arious rival
claimants to the throne strove for the mastery during successive
centuries. The land was always more or less on the rack of civil war,
and so to-day the largest State in the Peninsula carries a population of
only some four human beings to the square mile.

War was lulled, and peace fell upon Pahang when Bendahara Ali, the
father of the present Sultan, came to the throne; but, when he died in
his palace among the cocoa-nut trees, across the river opposite to the
Pekan of to-day, civil war broke out once more with redoubled fury.
During the years that he was a fugitive from the land of his birth, Che'
Wan Ahmad, who now bears the high-sounding title of Sultan Ahmad
Maatham, Shah of Pahang, made numerous efforts to seize the throne from
his brother and nephew, but it was not until the fifth attempt that he
was finally successful.

During one of those pauses which occurred in the war game, when Ahmad
had once more been driven into exile, and his brother's son Bendahara
Korish reigned in Pahang, the ambitions of Wan Bong of Jelai brought him
who had cherished them to an untimely and ignoble death.

The Jelai valley has, from time immemorial, been ruled over by a race of
Chiefs, who, though they are regarded by the other natives of Pahang as
ranking merely as nobles, are treated by the people of their own
district with semi-royal honours. The Chief of the Clan, the Dato'
Mahraja Perba Jelai, commonly known as To' Raja, is addressed as
_Ungku_, which means 'Your Highness,' by his own people. Homage too is
done to him by them, hands being lifted up in salutation, with the palms
pressed together, as in the attitude of Christian prayer, but the tips
of the thumbs are not suffered to ascend beyond the base of the chin. In
saluting a real _Raja_, the hands are carried higher and higher,
according to the prince's rank, until, for the Sultan, the tips of the
thumbs are on a level with the forehead. Little details, such as these,
are of immense importance in the eyes of the Malays, and not without
reason, seeing that, in an Independent Native State, many a man has come
by his death for carelessness in their observance. A wrongly given
salute may raise the ire of a _Raja_, which is no pleasant thing to
encounter; or if it flatter him by giving him more than his due, the
fact may be whispered in the ears of his superiors, who will not be
slow to resent the usurpation and to punish the delinquent.

At the time of which I