If our minds wandered away from visions of future crocodile-shooting to dreams of the past wealth that had been taken from the ancient mines that honeycombed the base of the mountain, it is hardly to be wondered at. If Dato or “Lord” Garlands told us queer stories of woods and masonry that antedated the written history of the country, stories of mines and workings that were overgrown with a jungle that looked as primeval as the mountain itself, he was to be excused on the plea that we, waiting on a sandy bar with the metallic glare of the sea in our eyes, were glad of any subject to distract our thoughts.
The Resident’s launch brought out Prince Mat and the Chief Justice, both of whom spoke English with an easy familiarity. Both had been in Europe and Prince Mat had dined with Queen Victoria. One night at table he related the incidents of that dinner with a delightful exactness that might have pleased her Britannic Majesty could she have listened.
I waited only long enough to see the ladies installed in a suite of rooms in the Residency, then donned a suit of white duck, stepped into a river launch in company with Inchi Mohamed, the Chief Justice, and steamed out into the broad waters of the Maur.
The southernmost kingdom of the great continent of Asia is the little Sultanate of Johore, ruled over by one of the most enlightened Princes of the East. Fourteen miles from Singapore, just across the notorious old Straits of Malacca, is his capital and the palace of the Sultan.
We had been guests of the State for the past two weeks. Its ruler, among other kind attentions to us, had suggested a visit to his out province Maur and a crocodile hunt along the banks of the broad river that wound about the foot of Mount Ophir.
Fifteen hours’ steam in his beautiful yacht along the picturesque shores of Johore brought us to the realization of a long-cherished dream,—the seeing for ourselves the mountain whose exact location had been a subject of conjecture for so many centuries. Were I a scholar and explorer and not a sportsman, I might again and more explicitly set forth facts which I consider indubitable proof that the Mount Ophir of Asia and not the Mount Ophir of Africa is, as I have already claimed, the Mount Ophir of the Bible. But here, I wish only to narrate the record of a few pleasant days spent at its foot.
The Maur River, at its mouth, is a mile across; it is so deep that one can run close up to its muddy banks and peer in under the labyrinth of mangrove roots that stand like a rustic scaffold beneath its trunks, protecting them from the highest flood-tides.
It was some time before I could pick out a crocodile as he lay sleeping in his muddy bath, showing nothing above the slime except the serrated line of his great back, which was so incrusted that, but for its regularity, it might pass for the limb of a tree or some fantastically shaped root.
“There you are!” said the Chief Justice, pointing at the bank almost before we had reached the opposite side. I strained my eyes and raised the hammer of my “50 x 110” Winchester; for I was to have a shot at my first live crocodile.
We drew nearer and nearer the shore and yet I failed to see anything that resembled an animal of any sort. The little launch slowed down and the crew all pointed toward the bank. I cannot now imagine what I expected then to see, but something must have been in my mind’s eye that blinded my bodily sight; for there, right before me, was a little fellow not over three feet long.