HOTTEST IBN WORLD

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 29 May 1930, Page 28

HOTTEST IBN WORLD

LODE TOW OF MALAYA

DREDGING IN JUNGLE

Stretchod up'and: down Malaya, from Siam to within a few miles of the Equator, .are the'hottest mines in the'j world; they, are the tin" mines of the j Malayan peninsula and they ropresent a largb part'of the "Empire's mineral I wealth' iiT'tho Far' Bast. . • ■ ■ The niines—and the ore is found in a variety of ways cv'en within the same square'Diild—arc the most fascinating in' the world. So interesting and. so picturesquo ate some of the methods of tin-winning and so beautiful are the environments that one tour.ist\ageiicy in Singapore. now^ offers to whisk its clients round one or two tin mines while they are in Malaya. But. visitors, on. the whole, aro few; the: huat. even on these winter ■ days effectively- protects the'secrets of the .mines.- .' . DREDGING A JUNGLE. The. quickest ,' and most efficient means of tin mining to-day is dredging. There 'is something hypnotic , about watching tho buckets ceaselessly rise from th*e. warm, yellowish water. Often they bring up things other than claytrunks -of trees, .relics from' another jungle long buried, and often a snake. It is mostly at night; when the dredge whirrs, and sighs in a blaze of searchlights, that .the snakes come aboard. Grey-black cobras, pythons, bright gceen snakes, and snakes that glisten like the moon—the last horrible but harmless.' 'Only-the night before a sleepy python had. suddenly, found himself suspended over two- buckets and being carried swiftly upwards. Chinese, coolies-.had half killed and skinned him before lie realised what had happened.' .-•'.; Hot though it' is under the corrugated iron roof of the dredge, this is as a breath of Everest compared with the interior depths of a lode mino. Even the Chinese coolie, the hardest worker in the world . and . the strongest, can only bear the incredible heat of these deep niines^—there 'aro not many in Malaya—for a few months.' Oh, ;thoy are beautiful to look upon; these tin mines of Malaya. • There is no smoke, no dust, nor dirt. Tropical wild flowers and flowering trees blazed round the top of this particular mine. Round it all the jungle pressed, waiting perhaps for. man to cease his endeavours here, so that it might once,more people.tho little clear; ing with its greatest extravagances. Tho last thing I remember seeing before the cage descended was a tendril of orchids and one great yellow flower, slashed with, scarlet, like a paintod face.- ■''■■'"'

A BROKEN TIGEB. There are .pleasautor ways of.tiawinhing than deep mining. . The coolie gathers the ore,by playing a njonitor— really a majestic kind of garden hose —on' to a cliff of tin-bearing ground. A jet of water, at a pressure of 2001b or more, smashes the ground away lilio i.. tillery. . ' .' i. Artillery indeed it is, for not many nights; ago one coolie playing tbo monitor,agaijist'the cliff saw two greenish eyes regarding him from the right. Only one inhabitant of-tho "jungle-had oyes like that, the coolie knew, and more in terror than in judgment he turned the "hose 1' jn to the eyes. Thero was a'roar and'silence.' In. the morning they found'the lacerated body of a tiger, so broken that oven his skin was valueless. > ■