304 ON MINES AND MINERS IN KINTA, PERAK. 
very extensive work has been done here by somebody ata 
time when the method was different from that which is com- 
monly adopted by Kinta Malays at the present day. There 
are at least fifty deep well-like pits on the Lahat hill, aver- 
aging about eight feet in diameter and perhaps twenty feet 
deep. 
Further up country, I have seen a large pit which the natives 
called a Siamese mine ; this is about fifty feet in diameter and 
over twenty feet deep and its age may be conjectured from the 
virgin forest in which it is situated. Besides these, at many 
places extensive workings are continually brought to light as 
the country is opened up, and these appear to have been left 
undisturbed for at least a hundred years. Further evidence 
of old work is furnished by slabs of tin of a shape, unlike 
that which has been used in Pérak im the memory of living 
persons ; and only a few weeks ago two very perfect ‘ curry 
stones’ of an unusual shape and particularly sharp grit, 
were found at a depth of eight feet in natural drift. These 
may, perhaps, have been used to grind grain. 
So peculiarly is Kinta a mining district, that even the 
Sakais of the hills do a little mining to get some tin sand 
wherewith to buy the choppers and sarongs which the Malays 
sell to them at an exorbitant price. 
The Malay pawang or medicine-man is pr obably the inherit- 
or of various remnants and traditions of the religion which 
preceded Muhammadanism, and in the olden time this class 
of persons derived a very fair revenue from the exercise of 
their profession, in propitiating and scaring those spirits who 
have to do with mines and miners; even now, although the 
Malay pawang may squeeze a hundred or perhaps two hundred 
dollars out of the Chinese towkay who comes to mine for tin 
in Malaya, the money is not perhaps badly invested, for the 
Chinaman is no prospector, whereas a good Malay pawang has 
a wonderful ‘nose’ for tin, and it may be assumed that the 
Chinese towkay and, before his time, the Malay miner, would 
not pay a tax to the pawang, unless they had some ground for 
believing that, by employing him and working under his advice, 
there would be more chance of success than if they worked 
only on their own responsibility. 
