narrow gangway of the barricade, and with uplifted spears waited for the coming of the fish. The tuba water was still some way up - stream, but it was driving the fish before it.

In the press of the boats above the line marked by the red flags an occasional spear rose and fell and rose again, but in the open space immediately above the barricade all was still. Suddenly the surface of the water was broken, and a great fish launched itself at the barricade. The gleam of a bar of silver and the twinkle of falling drops, and then the fish hit the bamboo framework some four feet above the level of the river. With a mighty splattering of its tail it managed to maintain its position for a moment, and then it fell on to the platform just in time to escape the thrust of a chief's spear. While the old man was extricating his barb from the bamboo framework the fish leapt free, and, leaving only some glittering scales behind it, fell back into the river. A moment later another huge broad back showed above the surface, and we saw a fish carefully and deliberately trying to find whether, in the length and breadth of the barricade, there was not some loophole of escape. A steady hand drove the spear, and after a struggle a young chief laid the fish on the platform.

Soon the fish came in numbers, and we were thrusting and stabbing on every side, now at one as it hit the barricade, now at another in the water; now at one as it fell back on the platform; sometimes at one as it flashed through the air. While we thrust at one, another would leap up beside us,

and before we could turn it too would fall back into the water. Beside each of us there grew up a pile of splendid fish.

One magnificent fish a great temoli, weighing perhaps sixty pounds-twice launched itself at the barricade, and twice escaped in safety back into the water; but each time it fell back on the up-stream side, and safety from the tuba only lay in flight and access to the down-stream side.

Then, during a lull, while all were waiting, the great fish broke the surface of the water some eight feet away from the barricade, and, cleaving through the air like a broad spear-head, rose up to the top of the bamboo framework. It hit the barricade some few inches below its summit, and hung balanced for a moment. Two men thrust at it and missed it, and then the framework bent back under the great weight, and the noble fish fell into the water on the down-stream side-safe.

This was one of the last fish of the day, and before long all was over. We made our way to a sandy spit where the day's catch was exhibited. Malay women appeared on every side, bringing great earthen jars in which such fish as were not to be eaten fresh would be made into highly-flavoured, awful-scented pickles for future use. But at the meal which now awaited us it was fresh fish that we were to feast upon, fish, fresh from the river, and held, before their scales had ceased to glisten, over the fire to grill: merely split down the middle, and impaled upon a toasting-fork of sharpened bamboo. Grilled fish eaten with rice and coarse rock-salt-nothing

more; but nothing could be more delicious. There might perhaps be a handful of wild bird's-eye chilies, culled from the river-bank during the day, and now produced with exultation, and pounded with the rocksalt to form a red pungent paste; or there might be a lime dragged forth from the depths of a wallet to be sliced and sprinkled over a fish's richly browned back. But for the most part we have nothing but rice and salt and grilled fish-and we want nothing We have no curry, because it takes too long to prepare. Besides, who wants a curry to-day? There is nothing like grilling to bring out the true flavour of a fish, and nothing like rice and salt to make one appreciate that flavour.

more.

We feel it our duty to eat of every kind of fish; partaking, sparingly perhaps, of the inferior in order to know the difference between it and the moderately good, and taking helpings of the moderately good in order to realise how sweet the best kind are. "Take some of the belida," an old chief will tell you, "and then see how succulent is the kelah."

But of all the day's strange sights the strangest sight is to see the fish fry playing and splashing for the rice grains that fall from the plates on the scene where all the great fish had been speared a short hour before. Except where it is first poured into the water, and where the poison permeates top and bottom of the river, tuba does not kill the fry. The fry, keeping to the surface, escapes the tuba, which follows the bottom.

Some years ago I was present at a tuba fishing party given by His Highness the Sultan of Pahang

to the British Resident and the District Officers. When we were at lunch in the Sultan's boat, after a tremendous catch of fish at the barricade, His Highness pointed to the swarms of fry that surrounded the kitchen boats, and, inverting the Malay proverb, "Big fish eat little fish," said "Big fish die, but little fish eat."

265

A WERE-TIGER.

SOME years ago I was travelling on a somewhat delicate mission in one of the petty sultanates of the Malay Peninsula that lie to the north of the federated states administered under British protection. The state is a long narrow strip of land lying on the east coast, and is traversed by a number of rivers that run parallel to one another from their source in the main range of the peninsula to the China Sea. The area of the district watered by each of these rivers is perhaps 500 square miles, of which at least 495 are forest. At the mouth of every river a few hundred Malays collect and make a living by fishing; while, scattered up and down the stream, separated from one another by distances varying from one to five miles, are small clearings containing ten, twenty, or even fifty families, who are dependent upon an annual crop of padi and the collection of various forest products, such as rubber, gutta, and rattans. As against the rest of mankind, the Malays say that the land is theirs; but no one knows better than themselves that the real lord and master of the country is the forest. Each clearing has been hacked out of the primeval forest with infinite trouble; the period of its