A PEBSONAL RKCONNA [SANCE OF GUNONG TAHAN. 87 



now only three days' rations, but the next morning I made a last 

 attempt to circumvent the cliffs which had baffled us so long. The 

 men at first refused to go, saying that they had had enough of 

 climbing, that we were already short of rice, etc. I offered them 

 double pay, however, in the event of success, and finally two of them 

 agreed to accompany me, the rest remaining in camp until our return. 

 This attempt, too, failed, as the mountain side proved to be covered 

 with giant boulders (under one of which we saw some dung of the 

 Mahay mountain goat) and low cliffs, many of them not more than 

 eight or ten feet in height, but rising in many tiers one above the 

 other. These low cliffs and boulders, which would have offered no 

 serious difficulty under ordinary circumstances, but to proceed, it was 

 clear, would take us more time than we could afford, considering our 

 scanty allowance of rice. I therefore felt compelled to give orders to 

 descend and evening saw us encamped a considerable distance down 

 the stream. That night, however, a great calamity befell us; our 

 matches gave out. We had brought with us as many as thirty match- 

 boxes, but in a flood which overtook our camp at Kuala Badong, on 

 our way up the Lebeh almost every one of the boxes had been spoilt. 

 The dampness of the jungle and the persistent rains rendered futile 

 all attempts to obtain fire by the ordinary jungle methods (of 

 friction) and, though we used to spend hours every night over such 

 attempts, we were never able to do more than get smoke by it, 

 although two, if not four, at least of our men were well versed in the 

 methods ordinarily employed. From this night forward, therefore, we 

 could neither cook the little rice that remained, nor dry our clothes, and 

 our return journey, before we reached civilisation again, would be a 

 mere record of privations and hardships, not very interesting to read. 

 I will, therefore, merely say that on the next day we followed the stream 

 (which at the time we hoped might be the Aring or some tributary of 

 the Lebeh) till we reached a disused trail leading to the site of a 

 ruined and deserted shelter on the river bank, whether Malay or Sakai 

 it was hard to tell. Fording the river close to this shelter, we climbed 

 a steep hill and had already descended rapidly again by a steep but 

 otherwise easy trail for over two hours, when one of the Selangor 

 Malays was bitten by a snake. Fortunately it was a small snake, but 

 the foot began to swell and I cauterized it by way of precaution and 

 shortly after ordered a halt for the night. The men's feet (which had 

 been suffering, they said, from the poisonous water under foot in the 

 jungle) were now better, but my own feet had meanwhile become so 

 painful and inflamed (I believe from the same cause) that I found it 

 impossible to keep my boots on and was obliged to discard them and 

 wrap up my feet in cloth, though even so walking was exceedingly 

 painful work. The skin had turned a bright crimson and my feet 

 felt as if they had been plunged in boiling water. To add to our 

 troubles that day two of the Malays on their way down to the camp 

 met with a tiger, and we, therefore, had to take special measures of 

 precaution in the camp at night. 



