28 A JOURNEY ON FOOT TO THE PATANI FRONTIER. 
at all events Lunggong was one stage in the right direction, and I 
had promised Datoh Ttn to be his guest. 
The Penghulu must have borne testimony to the peaceable inten- 
tions of our party, for I observed none of that panic on the part of 
women and children which I had sometimes unwittingly caused in 
Perak hamlets. I am reluctantly compelled to bear witness that 
the ladies whom J saw at Lunggone were not one whit better 
looking than the specimens of womanhood whom I had seen from 
time to time in other parts of the country. Kota Lama and Kam- 
par have the reputation of producing the best favoured damsels in 
Perak, but to the Western imagination it seems that even those 
happy spots have earned their fame too cheaply. 
While a house was being prepared for my reception, and while 
Mastan looked on in a superior kind of way as much as to say 
“Do you really expect my master to sleep here?” the Penghulu 
invited me into his house. Various elders were introduced, and 
the politest of small talk was interchanged for a time. Presently 
refreshments were served, consisting of bullets of dough in a 
molten sea of brown sugar. My host and his brother, with true 
Malay hospitality, shared this delicacy with me, no doubt for the 
usual unspoken reason—to prove that no poison was to be feared. 
I was glad to fall back on some excellent plantains and to leave 
the bubur to those more capable of appreciating it. 
It was all very well to le perdu in a hammock in my new quar- 
ters all the afternoon, but the villagers were not to be cheated in 
that way, and when with one or two “ faithfuls”” 1 started in 
the evening to bathe in a little stream which flows past the kam- 
pong, the whole population turned out to assist. To attend 
another to the bath is a polite attention among Malays ! 
Kunivue Monamep brought unsatisfactory accounts of Sayyid 
Maumup. The latter, so far from meeting me at Lunggong, as | 
had reason to hope he would do, had written to say that illness 
detained him at Tumulong. It was time to settle definitely what 
our movements were to be, without further reference to this man, 
so I told my people to be ready to march on the morning of the 
8rd. The neighbouring Penghulus mustered strong in our hut 
that evening, each with his grievance. One had been squeezed 
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