IX SEARCH OF BIG GAME. 
35 
CHAPTER IV. ^ 
The Tembeli.ng. 
About nine o'clock on the morning of the 22nd of July we 
arrived at a kamponji^ opposite Pulau Rata where we were infor- 
med that a sohtary elephant had been doing damage to the newly 
planted out padi, and we decided to stop and have a look at 
his tracks. He was reported to have very long tiisks — they 
always have in report— but I found on inspection that he, at 
any rate, had not got a ver>' bi-^ track. However as I did not 
think that 1 would lose any time by going overland to where I 
hoped to stop thai night, I sent the boat up stream to Padang 
Tengoh, with instructions to make a camp there, hoping to be 
able to find fresh tracks of the elephant during the day. The 
tracks that had been shown me were a day old. With Yasin 
and a gun bearer and two local Malays we followed the bull's 
spoor which took us in the direction of the padang, but 
although we followed these tracks almost up to our destination 
we found late on in the afternoon that the elephant had 
changed his mmd regarding his desire to obli*je us and had 
doubled back towards the padi fields, so we abandoned our 
tracking and made our way down to the river. In the 
•evening Yasin and myself went out into the padang to 
try for deer, hut found no new tracks at all. This padang 
is frequently visited b\' seladang, but with the exception of 
the old tracks of a solitary beast I do not think that 
there had been any seladang there for months. Before 
daylight the following morning we again went into the 
padang also without seeing any sign of deer, bnt we found that 
our friend of the previous day had crossed the clearing early 
that morning, and we followed his tracks a little way into the 
jungle. The ground was too hard to give us any idea of his 
she, hut the marks made by his shoulder where he had rubbed 
against the trees as he ff?rced his way through the jungle were 
so low down that we soon decided that he was not worth 
going after. Returning to the boat we got away soon after 
eight o'clock, arrived at Pulau Tawah early in the afternoon 
and decided to stop there for the night. The Datoh Garang, 
to give him the name by which he is known to all the natives, 
was away, and I was unfortunate in being unable to meet him 
once more. He is one of that rare genus amongst Malays, a 
strong man, and is much respected by all who know him. 
The next day's poling took us up to Pulau Guai where we 
camped on the sand-bank to the north of the island. In the 
