Page 48 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES
five miles to the appointed place of meeting, and
there find a crowd of one or two hundred Malay
men, women, and children, who have been duly
bidden to meng-gelunchor and to take part in the
which forms a to
picnic recognised accompaniment
the proceedings.
A walk of a couple of miles along a shady jungle
the to the foot of a
path brings party spur of hills,
whence a clear mountain stream leaps down a suc-
cession of cascades to fertilise the plain. There is
a stiff climb for several hundred feet until the party
a rock in the bed of the
gains great granite stream,
large enough to accommodate a much more numerous
" "
In a this rock be
gathering. spate might
but now the water flows round and
covered, it
dashes itself wildly over the falls below. Up-
stream, however, there is a sheer smooth face of
about feet inclined at an
granite, sixty long, angle
of say 45, and, while the main body of water finds
its way down one side of this rock and then across
its foot, a certain quantity, only an inch or two deep,
flows steadily down the face. The depth of water
here can be increased at will by bamboo troughs,
leading out of the great pool which lies at the head
of the waterfall. At the base of the rock is an in-
viting lynn not more than four feet deep. On either
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