THE QUEST FOR CAMERON'S PLATEAU (1949)

A Newcomer to Malaya visiting Cameron Highlands for the first time may probably wonder, after his car has made its tortuous ascent into the mountains, how this area became Malaya's main hill station and why it received its name. He may not know that years before the Highlands came under serious consideration and after it was obvious the development of Fraser's Hill could only be limited, Gunong Tahan, the highest mountain in the peninsula (7,186 feet) on the borders of Kelantan and Pahang, was for a long time considered as Malaya's only hope of a hill station likely to rival those of India and Ceylon. In fact, a topographical survey made by the Federated Malay States Survey Department just before and during the 1914–18 war revealed the presence there of an extensive plateau at a height of about 5,400 feet, It seemed so promising that in 1912 the Governor, Sir Arthur Young, made the ascent on foot to inspect it. However, before coming to a decision Government considered it advisable to test the climatic conditions there, and accordingly a party of observers was recruited from England for the purpose. They spent a year on Gunong Tahan between 1921 and 1922 and subsequently made a report on their observations. Opinion then became unfavourable, partly because the plateau is but imperfectly furnished with soil, partly because it is somewhat inaccessible from most of the inhabited areas of the peninsula, and partly because during too many days of the year it is liable to become enshrouded in heavy mists. The idea of immediately developing Gunong Tahang was therefore abandoned. Those who thought they saw in this mountain another Newara-Eliya or Ootacamund were naturally disappointed and soon cast around for another site to accommodate the hill station of their dreams. In this quest someone remembered or alighted upon in the archives of the Perak Public Works Department a report by an explorer named William Cameron on his journey overland about 1884 from Kinta to the mouth of the Pahang River. The late Sir Frank Swettenham, in his last book, “ Footprints in Malaya “, published by Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., London, in 1942, throws some light on Cameron and his activities about this time. He says, “ Amongst the strangers from Ceylon and India, from Shanghai, Hong-Kong, Australia and elsewhere, who strayed into Selangor was Mr. William Cameron, brother of the editor of the Straits Times, a highly respected resident of Singapore. Mr. William Cameron came to Selangor shortly after I became British Resident there, and he asked to be allowed to do something which would help in the development of the country. His culture and his quiet manner appealed to me, and I asked him what he proposed to do. He explained that he had some knowledge of minerals and geology, and he suggested that he should be given a roving commission to go, with a party of wild people whom he would collect, and explore the depths of the jungle and report the result of his search …. I engaged Mr. Cameron to do what he suggested. He made all his own arrangements, managed somehow to collect a party of aborigines, and disappeared into the jungle for weeks at a time. When he returned from these expeditions he used to come to the Residency, stay a few days, make his report and start off again. After one prolonged absence, when I became anxious about his safety, he returned very ill and had to be carried the last stage of his journey. He then reported the discovery of the high table-land on the borders of Perak and Pahang, now known as Cameron Highlands. I do not know what had upset him, unless it was the hardships he went through in those many weeks of travel up and down the jungle-covered mountains of the main range, but while he stayed with me he was subject to strange delusions, walked about the house at 3 a.m., carrying an iron bar, and two or three times in a night I had to put him back in his bed. Finally, one morning, he produced a revolver and shot at his Chinese servant, and when I went to his room and told him I had removed all his firearms because of that incident, he merely remarked: ‘Yes, but I didn't ·hit him.’ Eventually it was necessary to send him to the Singapore Hospital’ for proper care, and there he died.”