IN THE EASTERX AUCniFELAOO, 



165 



the eveniTig before. Resummg our jonrney faiot and in 

 low spirits, we reached the dammar-gatherers hut within 

 ail lioiir'a walk. The dead fowl, hastily boilod with a littl« 

 rice which had soured in the rain, was partiikeu of without 

 complaint. The nearest baggage came in some two hours 

 after us, the porters having ctimpod withont fire or shelter 

 not far from myself, but the heavier part did not arrive 

 till lute in the afternoon, and not until I had sent out a 

 relief eonvoy. When it arrived the men were too tired to 

 proceed further that flay, so we spent the night where we were. 

 At sunset we feasted luxuriously, we thought, on the solitary 

 fowl belonging to the owner of the hut, carefully reserving a 

 limb for next day's breakfast 



The remembrance of our dismal surroundings on that 

 evening haunts me still — a miserable hovel gauntly raised 

 like a railway sigual-box on high posts, in a clearing in the 

 heart of the forest, amid the wild and raelaucholy confusion of 

 felled trees, and with our view shut in by grey fleecy rain- 

 clouds hanging in banks on the hills and low down on the 

 tree-tops. The screaming of the cicads and the " koo-ow " of 

 the Argus pheasants seemed more mournful than usual ; there 

 was nothing lively anywhere to relieve the gloom. In the 

 little space which they had respectfully railed ofi' for me I 

 rntired e^irly to rest, and slept comfortably, notwithstanding the 

 smoke from a wood fire and a spluttering dammar hmip, the 

 steam from drj^iug clothes and the aroma that filled the cabin* 

 into which twenty-eight of us had managed to squeeze. 



Next day the grey morning had hardly appeared before we 

 were again on the march, striding along as ftist as the deep 

 tracks made by a bevy of elephants which bad traversed the 

 roa<l the night before, j;»ermitted m. Mr. Wallace, in his 

 * Malay Archipelago,' says "of the great Mammalia of Sumatra, 

 the elephant and the rhinoceros, the former is much more 

 scarce than it \\m a few years ago, and seems to retire rapidly 

 before the spread of civilisation- About Lobo Raman [a 

 district more to the north-east in the Palembang Residency] 

 tuaks and bones are occasionally found, but the living animal 

 is now never seen." In the district I was traversing the opposite 

 seemed to hold. Within twenty miles of Telok-betong I have 

 crossed a wide area over which elephants had {jommitted 



