be dangerous to travel liere with any but these active
and sure-footed ponies. With men on their backs
they will climb up places that our horses at home,
which are accustomed to level roads, would not like
to ascend alone. In certain spots along this path
were many piles of the excrements of elephants,
where they came to feed on the branches of young
trees. Half an hour before sunset we arrived here,
at Suban, a village of four houses, and were glad to
rest and take some food after a very fatiguing day’s
journey. Hear by is a large stony brook, where I
have enjoyed a refreshing bath in the cool, clear
mountain-stream.
A p ril 22d. — Early this morning we walked
about half a mile up the stream, making our way
over the huge boulders in its bed. Soon we came to
strata of coal, associated with layers of clay and
sandstone. I was searching particularly for a limestone
mentioned by Yan Dijk, who has examined
the geology of this region, as being of the same age
as the coal, and containing fossils of a recent period.
Hot finding it in this direction, I returned and continued
down the stream for half a mile, crossing from
side to side over the slippery rocks and through the
torrent until the banks became high, perpendicular
walls, and the water was deeper than the waist.
Finding I could proceed no farther without a raft
of bamboo, I returned a quarter of a mile, ascended
the steep bank, and followed down the stream for
about a mile, but could not find any outcropping of
the rock I was seeking. When I reached Suban
again, I felt a peculiar smarting and itching sensation
at the ankles, and found my stockings red with
blood. Turning them down, I found both ankles
perfectly fringed with blood-suckers, some of which
had filled themselves until they seemed ready to
burst. One had even crawled down to my foot,
and made an incision which allowed the blood
to pour out through my canvas shoe. All this
day we have suffered from these disgusting pests.
Our horses became quite striped wuth their own
blood, and a dog that followed us looked as if
he had run through a pool of clotted gore before we
reached the highway again. Of all the pests I have
experienced in the tropics, or in any land, whether
mosquitoes, black flies, ants, snakes, or viler vermin,
these are the most annoying and disgusting. There
is something almost unendurable in the thought
that these slimy worms are lancing you and sucking
out your life-blood, yet the Resident informs me that
he has travelled many times through the forests in
this region when these animals were far more numerous
and tormenting than they have been to-day.
Sometimes he has known them to drop from the
leaves upon the heads and into the necks of all
who chanced to pass that way.
Returning two paals toward the highway, we took
a path through a magnificent forest in a more easterly
direction, for about the same distance, to Ayar
Sumpur, a brook where the coal again appears on its
sides and in its bed. The layers seen at Suban were
not more than two or three feet thick, but here they
are from six to ten. Between this place and Suban
coal again outcrops on the banks of the Kamuning.