FIVE DAYS IN NANING. 
31 
to the Malayan method is a very peculiar one, a crop being 
taken from the same ground only once in every 8 or 10 
years. When the original forest is felled and burned, ad¬ 
ding a large quantity of wood ashes to the surface layer of 
vegetable matter, the first crop is sometimes- succeeded by 
plantains and other vegetables, which are hardly and often 
not at all cultivated, and seldom visited save to take their 
produce. Instead of renovating the vigour of the soil by 
tillage and manuring, it is given back into the hands of 
nature for years, until a young forest has grown up to a con¬ 
siderable height, and supplied materials for anew fertilizing 
ash. A single paddy crop is now all that the husbandman 
generally ventures to take, and this system continues ever 
after. Where the road crosses the brow of the hill, Abdulrah- 
man pointed out the site of one of the principal stockades 
of our old enemy Dul Syed, the Panghulu of Nailing. So 
important did he consider it from its vicinity to his own 
village and its strength, that he called it the key of Tabo. 
A narrow paddy flat, of which the water was of a remarkably 
strong brownish red colour, separated Perling from the next 
elevation, which has a wide undulating summit. The 
soil near the flat is of a brownish white, but it soon changes 
into brownish red, with an abundant mixture of lateritic 
gravel and frequent solid, calcined looking blocks of brown¬ 
ish yellow and brownish black colours. These at some places 
protrude in such numbers as to render the whole surface 
utterly barren, and give it the appearance of having been 
burned. In some places small quartz fragments are mixed 
with the lateritic gravel. 
The country now became more open, and after crossing a 
low hillock in which a bluish slatey micaceous rockhas been 
left unaltered by plutonic action, the extremity of another 
steep hill, and the flats between them (the only named 
localities in the tract being Bunga Tanjong and Bali 
Munkur), we had only a narrow flat between us and the 
hill of Tabo. On the left a paddy valley of considerable 
size, (into a lower part of which run the flats which we had 
just passed) swept round the north west side of the hill,—■ 
a very gentle slope covered with old fruit trees, amongst 
which cottages are scattered. On this side of the village 
the earthen rampart of the Panghulu still stretches along 
the face of the hill. The road cuts through it, passes the 
village burial ground, where there are many rude tomb 
stones of unhewn upright slabs of granite, and then runs 
close above the village, over an open tract covered with a 
