8 A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO TEMENGOH. 
pounded about by the elephants for which in parts side tracks 
had been made, but the places where the beasts had stepped 
were full of holes containing foul water which never escaped. 
In one of these elephants’ foot print puddles we on one 
occasion found a large water scorpion (Selostoma). 
The house at Temengoh was a bamboo hut of fairly large 
size near the river bank and standing in old village ground 
with Limes, Guavas, Durians, and Sentol trees, growing 
around. Near the river bank was a very fine Kapayung tree, 
Pangium edule, Bl., bearing its curious fruits. 
Our arrival at the village seemed to cause some alarm, 
and the children refused to go to the school which was near the 
resthouse unless personally conducted by aduits, nor were the 
adults much less nervous. There were a good many Semangs 
about and we constantly came to camps from which they 
had fled at our approach. On one of our walks through the 
ricefields Amat the plant collector and I met a Semang witha 
little child on the path. He stopped dead at the sight of us 
some forty yards away. We turned off the path to cross the 
fields and he began to sing, or utter some invocation in a very’ 
loud voice till he had passed the spot we had turned off when he 
broke into a run as hard as he could go yelling at the top of his 
voice. We managed to get several however to the resthouse 
where the other members of the party collected their language. 
We asked them what became of the dead, good and bad; one 
sald the good went down stream, the bad up stream, asked who 
made the world they were quite unable to understand the 
question, apparently they did not see any reason why anyone 
should make it. They seemed to know nothing of any deities 
or spirits (hantus) and feared only the tiger, elephant, and 
falling trees, and apparently lightning. In camp on June 21, 
three men ovt of a travelling band of fifteen came to my hut, 
the others made a detour to avoid us. They had been further 
into the forest to visit another set who had some plantations, 
and were returning to Temengoh with food. Two were young 
fellows and one an old bald man with a single tuft of hair on 
his head, father of one of the younger. ones. They had some 
Jour. Straits Branch 
