A journey over the main range from Perak to Pahang
J.E. Nathan’s 1915 account documents a west-to-east traverse of the Titiwangsa main range from Ulu Slim in Perak to the Lipis river in Pahang, retracing the route taken by Frank Swettenham and party in 1885. Nathan’s central purpose is comparative: to assess what thirty years of colonial administration and mining activity had changed in this remote interfluve, and his conclusion is that the changes have been surprisingly modest.
Summary
Nathan’s journey began at Slim, where a French Company tin mine was already silted into the padi fields of Ulu Slim, and proceeded up the Briseh river to the pass at 3,150 feet before descending the Pahang side via the Sungei Kenor and Sentol to the Lipis. The route from Ulu Slim to Kuala Dong—approximately 55 miles—had no roads or bridle paths, only narrow Malay, Chinese, or Sakai tracks. Nathan notes that the 1912 Pahang map was inaccurate in this locality, with river names (Kenor and Sentol) transposed relative to Swettenham’s account, and that recent mining surveys would correct this in the next edition.
The most striking observations concern the Sakai communities now settled along the Lipis at Kuala Kenor, Kuala Buntu, and Ginting Selebah. Nathan describes them as “very civilised,” settled for at least fifteen years, with coconut plantations and even mosquito nets, and he records an amusing incident in which one Sakai was charged under the Crimes Prevention Enactment for being abroad after 9 p.m. without a lamp. He also notes that Toh Bakar’s son Usop, whom Swettenham met in 1885, was still alive and remembered the cholera epidemic that Swettenham’s party had introduced, which killed over two hundred people as far down as Kuala Lipis.
Nathan closes with a lament for the Lipis river’s crystal-clear water, warning that the tin deposits in the ulu tributaries will eventually produce the same turbid flood seen in other Ulu Pahang rivers. He predicts that, absent a road up the Lipis, the region will remain largely unchanged for another thirty years.
Key Findings
- The pass height of 3,150 feet (as given by Swettenham) is 350 feet higher than the Kuala Kubu–Raub gap, yet the gradient is so gradual that Nathan initially estimated it at only 2,400 feet (p. 3).
- Transport costs of $8–$9 per picul made the small Chinese tin mines on the Sungei Kenor economically unviable whenever tin prices fell (p. 3).
- The 1912 Pahang map misidentified the Kenor and Sentol rivers; the left-hand branch (which Swettenham called the Kenor) is now called the Sentol, and its course runs approximately ten feet underground for a quarter of a mile (p. 3).
- The cholera epidemic of 1885, apparently introduced by Malay carriers from Slim, spread down the Lipis to Kuala Lipis and caused over two hundred deaths (p. 4).
- The gold mine at Tersang, where Swettenham found twenty Chinese working, had been completely abandoned by 1915 (p. 5).
- The Jeram Besu rapid, which the Malays refused to take Swettenham down in 1885, was by 1915 impassable by raft due to silting from mining on the S. Liang and S. Sempam (p. 5).
Conclusion
Nathan’s definitive historical takeaway is one of remarkable stasis: despite thirty years of colonial presence, the interfluve between Ulu Slim and Batu Talam had changed very little in either infrastructure or Malay social life. He attributes this to the prohibitive cost of transport in the absence of a road up the Lipis, and he predicts that the region will remain essentially as it was when Major Cameron first descended the river in the early 1880s.
Context
- The article is a direct sequel to Swettenham’s 1885 account published in JSBRAS (June 1885), making it a rare case of a colonial administrator’s field report being systematically revisited after three decades.
- Nathan’s observations on Sakai settlement patterns and their interaction with colonial law (the Crimes Prevention Enactment incident) provide valuable ethnographic detail for a period when the Sakai were being increasingly incorporated into the administrative framework of Ulu Pahang.