ur arrival, and as we finished
our struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last
rubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking of
dogs. Evidently we were expected.

The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the little
old weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, might
have been at the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs,--they
were all so much alike. A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a
cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for
each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing
beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan
ball within the light of a central fire,--made up the details of a
little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to
me within the last three years.

Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire,
while we for politeness' sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and
syrah leaf from the punghulo's state box.

The next morning we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrow
jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my
companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a
long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended,
and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.

Twice during our day's march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in
the earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal
in age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them,
although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas
(gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of the
creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim was
engaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth,
I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough gold
to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.

It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed
up through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn
sky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full "coo-ee"
of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts
of the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or the
wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of this
most glorious of birds.

The shrill, never ceasing whir