A JOURNEY ON FOOT TO THE PATANI FRONTIER. 31 
that this was the ninring * season, and that all the male elephants 
were gila? Allah! Such a misfortune! Hardly had the descendants 
of the Prophet got one stage beyond their vlllage than their ele- 
phants strayed into a herd of wild ones, and if it pleased God they 
might be caught again in a week! I was sufficiently versed in the 
guile of the Perak Malay to know how much to believe of this 
story, and though I dismissed them civilly, I was not at all surprised 
to hear, after my return to Kwala Kangsa a month later, that these 
two rogues had left their elephants at Beong when they came on 
to see me, and rejoined them there on their return! 
The day was spent in Tou Ttn’s house, and the only important 
event was the receipt of a piece of information about one of the 
proscribed offenders of whom we were in search, which rather 
surprised me. It leaked out through some of the Malays in the 
place, who had made friends with my men, that St Tuan, one of the 
persons mentioned in the Governor’s proclamation, had fallen into 
the hands of Cuz Karim’s men after Ismatn’s flight from Jambai. 
They had scoured the country round Jambai for two or three weeks, 
and had picked up several slaves, chiefly women. Tuan had success- 
fully concealed his identity, so said my informants, by giving his 
name as Untona, but before he had been taken over the hills to 
SaLaMA, his master, Maharaja Lela himself, had offered to pay 
thirty dollars to the people in whose village Tuau was detained if 
they would bring about his escape. The man was said to be still 
in captivity at Salama, with other slaves. 
JaH Desa had sent me a letter that morning warning me that a 
noted robber, named Raga AxBBasf with five companions was out 
in the district South of Tampan; his messenger took back from me 
a letter, written in Haji AsuBaKar’s most flowing Malay, asking 
Cue Karim of Salama, to send to Kwala Kangsa, to await my re- 
turn, the person of St Unrone, said to be a captive in his village. 
* Ninring, a kind of fruit. The condition, called musth in India, to 
which the male elephant is subject periodically is attributed by the natives 
of Perak to this fruit, which, they say, is greedily eaten, when ripe, by 
elephants. 
+ Raja Abbas was a freebooter of Bugis origin, but a native of Krian. 
He had escaped a few years before from the Penang Prison, where he was 
confined on a charge of gang-robbery and murder. He was eventually 
killed (in 1876) resisting an attempt to capture him. 
