32 AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA. 



Koh Lak itself is a small island rising from the sea like a 

 rudely splintered church tower, but on the adjacent mainland 

 is a small town bearing the same name. Along the sea-board 

 here, are numerous small patches of paddy fields with rude 

 bamboo houses, raised high above the ground, scattered 

 amongst them, and numerous water-buffaloes feeding in the 

 deserted clearings. Looking westwards, some ten miles 

 distant, one can see Khow Maun (known on the Burmese side 

 as Khow Mordann) rising from the ridge that divides Siam 

 from Burma, over the shoulder of which the path we were to 

 take turned. It was then the 7th of June, and the South-West 

 Monsoon had set in, and although upon the East side of the 

 Peninsula not a drop of rain was falling, we could see heavy 

 masses of vapour lying upon the West side of the hills, and 

 evidently rain falling plentifully on there. 



My guide, who had been known to me for over two years 

 as a miner and hunter at Bangtaphan, was a Siamese with a 

 dash of Burmese blood in him and had relations living on both 

 sides of the Peninsula whom he visited frequently, and known 

 to those of the Siamese side as Nat Yeet, to those in Burma 

 as Moung See. He would assent gravely to the most impro- 

 bable statememts, and the real state of matters never stood a 

 moment in his way from putting them as he thought they 

 were wanted to be. He had announced this road as eminently 

 suited for elephants, and that a pony might go along, so that 

 I was tempted to travel at ease. Luckily I had with me 

 another man, NUAN by name, a most faithful Siamese and quite 

 an ornament to the skin he wears. 



Having followed the coast line from Bangtaphan northwards 

 to Koh Lak, we there turned inland and made for the pass 

 across the hills at Khow Maun. For the first four miles, a 

 rough dray-path led us over a shallow, level, damp soil carrying 

 a stunted jungle clear overhead, so that we made a swinging 

 pace. But at the end of the four miles the path ended in a 

 clearing in the jungle covered with tall lalang grass and full 

 of shallow pools, and for the following five miles we followed 

 an irregular footpath that wound through the jungle. The 

 soil was here deeper and drier, and the trees grew larger and 



