Note 14 — Chapter I · Nature

“There was once a Selangor man named Haji Batu, or the Petrified Pilgrim, who got this name from the fact that the first joints of all the fingers of one hand had been turned into stone. This happened in the following manner. In the old days when men went voyaging in sailing vessels, he determined to visit Mecca, and accordingly set sail. After sailing for about two months they drifted out of their course for some ten or fifteen days, and then came to a part of the sea where there were floating trunks of trees, together with rice-straw (batang padi) and all manner of flotsam. Yet again they drifted for seven days, and upon the seventh night Haji Batu dreamed a dream. In this dream one who wore the pilgrim’s garb appeared to him, and warned him to carry on his person a hammer and seven nails, and when he came to a tree which would be the Pauh Janggi he was to drive the first of the nails into its stem and cling thereto. Next day the ship reached the great whirlpool which is called the Navel of the Seas,14 and while the ship was being sucked into the eddy close to the tree and engulfed, Haji Batu managed to drive the first nail home, and clung to it as the ship went down. After a brief interval he endeavoured to drive in the second nail, somewhat higher up the stem than the first (why Haji Batu could not climb without the aid of nails history does not relate), and drawing himself up by it, drove in the third. Thus progressing, by the time he had driven in all the seven nails he had reached the top of the tree, when he discovered among the branches a nest of young rocs. Here he rested, and having again been advised in a dream, he waited. On the following day, when the parent roc had returned and was engaged in feeding its young with an elephant which it had brought for the purpose, he bound himself to its feathers with his girdle, and was carried in this manner many hundreds of miles to the westward, where, upon the roc’s nearing the ground, he let himself go, and thus dropping to the earth, fell into a swoon. On recovering consciousness he walked on till he came to a house, where he asked for and obtained some refreshment. On his departure he was advised to go westward, and so proceeded for a long distance until he arrived at a beautifully clear pool in an open plain, around which were to be seen many stone figures of human beings. The appearance of these stone figures rendering him suspicious, he refrained from drinking the water, and dipped into it merely the tips of his fingers, which became immediately petrified. Proceeding he met a vast number of wild animals—pigs, deer, and elephants—which were fleeing from the pursuit of a beast of no great size indeed, but with fiery red fur. He therefore prudently climbed into a tree to allow it to pass. The beast, however, pursued him and commenced to climb the tree, but as it climbed he drove the point of his poniard (badik) into its skull, and killed it. He then robbed it of its whiskers, and thereafter, on his reaching a town, everybody fled from him because of the whiskers which had belonged to so fierce a beast. The Raja of that country, begging for one of them, and giving him food, he presented him with one of the whiskers in payment. After paying his way in a similar manner at seven successive villages, the Petrified Pilgrim at length reached Mecca.”