by the wooden walls of the flume, was stalled like a tame ox within the four walls of the reservoir, was forced, protesting but obedient, into the unsightly piping, and at the power station, three hundred feet below, was compelled to yield up its angry strength to the service of man, its master, in order to work and light the gold mines at Raub, seven miles away.
I listened as the engineer in charge told me, with the air of a lecturer upon anatomy, how many gal- lons of water per minute went to the pulsing of that once free river; how much of its strength was taken for the electrical works, how much left to the dimin- ished waters of the torrent.
The scene, as I stood looking down at it, was won- derfully little changed from what it had been that day long ago when I, first of all my kind, had gazed in fascination at those boisterous falls. On the left bank, where I had clung, the jungle still ran riot to the skyline. An outcrop of white limestone, which I remembered having noted, stood out prominently as of old, a glaring landmark, bare of vegetation on the flank of one of the higher hills at the foot of the falls. Through the deeply cleft walls of granite the river still danced and leaped wildly, though with sadly diminished volume, and with a voice that was like a mere whisper compared with the roar and Thunder of other days. Except when my eyes rested upon the works of man upon the right bank, all was as beautiful as in the past. But the supreme free- dom of the river, the quality which for me had had so overmastering, so compelling a fascination, had van-
