house or big room, raised for Mr. Hawley, with the swamp all round it
and underneath it, and close to it some pestiferous ditches which have
been cut to drain it, but in which a putrid-looking brown ooze has
stagnated. There is a causeway about two hundred yards long on the
river bank, but no road anywhere. The river is broad, deep, swift and
muddy; on its opposite side is Perak, the finest State in the
peninsula, and the cluster of mat houses on the farther shore is under
the Perak Government.* Sampans are lying on the heated slime. Cocoa-nut
trees fringe the river bank for some distance, and there are some
large, spreading trees loaded with the largest and showiest crimson
blossoms I ever saw, throwing even the gaudy Poinciana regia into the
shade; but nothing can look very attractive here, with the swamp in
front and the jungle behind, where the rhinoceros is said to roam
undisturbed.
[*The Bernam district has recently been handed over to Perak, and is now
under Mr. Low's very capable administration.]

We landed in the police boat at a stilted jetty approached by a ladder
with few and slippery rungs. At the top there was a primitive gridiron
of loose nibong bars, and the river swirled so rapidly and dizzily
below that I was obliged ignominiously to hold on to a Chinaman in
order to reach the causeway safely. To add to the natural insecurity of
the foothold, some men were killing a goat at the top of the ladder,
and its blood made the whole gridiron slippery. The banks of the river
are shining slime giving off fetid exhalations under the burning sun;
there is a general smell of vegetable decomposition, and miasma fever
(one would suppose) is exhaling from every bubble of the teeming slime
and swamp.

In the veranda of Mr. Hawley's house a number of forlorn-looking