40 
FIVE DAYS IN NANING. 
a Malacca Malay informed me that sea shells, pieces of cable 
and other marine remnants abounded.* 
r lhe whole aspect of Rambau, so far as 1 proceeded, 
was so different from that of the proper Malay countries, 
that the eye alone told that here Sumatra was transported 
into the Peninsula. The houses and everything about them 
indicated a population industrious, thrifty, hardy, indepen¬ 
dent and republican. The pronunciation, customs and ideas 
had no tinge of the Penirfeula, but were entirely those of 
Meniingkabau. This passage of the inland people of Su¬ 
matra across the Malayan lowlands of Sumatra and the 
Peninsula into the interior of the latter, without pause or 
commixture with the inhabitants of the sea-board, is a cu¬ 
rious phenomenon. It still continues. I shall notice the 
remarkable institutions and governments of Rambau and the 
adjacent states in another paper. They are pure Sumatran. 
I will not ask the reader to bear me company on my 
return to Alor Gaja, as, save some additional and more 
minute geological information,f it presented only a repetition 
of what had attracted my notice in the forenoon. We reach¬ 
ed Alor Gaja at 8 o’clock, having accomplished a twelve 
hours walk, and an entire day’s journey of nearly sixty miles, 
without suffering. My Malacca companion, less accustomed 
to walking than the rest of us, had his feet much bruised by 
the lateritic gravel on the road, and was fain, when within 
a few miles of Alor Gaja, to borrow a pair of shoes from 
me.J 
* This is a very common belief, with respect to mountains of note, in Ma¬ 
layan superstition. 
t The Chirana Puteb hills were found to be ironmasked. In front of the 
cottage facing the path across the swamp formerly mentioned (p. 33) there 
was a calcined stone. The people of the place said it had not been burned 
by them. Further along I fouud another stone of the same kind within a few 
inches of the common ironmasked rock of the locality. Proceeding on, I picked 
up some specimens resembling calcined sandstone. Subsequently to the above 
journey I found in Singapore, on the line of junction between the granitic and 
sedimentary rocks, some massive remnants of sandstone and conglomeritie 
layers, which are completely identical with my Chiliad Puteh specimens. 
These rocks are very instructive, shewing the mode in which the sandstone has 
been converted into granite, and explaining the singular appearance assumed 
by the latter prior to conversion, under the influence of the heat and ferru¬ 
ginous emissions proceeding from the former. To find a precisely similar and 
peculiar transformation at the line of junction, at two places so distant, is a 
striking illustration of the correctness of the views of the formation of the Ma¬ 
lay Peninsula.which I have explained elsewhere (ante vol, II. On the Physical 
Geography and Geology of the Malay Peninsula.) 
J A European is a much better traveller than a Malay even in the Peninsula. 
Where there is much exposure to the sun, as in this day’s route, it is rather 
trying. But in the thinly inhabited parts of the Peninsula, where the paths 
lie through shady jungle, a Malay gives way sooner than a European, notwith- 
