KELANTAN AND GUNONG TAHAN. 5 



thicket not 150 yards from the house the whole day. On my 

 return from the mountain however I got him, as he had just 

 then killed a buffalo, and came back in the afternoon to have 

 another meal. 



About a day's journey to the westward of the village at an- 

 other tributary to the Lebeh river, called Sungei A ring, was 

 situated a small encampment of Sakais and as I wanted these 

 men to show me the way to the mountain, I got the headman of 

 the village to send word to them to join me at once. The 

 whole tribe of Sakais living there are considered to be the pro- 

 perty of a Malay living half way up the Aring ; and this man 

 brought all the full grown men to me a couple of days later. 

 There is only this one settlement of Sakais in this part of the 

 country, whereas there are said to be thousands of them living up 

 the Ulu Kelantan river. Those that I had with me (ten or eleven 

 men), were all remarkably strong and healthy looking, and were 

 not so much troubled by skin diseases as is usually the case 

 with the Sakais. After getting all the information I could 

 about the Gunong Tahan or Gunong Siam, I decided to follow 

 the Aring as far as it was possible to go with the native boats, 

 and then strike across country straight for it. We therefore 

 loaded the provisions in eight or nine small dug-outs, and went up 

 stream with these, most of the coolies following us along the bank. 

 After going on in this way for a couple of days I found it im- 

 possible to get any farther with the boats, as the river was get- 

 ting too small, and the boats had continually to be hauled over 

 trees that had fallen across the river and barred the passage. 

 We therefore stopped at a small tributary called Sungei Tamu, 

 and while my Malays made everything ready for the march in- 

 land, I sent the Sakais in the jungle to cut a path for us along 

 the bank of the Tamu, which I had decided to follow seeing 

 that it seemed to come from the direction that I wanted to take. 

 The Sakais came back in the evening of the same day and re- 

 ported having found an elephant track, which they had followed 

 up a high ridge, and they were of the opinion that by following 

 this track we should reach the foot of the mountain. They 

 had come up with the elephants about half way up the mountain, 

 there being seven of them, but as there were no tuskers amongst 

 them, they had not fired on them, and the elephants continued 



