IX 
Obituary .- — David Thomas Gwynne- Vaughan. 
i 
shot, the rafts would come instantly to pieces and all my kit would 
probably be ruined. No other kind of craft would stand it. These rafts are 
only made of a few bamboos lashed together by rotan, and they bend like 
fishing rods before they break. Twice we have had to moor out our kits and 
descend in the raft alone, because it was too risky. 
‘ Hadji and I sleep together at night on the raft, wherever night over- 
takes us, which it has up to now in the middle of the jungle. When it rains 
we put up my waterproof sheet, and go on getting wet as before. You will 
hardly believe it that, in spite of all this, I am in uproarious good health, 
and am enjoying it immensely, although I am frightfully savage at having 
the rest of the trip spoiled.’ 
‘ Now Tomoh is a gold country, worked by a Chinese colony, and one 
day on the march through it we changed our path from the bed of a large 
stream to a path (hardly better) through the jungle, when after a while we 
were petrified by meeting in the midst of the forest a little locomotive 
engine, and one or two trucks with English gold-mining machinery in them, 
all broken and decayed, the plates of the engine all burst and broken in all 
directions, but with its little rusty smoke-stack still erect. There it stood, 
as though suddenly slain in the midst of action, and now the forest had 
rapidly overgrown, crowded in and suffocated it, a stout liane twining 
round the smoke-stack painfully suggesting strangulation. The trail of the 
white man stood before us, the little engine looked pitiful and melancholy, 
and it felt as though we were deserting a disabled comrade in the face of 
a relentless and cruel foe, when we went on, leaving the work of our hands 
alone again and utterly desolate, to suffer the revenge of the violated 
jungle. The tale came out later on. Some time ago six “ Orang putih ” — 
whites — came here to work for gold. They stayed three years, they found 
none worth working, and then three of them went back, two died of fever 
and one by the fall of a rock. They must have been pretty good men 
because they left a good reputation among the Malays, who speak well 
of them.’ 
‘ This morning, after great difficulty in obtaining two men, we floated 
down on our raft very slowly, using paddles, the water now having become 
too deep to punt, until I got to Kluat a village. There I managed to buy 
a small prahu, a much swifter craft. Now there are no more rapids, the river 
being a fine one, about 1 50 yards wide, running through a hilly and densely 
afforested country, every now and then coming to a solitary house or 
Kampong. It is really excessively beautiful, and not in the least mono- 
tonous, as was the Amazon. I also managed to get three men to paddle, 
and actually got them to work nearly all night, chiefly because I could not 
sleep myself, since the boat leaked, and everything got soaking wet, to say 
nothing of the rain. We have made excellent progress, and I expect to get 
to Kelantan by night. One of the men I picked up is a certain Hadji Said, 
