A journey in the Ulu Rompin district, south-east Pahang
E.S. Willbourn published this first-person account in 1926, describing a July–August 1925 expedition through the Ulu Rompin district of south-east Pahang, a region he characterises as “very little known.” The article serves as a geological and geographical survey of the upper Sungai Sekin tributary and its surrounding ridgelines, documenting the first recorded ascents of several peaks and the first European penetration of the Ulu Sekin headwaters.
Summary
Willbourn’s narrative is structured around a single continuous journey: from Mersing, Johore, up the Sungai Rompin to its confluence with Sungai Sekin, then up the Sekin to its navigable limit at Sungai Perpati, and finally on foot into the interior highlands. The expedition’s primary purpose was geological survey, though Willbourn frames it as a general exploration of “a section of country which is very little known” (p. 197). He departed with a small party of ten Malay coolies and ten Jakun aborigines, the latter serving as guides, boatmen, and fish-spearing specialists. The party’s progress was slow—Willbourn himself notes that “a long time was spent in covering a very small distance” (p. 198)—and the account is punctuated by the practical difficulties of jungle travel: elephant encounters, wasp and fire-ant stings, the impossibility of drying clothes in persistent rain, and the constant problem of navigation in trackless terrain.
The article’s most significant contribution is its documentation of previously unvisited ground. Willbourn states explicitly that no one had ascended Gunong Ulu Telang from the north side, and that the ridge running east from Gunong Ulu Kinchin to an unnamed 1586-foot peak had never been visited (p. 198). His party also reached the source of Sungai Kachah and the spectacular quartz-porphyry waterfalls of Sungai Kukau, which he describes as “surely one of the most beautiful sights in the Peninsula” (p. 203). A notable navigational error—arriving at Gunong Ulu Telang instead of the intended Gunong Ulu Kemapan—becomes a case study in the difficulties of jungle orientation, where elephant trails and the absence of known tracks make it easy to go wrong (p. 206).
The account also provides ethnographic observations on the Jakun communities of the district, their fishing techniques (particularly the use of the serampang, a three-pronged spear), their settlement patterns along Sungai Sekin, and their relationship to the Malay and Chinese populations who used the lower river. Willbourn records the wages he paid (60 cents per day for Jakuns, a dollar for Malays), the food provisions he supplied, and the social dynamics of the mixed party, including a humorous episode in which a sleeping seladang (gaur) was mistaken for a rhinoceros, prompting one of the Jakun headmen to charge at it with a parang before the animal was revealed to be a fallen tree trunk (p. 205).
Key Findings
- The expedition covered the period 15 July to 14 August 1925, with the upstream journey from Kuala Rompin to the Ulu Sekin headwaters taking approximately three weeks (pp. 198–208).
- Bukit Mirsemah, the first major peak climbed, stands at 1,812 feet; the unnamed peak on the eastern ridge from Gunong Ulu Kinchin is 1,586 feet (pp. 202–203).
- The Sungai Kukau waterfalls comprise a series of eight quartz-porphyry falls with a total height of “considerably more than a thousand feet,” and a further six falls upstream bring the total cascade height to approximately 1,500 feet (pp. 203–204).
- Jakun wages were fixed at 60 cents per day, supplemented with rice, dried fish, tobacco, and matches; Malay coolies received one dollar per day (pp. 200–201).
- A European prospector had sunk five-foot-square mine pits (lombong) on the lower slopes of Bukit Gayong approximately 25 years prior (c. 1900), likely searching for gold rather than tin, given the quartz-porphyry geology of the area (p. 207).
- The abandoned Arghan fibre plantation, once employing five Europeans and several hundred coolies, had been reduced to “a few hundred acres of belukar” by the time of the expedition (p. 200).
Conclusion
Willbourn’s definitive takeaway is that the Ulu Rompin interior, while accessible by river to the lower reaches, remained effectively unexplored above the rapids and beyond the reach of the Forest Department’s rentis (forest tracks). His expedition established baseline geographical knowledge—peak elevations, ridge orientations, waterfall sequences, and the positions of Jakun settlements—that would inform subsequent surveying and administrative work in the district. The article also implicitly argues for the value of mixed Malay-Jakun parties in penetrating such terrain, as the Jakuns’ intimate knowledge of elephant trails, fishing grounds, and local topography proved indispensable where no European had previously set foot.
Context
- Willbourn was conducting a geological survey, and the article is framed as a field report for the Royal Asiatic Society’s journal rather than a purely literary travelogue; his observations of rock types (quartzite, quartz-porphyry) and his reference to the Reconnaissance Map compiled by the Survey Office, Kuala Lumpur, confirm this professional purpose (pp. 197, 207).
- The text reflects the colonial-era convention of describing indigenous peoples in terms of their utility to the expedition (as guides, boatmen, and labourers) and of framing unexplored territory as a resource to be “examined” and mapped for administrative benefit.