placing a few of the things stolen in some innocent person's
house, and had employed a variety of tricks to avoid suspicion resting
on themselves.

The valuables recovered in the Temple of Atlas were restored to their
rightful owners where they could be traced, and the balance was
ultimately considered as treasure-trove, the Government claiming four
annas in the rupee, thus leaving three-fourths of the value to be
divided amongst those who had discovered it.

Many hours did the Englishmen spend in trying to discover the inner
Temple of Hydas, but its secret baffled all their efforts, neither were
they able to find any parts of the broken slab which might have aided
them in their search. They were equally unsuccessful in getting any
trace of Appoyas, who had so suddenly disappeared while his cry of
revenge was ringing through the Cave of Hydas.

XI

AN ADVENTURE IN THE HEART OF MALAY-LAND

To the world-wanderer the confines of our little planet seem very
limited indeed, and to him there are few regions within its boundaries
which remain long unknown. Yet to the vast majority of people Old Mother
Earth abounds in many a _terra incognita_.

Away in the East, where the Indian Ocean merges into the China Sea,
where the sunny waters of the Malacca Straits are being ceaselessly
furrowed by giant steamers and merchantmen, lies a land, which though
spoken of glibly by every schoolboy, is to-day one of the least explored
countries of the globe. The Malay Peninsula is a familiar enough name,
and so it ought to be, for it skirts the ocean highway to the Flowery
Kingdom and to some of our most valuable island possessions; still, it
is a strange fact that this narrow neck of land is, geographically
speaking, one of the world's darkest areas.

Its seaboard is generally flat and overgrown with mangroves to a depth
of several miles, but the interior is an extremely mountainous region,
containing elevations of over eight thousand feet. An irregular
backbone connects all these great heights, and it itself is of no mean
dimensions, being throughout well over three thousand feet above
sea-level. Between the mountain-peaks, as may be imagined, there is
little room for fertile plateaus, and the most settled districts in
consequence are those farthest away from the towering ranges; of these
Selangor is, perhaps, the most noteworthy. Here vast forests and jungle
scrub extend everywhere, though the trees are being rapidly cut dow