clearings when the sun declined from the zenith. We therefore went on board to burnish up our arms, and get some salt ready for curing our anticipated surplus of beef. I found Jamboo anxious to proceed up the river, to procure from a certain bank a peculiar species of very delicious shellfish, which I never have tasted anywhere but in the Setouè, although it is, I believe, common to the Straits of Malacca. I gave him permission, warning him to retreat immediately should war parties of Siamese or the orang-jahat fire upon him-an injunction which I believe I might have well spared myself the trouble of giving to the unwarlike descendant of the British Mars. About three o'clock Jadee and I started for our foray against the buffaloes, with a single barrel each, and two active men as beaters. As we went along, Jadee explained to me that the animals were perfectly wild, and all that the Malays knew of them in Tamelan was, that their young rice-fields had been sadly ravaged by them, and that we should have to be, in the first place, very 'cute to get within shot of them; and in the next, it would require some generalship, if we hit them in the open ground, to escape their wrath; for, as he sagely observed, "They don't care about tigers or snakes; and a very wise man whom I once knew, who understood all the buffaloes say to one another, told me that they don't care for a man either." "All right!" I said to Jadee; "but don't you know of any charm for getting near them, or, if we get near them, for being sure of killing them?"-Nothing, I knew, pleased Jadee so much as appealing to his powers of necromancy. BUFFALO-SHOOTING. 185 "Well, Tuhan," he replied, "I do know an infallible charm for bringing down man or animal; and that is, putting a small piece of pork-flesh (here he spat, and cursed the unclean animal) down a gun-barrel. I intend to practise it on Mahomet Alee; but, Inshallah! we will get these buffaloes without." "God is great!" I reverentially replied; "and it is lucky we are able to do without the flesh of swine on this occasion; but if it is a charm, may it be plentiful, O Jadee! when you meet the pirate Mahomet Alee!" : Thus chatting, we strolled rapidly along, skirting the western edge of the jungle, so that the strong shadow might in some measure serve to conceal us, and keeping to leeward of every animal in the cleared ground, the wind being from the eastward. At last the quick eyes of the Malays detected four or five animals feeding in a hollow and we commenced to stalk them up as if they had been red deer. Aided by the wind and shadow, we at last reached a small knoll unobserved; and there, through a mass of brushwood, had a good view of the brutes, and were well within range of them. Jadee peered over, and whispered that we were in a bad place, but no better could be had. There was a fine tree lying on its broadside not far off; its branches would have given a cover against any charge, for it formed a natural "abattis;" but it was impossible to get there without being seen by the cattle, who would either charge us, or bolt immediately. I therefore arranged that our two beaters should at once fall back again into the jungle, out of which we had advanced some four hundred yards. When they were safe, Jadee and I were to single out a bull, and fire, then run for the fallen tree, to obtain shelter before the rest of the herd were upon us. We accordingly carried this into execution, levelling our muskets at a great black bull buffalo, who was on the lookout whilst the rest fed. Something alarmed the brute he evidently caught sight of the beaters retiring to the jungle, and, as if by magic, seemed to communicate an alarm to the herd, which contained not more than four or five cows with calves and another bull. Seeing by his vicious look that he was going to charge my men, I sang out, "Fire!' Both our barrels went off together, and down dropped the lookout-bull. I was so enchanted that I looked only at him. "Lari-lacasse!" screamed Jadee, suiting the action to the word, by starting on his legs and running as fast as he could for the fallen tree. It required no repetition of the admonition for me to follow suit, and the more so as one glance showed me the other bull was in chase. The fifty yards I had to go over were done like lightning, and I leapt the stem and dashed after Jadee amongst the branches as the brute crashed against them. After trotting briskly round to see if there was an opening, it pawed the earth fiercely; and taking another volley from us, of which one ball alone wounded it, the bull beat a retreat, at which I was not sorry; for a more spiteful-looking beast than an enraged buffalo, I do not suppose the whole range of the animal kingdom can produce. It has none of that beauty of form which strikes one in looking at a European bull. Its black smooth skin is thinly covered with hair, not unlike that of an English pig; its frame is long, bony, and rather angular; THE MALAYAN BUFFALO. 187 the feet or hoofs clumsy and massive; the head long, with an appearance of cunning ferocity about the eye, very unlike the fearless look of our British bull. The horns are long and sharp, thick as a man's arm close to the head, and forming so open a curve that they can be laid almost close back in the hollow of the shoulder; and their efficiency I was very ready to believe in, without further proof than Jadee's assurance. We now left our fortress and joined the beaters, who told us that the wounded bull had retreated into the jungle, but was bleeding too profusely to go far; we followed up his trail, and soon found him in the centre of a thicket. After some trouble we dislodged him and administered the coup de grâce, much to our delight, for neither Jadee nor I were sportsmen in the proper acceptance of the word; and as we cheered over our trophy, I own to the soft impeachment of allowing my mind to recur to beefsteaks and marrow-bones, to which my rice-famished palate had been long a stranger. Ripping open the bull, we cut off as much meat as we could shoulder, and proceeded to the Emerald, to send all hands up for the rest of the carcass. CHAPTER XVIII. JAMBOO FRIGHTENED BY A RIVER SPIRIT-THE ABORIGINES OF MALAYIA-MALAYAN SUPERSTITIONS—AN “UNTOO," OR SPIRIT, SEEN MY CREDULITY TAXED-THE SPIRITS OF THE JUNGLEON SUPERSTITIONS IN GENERAL-THE CHARMS OF SUPERSTITION -MUSQUITOES AND SAND-FLIES-THE VILLAGE ON FIRE-FLAMING COCOA-NUT TREES-INTENTIONAL DESTRUCTION-TRACES OF MAN RAPIDLY OBLITERATED IN THE EAST. THE men soon brought off all the meat from the dead buffalo, and as there was much more than we could eat at once, the surplus was cut into thin shreds, and hung up about the vessel, so that on the morrow the action of the sun should convert it into what, in South America, is styled "charqui," or dried beef. Towards sunset, the sampan returned down the river with only half a load of shellfish, Jamboo and his crew having been frightened off the fishing-ground by what Sutoo, the quartermaster, assured me was an Untoo, or evil spirit. He explained to me, that while busy up to their knees in water, an odd noise had been heard under the overhanging trees on the opposite bank: looking in that direction, they saw a man's head come up out of the water; the face was covered with hair, and it eyed them in a fierce, threatening manner; they shouted, jumped |