32 
frlVE DAYS IN’ NANING, 
thin sward. Several rocks protrude here, which have more 
or less a calcined appearance or are merely laterised. The 
whole,, as well as all the hills from Alor Gaja to Tabo, are 
a micaceous clay, which has at many places been transformed 
by subterranean thea and gases.* Near the northern end 
of the village I noticed a luxuriant ipo tree, the juice of 
which forms an ingredient in the poison by which the 
darts of the sumpitan are tipped. 
The main operation of the Nan in g war seems to have 
been the conveyance of a mortar and a 12-pounder howitzer 
from Rumbiah to the Panghulu’s village at Tabo, a distance 
of 12 miles. For this purpose the road had to be widened 
and rendered passable, and in 115 days, at an expense little 
short of £100,000, the road over which I had just passed 
was constructed and the 12 miles march accomplished. If 
British troops cannot proceed a few miles into the Peninsula 
without carrying mortars and 32-pounders with them, the 
fewer petty Malay wars the Government provokes the better. 
It is true that when the artillery was brought up to Tabo 
opposition ceased, for the stockade was carried without the 
loss of a man on either side, but it may be doubted how far 
the artillery was essential to this result when we learn that 
the howitzer could not be got over some felled trees in 
time to be used, and the mortar apparently stuck in a 
paddy field. So that all the previous felling of innumerable 
trees and making of mounds over swamps, for the sake of 
the ordnance, had ultimately no other effect than to delay the 
issue of the contest for three months, and expose our troops 
during all that time to harassing attacks from the bush 
fighting Malays. A strong party of seamen would have 
taken Tabo in a few days, and so would the gallant Madras 
troops if they had trusted to their own good arms and left 
the guns at Malacca. It may be suggested however that 
a body of Macassar men, officered by Europeans and lightly 
armed and clothed, would prove a more effective force in a hill 
and forest contest with Malays, which any war we may ever 
again have in the Peninsula is likely to be, than any other 
description of troops. They would do their work rapidly, 
and at a vastly smaller expense than 300 dollars for each 
* At T£bo the original rock, of which the traces are slight, is a bluish an d 
reddish fissile micaceous clay. The plutooic action has rendered the greater 
portion of the rocks visible at the surface, whether gravel or protruding blocks, 
scoriform, partially quartsose, or lateritic. The larger proportion have the 
calcined appearance which rocks containing much iron assume on its com¬ 
plete oxidation. 
