Page 125 - Malay sketches

VAN HAGEN AND CAVALtERO

could find no one to guide them through the jungle,
but their difficulties became so great that they
decided to risk the journey as a choice of evils, and
one set out.
early morning they
I have elsewhere tried to describe a
Malay jungle,
and the path which these men had to traverse was,
as I know from my own experience, beset with
and led for a
peculiar difficulty, great deal of the
way through swamp and water, where, of course,
there was no track visible. It is not surprising that
the party lost its way. Not only that, but weak
from want of food, wanting in cohesion and discip-
and with the knowledge that were
line, they seeking
blindly for a road unknown to all, a feeling of
despair overcame many of them, and they wandered
off in different directions never to be seen or heard
of again.
The main body, with Van Hagen and Cavaliero,
after a weary day's march and no food, arrived in
the evening, utterly exhausted, at a place called
Pataling, only four miles from Kuala Lumpor !
They had been walking in a circle, and had got
back to a point not far from that of their original
departure.
Pataling was held by a considerable body of the
enemy under two Malay Rajas, and the weary
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