HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
IF YOU put your finger on the map of the Malay Peninsula, an inch or two from its exact centre, you will find a river in Pahang territory which has its rise in the watershed that divides that state from its northern neighbours Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu. It is called the Tĕmběling, and after its junction with the Jělai, at a point some two hundred miles from the sea, the combined rivers are named the Pahang. The Tĕmbĕling is chiefly remarkable for the number and magnitude of its rapids, for the richness of its gutta-bearing trees, and as being the scene of some of the most notable exploits of the legendary magician Sang Kělěmbai, whose last days on earth are supposed to have been spent in this valley. The inhabitants of the district were, in my time, a ruffianly lot of jungle-dwelling Malays, preyed upon by a ruling family of Wans—a semi-royal set of nobles, who did their best to live up to the traditions of their class. Chiefs and people alike were rather specially interesting because—though of this they had no inkling-they represented the descendants of one of the earliest waves of Malay invaders of the Peninsula—folk who came, not from Sumatra, as did the ancestors of the bulk of the natives of British Malaya. but from the islands of
