Gunong Tahan and Gunong Riam
J.B. Scrivenor, a geologist serving in the Malay States, published this account in 1912 drawing on his personal ascents of Gunong Tahan (1906) and Gunong Riam (1912), the two highest peaks in the Malay Peninsula. The article combines first-hand travel narrative with a geological argument about the structural relationship between the two mountains and the broader orogenic framework of the Peninsula’s main range.
Summary
Scrivenor’s primary purpose is twofold: to provide a plain narrative of two mountain ascents that had received little prior documentation, and to use his observations to advance a geological interpretation of the Peninsula’s main range. He frames the ascents deliberately as “a rather stiff up-hill walk” rather than mountaineering, and explicitly disclaims scientific authority in zoology or botany, reserving his analytical voice for geology (p. 8). The Tahan narrative is built around his 1906 journey up the Tahan River with three Tembeling Malays, his observations of the plateau-land vegetation (pitcher-plants, orchids, conifer-like plants), and his subsequent visit to the Cherual limestone hills from which he obtained a hill-sketch of the Tahan Range dictated by the local Malay Yusuf bin Sleiman (pp. 8–12). The Riam narrative, from his 1912 ascent, is shorter but includes a notable ethnographic episode involving a Senoi family encountered at a tin-stealers’ kongsi, and a detailed account of the summit conditions including a temperature of 58°F at 4 p.m. and an estimated minimum near 54°F (pp. 12–14).
The geological argument occupies the final section and constitutes the article’s most significant contribution. Scrivenor identifies the main range as the exposed granite core of a great anticline, with the Benom Anticline running parallel to it. He argues that Gunong Riam’s summit, composed of phyllites and quartzite as noted by de Morgan in the 1880s, preserves a remnant of the stratified “lid” that once covered the granite, indicating that denudation has not yet cut deeply into the core (p. 15). Gunong Tahan, by contrast, belongs to a different structural category: it forms part of the quartzite and conglomerate belt that lies between the east limb of the Main Range Anticline and the west limb of the Benom Anticline where the two arches meet (p. 15). This distinction—Riam as a granite peak capped by a fragment of the overlying arch, Tahan as a product of the inter-anticlinal belt—is the article’s central geological thesis.
Scrivenor also addresses the practical question of Tahan’s potential as a hill-station, arguing that the range’s open plateau-land at 4,000–5,000 feet elevation, abundant water, and relatively flat terrain made it superior to existing cramped hill stations, and he proposes a funicular railway connection from an extended Pahang Railway line (p. 12). He further corrects the common name “Gunong Kerbau,” tracing it to a French ascender who named the peak after the Sungei Kerbau rather than the correct Malay name “Riam” (p. 14).
Key Findings
- Gunong Tahan’s height was revised to 7,186 feet (per the Surveyor-General, Col. Jackson), surpassing Gunong Riam’s 7,160 feet, overturning the earlier belief that Riam was the Peninsula’s highest peak (p. 8).
- The summit of Gunong Riam is composed of altered stratified rocks—phyllites and quartzite—rather than granite, a fact first noted by de Morgan in the 1880s, which Scrivenor uses as evidence that denudation of the main range has not yet exposed the full granite core (p. 15).
- The Tahan Range is structurally distinct from the main range: it is formed of quartzite and conglomerate at the junction of the Main Range Anticline and the Benom Anticline, not from the granite core itself (p. 15).
- The Cherual Malays identified Gunong Tahan as “Gunong Rotan” or “Gunong Ulu Tanun,” and placed the Kelantan-Pahang watershed running east-west up to Gunong Ulu Kamua, with the S. Tanun rising on Tahan’s flanks (p. 11).
- Scrivenor’s 1906 ascent of Tahan took three days up the Tahan River to Kuala Teku, followed by a two-day climb to the summit; the 1912 ascent of Riam from Tanjong Rambutan required two days of walking to reach the trigonometrical beacon (pp. 9–10).
- The name “Gunong Kerbau” is a misnomer of French origin, derived from the Sungei Kerbau route of an early French ascender; the correct Malay name is “Riam,” and the Senoi word for mountain is “Jelmul” (p. 14).
Conclusion
Scrivenor’s definitive contribution is the structural differentiation between Gunong Riam and Gunong Tahan within the geology of the Peninsula’s main range. By identifying Riam’s stratified cap as a surviving fragment of the anticlinal “lid” and Tahan as a product of the inter-anticlinal quartzite belt, he provides a framework for understanding the varying degrees of denudation across the range and links surface geology to the deeper tectonic history of the region.
Context
- Scrivenor was a geologist employed in the Malay States; the article reflects the colonial scientific practice of combining field observation with administrative utility (the hill-station proposal) and ethnographic note-taking.
- The article draws on the 1905 F.M.S. Museums expedition account (Vol. iii, 1908), the Surveyor-General’s height determinations, and de Morgan’s earlier geological observations of the 1880s, positioning itself within the emerging body of colonial-era geological survey literature for the Peninsula.