FIVE DAYS IN NANING. 
25 
When the preparations for my excursion were complete, I 
found that the very limited number of hack ponies in Ma¬ 
lacca had all been previously engaged by Malays and Klings 
at high rates, for one of those frequent occasions on which 
the pleasure—loving Malaccans throng to Tajong Kling or 
some other attractive country spot, where, beneath moss 
covered and shady fruit trees planted by their forefathers, 
the tombs of Malayan saints of old are preserved with 
superstitious care. I was not long left in this difficulty, 
for the kindness of some of my European and Chinese friends 
speedily, at some inconvenience to themselves, placed a relay 
of horses at my disposal. To render the stages as easy 
as possible, I started two hours before day-break, accom¬ 
panied by a Malay named Mahomed, who was to take me to 
the house of a friend of his in Naning well qualified to 
escort me over the country. The road to the interior 
strikes across the paddy plain from the Trankerah road. 
The fields of paddy, stirred by a cold breeze, glimmered 
beneath the moon, and we passed cottage after cottage 
lying, with all their sleeping inmates, in perfect silence by 
the road side. The cold, mystic, melancholy aspect of the 
plain, which fancy might now people with the Hantus 
and other aerial beings who yet live in Malayan superstition, 
was a wonderful change from the warm and mellow scene 
which glows here when the sun is up, and like most other 
things in Malacca, very striking to a visitor from Singapore. 
We passed Raja Nerang, Bakar B4tu, Tomba Malim, Bir- 
tam Kichi, Birtam Bes&r, Kandang, Gaung, Pinring, and at 
4 o’clock reached the limit of the plain, and ascended the 
gentle slope of the first hill at Malim. The road now lay 
through a black thicket of fruit trees. Erom Malim to 
Ching, where we changed horses, and thence to the next 
stage at Rumbiah, our course was over a succession of 
connected or isolated hills, which were pierced or divided 
by winding flats, not broader than a small river and covered 
with paddy. The first hills rose in bold ridges, and the road 
w ound along their lower slopes, but after passing these sea 
ramparts of the early continent, the face of the country 
rose and fell in ramifying, sinuous undulations, varying in 
their forms and dimensions, and with the hollows filled up 
to a certain level with the clay and sand washed by rains, and 
dug out by streams, from the hills around and the mountains 
behind. The road sometimes mounts to the summits and 
sometimes lies along the sides or in the depressions of the 
hills, and as its general direction is transverse to that of the 
D 
