10 KELANTAN AND GUNONG TAHAN. 



100' up in a hill, and the Chinese, on account of this bearing 

 some resemblance to one of their deities, formerly used it as a 

 temple, and there is still an old rotten table up there with some 

 candlesticks full of burned joss sticks, and remains of half- 

 burned paper. It has however not been used for a long time, 

 and the ladders that led up to it have long since rotted away, 

 so I had to climb the face of the rock to get up ; but I should 

 not recommend anybody to try that experiment, unless he is a 

 good climber. My men that were with me looked at it, and 

 decided that it was safer to stop at the bottom ; so I let them 

 remain there, while I went up with a young Malay who had 

 been up there once before. The Chinese are rather afraid to go 

 near these limestone hills as they say that the tigers use the 

 caves as sleeping apartments, and this is very likely, though I 

 never found traces of them in any of the many caves that I 

 visited, whereas I found plenty of traces of elephants in the 

 larger caves that were level with the ground, and the Malays 

 told me that these animals often made them their homes for 

 months at a time. The floors of the caves were often strewn 

 with the remains of dead and broken snail-shells, which had 

 fallen down from the roof in the dry season, when most of the 

 snails die. However I also found a number of live shells hidden 

 away in the dark and moist crevices of the rock, among them 

 several new and rare species. Most of the snails have a great 

 liking for limestone rocks, and the collector will find more speci- 

 mens in one hour on these rocks than in the jungle for one 

 month. 



From the top of some of these cliffs I got a good view of 

 the surrounding country, but I looked in vain for a mountain 

 that looked anything like 10,000' high. Towards the East 

 were two mountain ranges which I supposed to be about 6,000' 

 high, the natives calling the most northern Gunong Siam, and the 

 other Tulang Rabong. Gunong Siam appeared to be slightly 

 higher than the other, and the Malays stated that this was the 

 same; mountain that the Malays of Fahang called Gunong Tahan. 

 I did not believe this possible, but seeing that the people on the 

 A ring river also called Tahan the Gunong Siam, I decided to 

 a.^ceud the mountain to make sure of it. I had great difficulty 

 in obtaining any coolies to go with me owing to the rivalry 



