134 MY TRIP TO BELUM. 



We were borne on in deep water where the poles could 

 not find bottom and, where the rush of water was too great for 

 the steersmen, on to a small rock — we hit it — jumped back 

 and then the starboard steersman pushed us off it with his 

 paddle. A little later, at 1.25, we heard Berkeley calling and 

 saw him on a sandbank a quarter of a mile back. We poled 

 into the bank and sent half a dozen men to see what had hap- 

 pened. Several of his lower tier of bamboos had been smash- 

 ed : so we stayed where we were for the night. 1 found I had 

 lost a pair of English shooting-boots. 



On the 11th August, we started off at 7 a.m. Very fortu- 

 nately it had rained heavily in the night : the river had risen 

 from 18 inches to 2 feet and our journey was made much 

 easier for us. At 8, just as we were about to shoot the jeram 

 ringat, we saw the last of the missing cow elephants (Rana 

 Kamuja) within a few feet of the right bank ; we poled into 

 the bank below the rapid and sent in two men to catch her. 

 At 9.15 they came back to say she had bolted. 



The Ringat river is pouring mining silt into the Perak, a 

 fouling that must be speedily prevented. 



At 10 a.m., we reached the head of Jeram Brusa. We 

 stopped for ten minutes, while experts examined the state of 

 the water. It was decided that we could go through the small- 

 er channel. We started, and for over a quarter of an hour it 

 was a great fight against a nasty, twisting, zigzag rush of water, 

 full all the way of eddies and whirlpools. There is one rock 

 in mid-stream which is very threatening, but the increased 

 quantity of water helped us to avoid it. A little later the raft 

 was sucked a foot under, but soon rose and, rounding the last 

 bend, we rode into smooth water. But no sooner were we 

 out of Brusa than we were into Breksa, not so long, not 

 so fierce, but with one difficult cluster of rocks round wmich 

 the water was sucking and plunging into the main passage. 

 We went quite close to them, so close that as the water 

 drove us off the tail of the raft touched them. The raft was 

 half across the stream, but the paddlers dexterously straight- 

 ened her. 



Jour. Straits Branch 



