IN SEARCH OF BIG GAME. 
49 
Ruan, which \\as near the Kemaman border. This was a 
great place for rhinoceroses so Wan Hadji had told me. We 
had a very rough journey again, over inonntains and up 
rocky river beds, the carriers Hnding it fairly hard work. 
There are no paths in this jungle except those made by 
wild beasts, and one has to follow them to get from one valley 
to the next ; most o( them seem to select the highest [loint in 
the ridge to achieve tiieir object of getting from river to river. 
Next morning we followed the Sadjah and almost at once 
came out on to the Sungei Katiay, which river we followed all 
day, crossing and recrossing it many doiiens of times. 
Towards evening we came across the tracks of a solitary 
elephant ; these tracks were qnite a week old, but as it seemed 
from their size that the\- must have been made by an elephant 
of vast proportions, I decided to follow the trncks on the 
morrow. We bad a bad experience that night; when we 
came to make a camp we could find no ground palms suitable 
for the roof of our hut and had to resort to bamboo of 
which there was any quantity of the giant all round us. 
Now^ split bamboo makes an excellent roof, but it has to be 
carefully erected and takes some time to put together. We 
had little time to spare before dark and we were all tired after 
a long day's tramp. The result was that I had a covering 
to my shelter but not a roof. As bad luck would have it about 
8 o'clock it started to rain in torrents and everything became 
soaked in a very few minutes. We mauaged to keep the 
rice dr}' by covering it up with a waterproof sheet and then 
sitting on it. For two hours we shivered in the rain— and it 
was cold in that jungle — and then it fortunately cleared* It 
was out of the cjuestion to sleep in our bedraggled condition, 
so with the help of a laruern we skirmished around and found 
some dead wood which fortunately was not very sodden and 
soon had a good bla;;e going. It was midnight, however, 
before we turned in- We made as early a start as we could on 
the morrow and followed the tracks of the big elephant, 
which took us along the main game path towards Pamah 
Ruan, Unfortunately we made a mistake with the tracks and 
had five or six hours of very heavy walking in conse- 
quence; the rain overnight was I think a sufficient excuse for 
what happened. After we had been tracking for about three 
hours — we were still following the Katiay— we came to a 
place where the elephant had wandered backwards and 
forwards having crossed the tracks of a herd which appeared 
to have passed that way before him. One track however, 
kept to the game path, and this one we followed, keeping as 
it turned out to the track that we had been following previously. 
4 
