KELANTAN AND GUNONG TAHAN. 9 



are a number of small villages on its banks, from which I 

 obtained relays of boatmen, those I had with me from Kota 

 Bahru having by this time all got fever, or were at least pretending 

 to have. As we got farther up, the river got very shallow, and 

 I had to leave the big boats behind, and go on in small dug-outs. 

 We passed a few Chinamen on the way, washing gold, and they 

 told me they could make about 75 cents a day, when working 

 hard. At other places where the Chinamen were working 

 farther inland, they had dammed up the river to obtain sufficient 

 water, causing us a lot of trouble, as we had to unload the boats 

 before we could haul them over these obstacles. 



At last the village of Pulai was reached, and there I had 

 to stop, as it was impossible to proceed any farther by boat. 

 The village contains a couple of hundred inhabitants, nearly all 

 Chinese, there being only a few Malay traders there, who occa- 

 sionally come up from Kota Bahru and stay there a month or 

 two, until they have have bartered all their goods away for 

 gold. Formerly all the Chinese living there were gold miners, 

 but now that all the gold-bearing sand in the river bed has 

 been washed over and over again and the returns are getting 

 less, many of them have settled down as agriculturists and have 

 large paddy lields all round the village. Formerly there must 

 have been a much larger Chinese population in these parts, as 

 traces of very large alluvial workings are found up nearly all 

 the small creeks, being now overgrown and covered with dense 

 jungle. At present there are only a couple of Chinese Kongsis 

 working on anything like a large scale, and I believe they are 

 doing fairly well. Lode working has also been tried by the 

 Malays, but though the ore obtained was of very good quality 

 they soon gave it up, the work proving too hard for them. The 

 formation of the country about there is mostly hard blue lime- 

 stone which crops through every where, the hills in some places ris- 

 ing to a considerable height, mostly impossible to ascend owing to 

 their steep or overhanging walls. All these limestone hills are 

 full of caves and passages made by the water in bygone days, 

 and in places some very curious dripstones* are formed, the best 

 specimen of which is found in a cave close to the village, about 



* Stalagmites ? 



