FASCICULI MALATENSES 
xiii 
which their dwelling-rooms are built. Altogether, the environs of Senggora 
offer a strange study in contrasts ; for while phonographs and acetylene bicycle 
lamps are on sale in several of the Chinese shops in the town, real lake dwell- 
ings are in actual occupation within a mile or two. The town market dues 
are very heavy in Senggora, and a most irksome regulation was made at the 
beginning of 1 902, forbidding women to carry on their heads, in the immemorial 
manner, anything intended for sale within the walls, the reason being that all 
such goods must be inspected by the police, who objected to pry too closely into 
things which had been sanctified by being placed on the head of a human 
being. 
We spent ten days in Senggora in December, 1901, recruiting our health 
and preparing for a journey to Kedah, and one of us returned for another short 
visit at the end of the spring of 1902. A few spiders and one or two ethno- 
graphical specimens were all that we collected here, but on both occasions we 
thoroughly appreciated the kind hospitality of His Excellency the Siamese 
High Commissioner. 
Patalung 
This state, the south of which marches with Senggora, the west with 
Trang and other West Coast States, and the north with Ligor, or Nakawn 
Sitamarat, is thickly populated in the neighbourhood of the Taleh Sap, but 
there appear to be only scattered villages in the interior, where considerable 
numbers of Semangs probably still exist in the jungle. The country is flat 
near the coast, but dotted over with limestone peaks, 1 and the central range 
sends down low spurs to within a few miles of the lake. I travelled by boat 
from Senggora to Lampam in May, 1902, and from Lampam overland to 
Trang. 
Lampam. This place, the capital of Patalung (Muang Talun in Siamese), 
is a neat little Siamese town, with handsome government offices, a fine temple, 
and a curious shrine in which crocodile skulls are reverenced. The population 
consists of Siamese, a few Chinamen and a considerable number of half-castes, 
the children of Chinese fathers and Siamese mothers. These people, who in 
the Patani States are confused with the race of their fathers, are here recognized 
as a class apart, wearing their hair hanging on the shoulders, but not in a 
queue ; they are called Baba. The country all round Lampam is very highly 
cultivated, chiefly by Siamese, who have evidently a full share ofSemang blood 
in their veins, and, to a less extent, by Malays, who dress and speak like their 
neighbours, though they live in their own villages and cling to the Mahommedan 
religion. The land is very fertile, producing two crops of rice in a year, and 
1. It is the pointed conical form of some of these peaks which is believed to give the medicine-men of Patalung 
such great magical power (Cf. Fascic. Malay. — ■ Anthropology , part I, p. 60). 
