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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER XVIII

BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT, February 11.

I left Mr. Justice Wood's yesterday, and his servant dispatched me from the jetty in a large boat with an attap awning and six Kling rowers, whose oars worked in nooses of rope. The narrow Strait was very calm, and the hot, fiery light of the tropic evening resting upon it, made it look like oil rather than water. In half an hour I landed on the other side in the prosperous Province Wellesley, under a row of magnificent casuarina trees, with gray, feathery foliage drooping over a beach of corals and, behind which are the solemn glades of cocoa-nut groves. On the little jetty a Sikh policeman waited for me; and presently Mrs. Isemonger, wife of the police magistrate of the Province, met me on the bright, green lawn studded with clumps of alamanda, which surrounds their lovely, palm-shaded bungalow.

Though the shadows were falling, Mr. Isemonger took me to see something of the back country in a trap with a fiery Sumatra pony. There are miles of cocoa-nut plantations belonging to Chinamen all along the coast, with the trees in straight lines forming long, broad avenues, which have a certain gloomy grandeur about them. Then come sugarcane and padi, and then palm plantations again.

The cocoa-nut palm grows best near salt water, no matter how loose and sandy the soil is, and in these congenial circumstances needs neither manure nor care of any kind. It bends lovingly toward the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into it. But if it is planted more than two hundred yards from the beach, it needs either rich or well-manured soil, or the proximity of human habitations. It begins to bear fruit between its fourth and tenth years, according to soil, and a well-placed, generous tree bears from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty nuts a year. They are of wonderfully slow growth. It is three months from the time the blossom appears before the fruit sets, then it takes six months to grow, and three months more to ripen, and after that will hang two months on the tree before it falls—fourteen months from the first appearance of the flower!

It is certainly not beautiful as grown in Province Wellesley, and I am becoming faithless to my allegiance to it in this region of areca and other more graceful palms.

In returning we saw many Malay kampongs under the palms, each with a fire lighted underneath it, and there were many other fires for the water-buffaloes, with groups of these uncouth brutes gathered invariably on the leeward side, glad to be smoked rather than bitten by the mosquitoes. These huge, thin-skinned animals have a strange antipathy to white people. They are petted and caressed by the Malays, and even small boys can do anything with them, and can ride upon their backs, but constantly when they see white people they raise their muzzles, and if there be room charge them madly. A buffalo is enormously strong, but he objects to the sun, and likes to bathe in rivers, and plaster himself with mud, and his tastes are much humored by his owners. A buffalo has often been known to vanquish a tiger when both have had fair play. Most of the drive back was accomplished by nearly incessant flashes of sheet lightning.

We had a most pleasant evening. Mrs. Isemonger, who is a sister of Mr. Maxwell, my present host, is gentle, thoughtful, well-informed, and studious, and instead of creating and living in an artificial English atmosphere which is apt to make a residence in a foreign country a very unproductive period, she has interested herself in the Malays, and has not only acquired an excellent knowledge of Malayan, but is translating a Malayan book.

I felt much humiliated by my ignorance of Province Wellesley, of which in truth I had never heard until I reached Malacca. It is a mere strip, however, only thirty-five miles long by about ten broad, but it is highly cultivated, fertile, rich, prosperous, and populous. From Pinang one sees its broad stretches of bright green sugar-cane and the chimneys of its sugar factories, and it grows rice and cocoa-nuts, and is actually more populous than Pinang or Malacca, and contains as many Malays as Sungei Ujong, Selangor and Pinang together—fifty-eight thousand! Mr. Maxwell had promised to bring the Kinta, a steam- launch, across from Georgetown by 8 P.M., and it shows how very pleasant the evening was, that though I was very tired, eight, nine, ten, and eleven came, and the conversation never flagged.

Soon after eleven the Kinta appeared, a black shadow on a silver sea, roaring for a boat, but the surf was so heavy that it was some time before the police boat was got off; and then Mr. Maxwell, whose cheery, energetic voice precedes him, and Mr. Walker landed, bullying everybody, as people often do when they know that they are the delinquents! It was lovely in the white moonlight with the curving shadows of palms on the dewy grass, the grace of the drooping casuarinas, the shining water, and the long drift of surf. It was hard to get off, and the surf broke into the boat; but when we were once through it, the sea was like oil, the oars dripped flame, and, seen from the water, the long line of surf broke on the shore not in snow, but in a long drift of greenish fire.

The Kinta is a steam-launch of the Perak Government. Her boilers, to use an expressive Japanese phrase, are "very sick," and she is not nearly so fine as the Abdulsamat, but a quiet, peaceful boat, without any pretensions; and really any "old tub" is safe on the Straits of Malacca except in a "Sumatran." I stayed on deck for some time enjoying the exquisite loveliness of the night, and the vivacity of two of my companions, Mr. Maxwell, the Assistant Resident here, a really able and most energetic man, very argumentative, bright, and pleasant; and Captain Walker, A.D.C. to Sir W. Robinson, on his way from the ceaseless gayeties of Government House at Singapore to take command of the Sikh military police in the solitary jungles of Perak. The third, Mr. Innes, Superintendent of Lower Perak, whose wife so nearly lost her life in the horrible affair at Pulo Pangkor, was in dejected spirits, as if the swamps of Durion Sabatang had been too much for him.

The little cabin below was frightfully hot, and I shared it not only with two nice Malay boys, sons of the exiled Abdullah, the late Sultan, who are being educated at Malacca, but with a number of large and rampant rats. Finding the heat and rats unbearable, I went on deck in the rosy dawn, just as we were entering the Larut river, a muddy stream, flowing swiftly between dense jungles and mangrove swamps, and shores of shining slime, on which at low water the alligators bask in the sun—one of the many rivers of the Peninsula which do not widen at their mouths.

The tide was high and the river brimming full, looking as if it must drown all the forest, and the trestle-work roots on which the mangroves are hoisted were all submerged. It is a silent, lonely land, all densely green. Many an uprooted palm with its golden plumes and wealth of golden husked nuts came floating down on the swirling waters, and many a narrow creek well suited for murder, overarched with trees, and up which one might travel far and still be among mangrove swamps and alligators, came down into the Larut river; and once we passed a small clearing, where some industrious Chinamen are living in huts on some festering slime between the river and the jungle; and once a police station on stilts, where six policemen stood in a row and saluted as we passed, and at seven we reached Teluk Kartang, with a pier, a long shed, two or three huts, and some officialism, white and partly white, all in a "dismal swamp." A small but very useful Chinese trading steamer, the Sri Sarawak, was lying against the pier, and we landed over her filthy deck, on which filthy Chinese swine, among half-naked men almost as filthy, were wrangling for decomposing offal. Dismal as this place looks, an immense trade in imports and exports is done there; and all the tin from the rich mines of the district is sent thence to Pinang for transhipment.

While my friends transacted business, I waited for an age in an empty office where was one chair, a table dark with years of ink splotches, a mouldy inkstand, a piece of an old almanac, and an empty gin bottle. Outside, cockle-shells were piled against the wall; then there were ditches or streamlets cutting through profuse and almost loathsome vegetation, and shining slime fat and iridescent, swarming with loathsome forms of insect and reptile life all rioting under the fierce sun, and among them, almost odious by proximity to such vileness, were small crabs with shells of a heavenly blue. The strong vegetable stench was nearly overpowering, but I wrote to you and worked at your embroidery a little, and so got through this detention pleasantly, as through many a longer, though never a hotter one.

After a time three gharries arrived, and Mr. Innes and I went in one, the two other gentlemen in another, and Sultan Abdullah's boys in the third. No amount of world-wide practice in the getting in and out of strange vehicles is any help to the tortuous process necessary for mounting and dismounting from a Larut gharrie. A gharrie is a two- wheeled cart with a seat across it for two people and a board in front on which the driver sits when he is not running by his horse. This board and the low roof which covers the whole produce the complication in getting in and out. The bottom of the cart is filled up with grass and leaves, and you put your feet on the board in front, and the little rats of fiery Sumatra ponies, which will run till they drop, jolt you along at great speed. Klings, untroubled by much clothing, own and drive these vehicles, which are increasing rapidly. The traffic on the road of heavy buffalo carts, loaded with tin, cuts it up so badly that without care one might often be thrown upon the pony's back at the river end of it.

Near the port we met three elephants, the centre one of great size, rolling along, one of them with a mahout seated behind his great flapping ears. These are part of the regalia of the deposed Sultan, and were sent down from the interior for me and my baggage. The smallest of them would have carried me and my "Gladstone bag" and canvas roll. The first sight of "elephants at home" is impressive, but they are fearfully ugly, and their rolling gait does not promise well for the ease of my future journey.

We passed through a swampy, but busy-looking Chinese village, masculine almost solely, where Chinamen were building gharries and selling all such things as Chinese coolies buy, just the same there as everywhere, and at home there as everywhere; yellow, lean, smooth-shaven, keen, industrious, self-reliant, sober, mercenary, reliable, mysterious, opium-smoking, gambling, hugging clan ties, forming no others, and managing their own matters even to the post and money-order offices, through which they are constantly sending money to the interior of China. I hope that it is not true that they look at us, as a singularly able and highly educated Chinaman lately said to me that they do, as "the incarnation of brute force allied to brute vices!" This is a Chinese region, so the degression is excusable.

It was bright and hot, the glorious, equable equatorial heat, and when we got out of the mangrove swamps through which the road is causewayed, there was fine tropical foliage, and the trees were festooned with a large, blue Thunbergia of great beauty. It is eight miles from the landing at Teluk Kartang to Taipeng, where the British Residency is. The road crosses uninteresting level country, but every jolt brings one nearer to the Hijan mountains, which rise picturesquely from the plain to a height of over three thousand feet. In the distance there is an extraordinary "butte" or isolated hill, Gunong Pondok, a landmark for the whole region, and on the right to the east a grand mountain range, the highest peak of which cannot fall far short of eight thousand feet; and the blue-green ranges showing the foam of at least one waterfall almost helped one to be cool.

We reached Permatang, another Chinese village of some pretensions and population, near which are two very large two-storied Malay houses in some disrepair, in which the wife of the banished Mentri of Larut lives, with a number of slaves. A quantity of mirthful-looking slave girls were standing behind the window bars looking at us surreptitiously. We alighted at the house of Mr. Wynne, the Government Agent, who at once said something courteous and hospitable about breakfast, which I was longing for; but after I had had a bath I found that we were to pursue our journey, I regretting for the second time already Mr. Maxwell's abstemiousness and power of going without food!

From this point we drove along an excellent road toward the mountains, over whose cool summits cloud mists now and then drifted; and near noon entered this important Chinese town, with a street about a mile long, with large bazaars and shops making a fine appearance, being much decorated in Chinese style; halls of meeting for the different tribes, gambling houses, workshops, the Treasury (a substantial dark wood building), large detached barracks for the Sikh police, a hospital, a powder magazine, a parade ground, a Government store-house, a large, new jail, neat bungalows for the minor English officials, and on the top of a steep, isolated terraced hill, the British Residency. This hill is really too steep for a vehicle to ascend, but the plucky pony and the Kling driver together pulled the gharrie up the zigzags in a series of spasms, and I was glad to get out of the sunshine into a cool, airy house, where there was a hope of breakfast, or rather tiffin.

The Residency is large and lofty, and thoroughly draughty, a high commendation so near the equator. It consists of a room about thirty feet wide by sixty long, and about twenty feet high at its highest part, open at both ends, the front end a great bow window without glass opening on an immense veranda. This room and its veranda are like the fore cabin of a great Clyde steamer. It has a red screen standing partly across it, the back part being used for eating, and the front for sitting and occupation. My bedroom and sitting-room, and the room in which Sultan Abdullah's boys sleep are on one side, and Mr. Maxwell's room and office on the other. Underneath are bath-rooms, and guard-rooms for the Sikh sentries. There are no ornaments or superfluities. There are two simple meals daily, with tea and bananas at 7 A.M., and afternoon tea at 5 P.M. Mr. Maxwell is most abstemious, and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There is a perpetual coming and going of Malays, and an air of business without fuss. There is a Chinese "housemaid," who found a snake, four feet long, coiled up under my down quilt yesterday, and a Malay butler, but I have not seen any other domestic.

Those boys of Sultan Abdullah's are the most amusing children I ever saw. They are nine and twelve years old, with monkey-like, irrepressible faces. They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one instant; they chatter, read snatches from books, ask questions about everything, but are too volatile to care for the answers, turn somersaults, lean over my shoulders as I write, bring me puzzles, and shriek and turn head over heels when I can't find them out, and jump on Mr. Maxwell's shoulders begging for dollars. I like them very much, for, though they are so restless and mercurial, they are neither rude nor troublesome. They have kept the house alive with their antics, but they are just starting on my elephants for Kwala Kangsa, on a visit to the Regent. I wonder what will become of them? Their father is an exile in the Seychelles, and though it was once thought that one of them might succeed the reigning Rajah, another Rajah is so popular with the Malays, and so intelligent, that it is now unlikely that his claims will be set aside.

The steep little hill on which the Residency stands is planted with miserable coffee, with scanty yellow foliage. The house on my side has a magnificent view of the beautiful Hijan hills, down which a waterfall tumbles in a broad sheet of foam only half a mile off, and which breed a rampageous fresh breeze for a great part of the day. The front veranda looks down on Taipeng and other Chinese villages, on neat and prolific Chinese vegetable gardens, on pits, formerly tin mines, now full of muddy, stagnant water, on narrow, muddy rivulets bearing the wash of the tin mines to the Larut river, on all the weediness and forlornness of a superficially exhausted mining region, and beyond upon an expanse of jungle, the limit of which is beyond the limit of vision, miles of tree tops as level as the ocean, over which the cloud shadows sail in purple all day long. In the early morning the parade ground is gay with "thin red" lines of soldiers, and all day long with a glass I can see the occupations and bustle of Taipeng.

Taipeng is a thriving, increasing place, of over six thousand inhabitants, solely Chinese, with the exception of a small Kling population, which keeps small shops, lends money, drives gharries and bullock-carts, and washes clothes. This place was the focus of the disturbances in 1873, and the Chinese seem still to need to be held in check, for they are not allowed to go out at night without passes and lanterns. They are miners, except those who keep the innumerable shops which supply the miners, and some of them are rich. Taipeng is tolerably empty during the day, but at dusk, when the miners return, the streets and gambling dens are crowded, and the usual Babel of Chinese tongues begins. There are scarcely any Malays in the town.

Mr. Maxwell walks and rides about everywhere unattended and without precautions, but Sikh sentries guard this house by night and day. They wear large blue turbans, scarlet coats and white trousers. There are four hundred and fifty of them, recruited in India from among the Sikhs and Pathans, and many of them have seen service under our flag. They are, to all intents and purposes, soldiers, drilled and disciplined as such, though called "Armed Police," and are commanded by Major Swinburne of the 80th Regiment. There is a half battery of mountain train rifled guns, and many of these men are drilled as gunners. Their joy would be in shooting and looting, but they have not any scent for crime. They are splendid-looking men, with long moustaches and whiskers, but they plait the long ends of the latter and tuck them up under their turbans. They have good-natured faces generally, and are sober, docile and peaceable, but Major Swinburne says that they indulge in violent wordy warfare on "theological subjects." They are devoted to the accumulation of money, and very many of them being betrothed to little girls in India, save nearly all their pay in order to buy land and settle there. When off duty they wear turbans and robes nearly as white as snow, and look both classical and colossal. They get on admirably with the Malays, but look down on the Chinese, who are much afraid of them. One sees a single Sikh driving four or five Chinamen in front of him, having knotted their pigtails together for reins. I have been awoke each night by the clank which attends the change of guard, and as the moonlight flashes on the bayonets, I realize that I am in Perak.

The air is so bracing here and the nights so cool, that I have been out by seven each morning, and have been into Taipeng in the evening. This morning I went to see the hospital, mainly used by the Sikhs, who, though very docile patients, are most troublesome in other ways, owing to religious prejudices, which render it nearly impossible to cook for them. There was one wretched Chinaman there, horribly mangled. He was stealing a boat on one of the many creeks, when an alligator got hold of him, and tore both legs, one arm, and his back in such a way that it is wonderful that he lives. The apothecary is a young Madrassee. One or two cases of that terrible disease known in Japan as Kakke, and elsewhere as Beri-Beri, have just appeared.* We walked also to a clear mountain torrent which comes thundering down among great boulders and dense tropical vegetation at the foot of the mountains, as clear and cold as if it were a Highland stream dashing through the purple heather. [*Since my visit there have been three fatal outbreaks of this epidemic, three thousand deaths having occurred among the neighboring miners and coolies. So firmly did the disease appear to have established itself, that a large permanent hospital was erected by the joint efforts of the chief mining adventurers and the Government, but it has now been taken over altogether by the Government, and is supported by an annual tax of a dollar, levied upon every adult Chinaman. Extensive hospital accommodation and sufficient medical attendance have also been provided in other stricken localities. In the jail, where the disease was very fatal, it has nearly died out, in consequence, it is believed, of supplying the prisoners with a larger quantity of nitrogenous food. It has been proposed to compel the employers of mining coolies to do the same thing, for the ravages of the disease are actually affecting the prosperity of Larut.]

There are "trumpeter beetles" here, with bright green bodies and membranous-looking transparent wings, four inches across, which make noise enough for a creature the size of a horse. Two were in the house tonight, and you could scarcely hear anyone speak. But there is a blessed respite from mosquitoes.

Major Swinburne and Captain Walker have dined here, and we had a simple dinner of roast mutton, the first that I have tasted for ten months. It is a great treat. One becomes tired of made dishes, consisting chiefly of impoverished fowls, disguised in about twenty different ways.

When I left Malacca, Captain Shaw said: "When you see Paul Swinburne you'll see a man you'll not see twice in a lifetime," so yesterday, when a tall, slender, aristocratic-looking man, who scarcely looks severable from the door-steps of a Pall Mall club, strode down the room and addressed me abruptly with the words: "The sooner you go away again the better; there's nothing to see, nothing to do, and nothing to learn," I was naturally much interested. He has a dash of acquired eccentricity of tone and manner, is very proud, but, unlike some proud people, appreciates the co-humanity of his inferiors, is a brilliant talker, dashing over art, literature, politics, society, tells stories brilliantly, never flags, is totally regardless of "the equities of conversation," and is much beloved by the Sikhs, to whom he is just.

At Pinang I heard an anecdote of him which is quite credible. The regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine, and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept insult. I take no future orders from your highness." Nor, it is said, has he.

My human surroundings have an unusual amount of piquancy. Mr. Maxwell is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able, combative, dogmatic, well-read and well-informed, expresses himself incisively, is self-reliant, strong-willed, thoroughly just, thoroughly a gentleman, and has immense energy and business capacity, and a large amount of governing power. He, too, likes talking, and talks well, but with much perfectly good-natured vehemence. He is a man on whose word one may implicitly rely. Brought up among Malays, and speaking their language idiomatically, he not only likes them, but takes the trouble to understand them and enter into their ideas and feelings. He studies their literature, superstitions, and customs carefully, and has made some valuable notes upon them. I should think that few people understand the Malays better than he does. He dislikes the Chinese. I have the very pleasant feeling regarding him that he is the right man in the right place, and that his work is useful, conscientious, and admirable. As Assistant Resident he is virtually dictator of Larut, only subject to Mr. Low's interference. He is a judge, and can inflict the penalty of death, the Regent's signature, however, being required for the death-warrant. He rules the Chinese rigidly.

Captain Walker is a new comer, and does not know more about Perak than I do. At this dinner of four there was as much noise as twenty stupid people would make! Something brought up the dead lock in Victoria, which excited violent feeling for some reason not obvious. Captain Walker threw off his somewhat suave A.D.C. manner, and looked dangerous, Mr. Maxwell fought for victory, and Major Swinburne to beat Mr. Maxwell, and the row was deafening. I doubt whether such an argument could have been got up in moist, hot Singapore, or steamy Malacca! An energetic difference seems of daily occurrence, and possibly is an essential ingredient of friendship. That it should be possible shows what an invigorating climate this must be. Major Swinburne, in an aggravating tone, begins upon some peculiarity or foible, real or supposed, of his friend, with a deluge or sarcasm, mimicry, ridicule, and invective, torments him mercilessly, and without giving him time to reply, disappears, saying, Parthian-like, "Now, my dear fellow, its no use resenting it, you haven't such a friend as me in the world—you know if it were not for me you'd be absolutely intolerable!" All this is very amusing. How many differing characters are required to make up even the world that I know!

It is strange to be in a house in which there are no pets, for a small Malay bear which lives at the back can scarcely be called one. Sometimes in the evening a wild animal called a lemur rushes wildly through the house and out at the front veranda. I am always afraid of being startled by his tearing through my room in the depths of the night, for here, as in many other houses, instead of doors there are screens raised a foot from the ground.

This morning I got up before daylight, and went up a hill which is being cleared, to enjoy the sunrise, the loveliest time of the tropic day. It was all dew and rose color, with a delicious freshness in the air, prolonged unusually, because the sun was so slow to climb above the eastern mountain tops. Then there was a sudden glory, and birds, beasts, and insects broke into a vociferous chorus, the tuneless hymn which ascends daily without a discord. There are sumptuously colored sunsets to be seen from this elevation, but one has no time to enjoy them, and they make one long for the lingering gold and purple of more northern latitudes. I have really been industrious since I came here, both in writing to you, and in "reading up" the native states in blue books, etc.

I. L. B.


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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/A CHAPTER ON PÊRAK

The "protected" State of Perak (pronounced Payrah) is the richest and most important of the States of the Peninsula, as well as one of the largest. Its coast-line, broken into, however, by a bit of British territory, is about one hundred and twenty-five miles in length. Its sole southern boundary is the State of Selangor. On the north it has the British colony of Province Wellesley, and the native States of Kedah and Patani, tributary to Siam. Its eastern boundary is only an approximate one, Kelantan joining it in the midst of a vast tract of unexplored country inhabited solely by the Sakei and Semang aborigines. The State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five thousand square miles. The great artery of the country is the Perak river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth, and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther. This river, even one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth at Kwala Kangsa, is two hundred yards wide, and might easily be ascended by "stern-wheel" boats drawing a foot of water, such as those which ply on the upper Mississippi. Next in size to the Perak is the Kinta, which falls into the Perak, besides which there are the Bernam and Batang Padang rivers, both navigable for vessels of light draught. Along the shores of these streams most of the Malay kampongs are built.

The interior of Perak is almost altogether covered with magnificent forests, out of which rise isolated limestone hills, and mountain ranges from five thousand to eight thousand feet in height. The scenery is beautiful. The neighborhood of the mangrove swamps of the coast is low and swampy, but as the ground rises, the earth which has been washed down from the hills becomes fertile, and farther inland the plains are so broken up by natural sand ridges which lighten the soil, that it is very suitable for rice culture.

Tin is the most abundant of the mineral products of Perak, and, as in the other States, the supply is apparently inexhaustible. So far it is obtained in "stream works" only. The export of this metal has risen from 144,000 pounds in 1876 to 436,000 pounds in 1881. Tin-mining continues to attract a steady stream of Chinese immigration, and the Resident believes that the number of Chinamen has increased from twenty thousand in 1879 to forty thousand in 1881. Wealth is reckoned in slabs of tin, and lately for an act of piracy a Rajah was fined so many slabs of tin, instead of so many hogsheads of oil, as he would have been on the West African coast.

Gold is found in tolerable quantities, even by the Malay easy-going manner of searching for it, and diamonds and garnets are tolerably abundant. Gold can be washed with little difficulty from most of the river beds, and from various alluvial deposits. The metal thus found is pure, but "rough and shotty." The nearer the mountains the larger the find. It is of a rich, red color. Iron ore is abundant; but though coal has been found, it is not of any commercial value. The methods of mining both for tin and gold are of the most elementary kind, and it is probable that Perak has still vast metallic treasures to yield up to scientific exploration and Anglo-Saxon energy.

Rice is the staple food of the inhabitants. Dry rice on the hillsides was the kind which was formerly exclusively cultivated, but from some Indians who came from Sumatra to Perak the Malays have learned the mode of growing the wet variety, and it is now largely practiced. Partly in consequence of a great lack of agricultural energy, and partly from the immense quantity of rice required by the non-producing Chinese miners, Perak imported in 1881 rice to the value of 70,000 pounds.

There is scarcely a tropical product which this magnificent region does not or may not produce, gutta-percha, india-rubber, sago, tapioca, palm-oil and fibre, yams, sweet potatoes, cloves, nutmegs, coffee, tobacco, pepper, gambier, with splendid fruits in perfection—the banana, bread-fruit, anona, cocoa-nut, mangosteen, durion, jak-fruit, cashew-nut, guava, bullock's heart, pomegranate, shaddock, custard-apple, papaya, pine-apple, with countless others. The indigenous fruits alone are so innumerable, that a description of the most valuable of them would fill a chapter.

Our homely vegetables do not flourish, but watermelons, cucumbers, gourds, capsicums, chilies, cocoa-nut cabbage, edible arums, and, where the Chinese have settled, coarse lettuces, radishes, and pulse, grow abundantly, with various other not altogether to be despised vegetables with Malay names.

The timber is magnificent, and under the unworthy name of "jungle produce" a large trade is done in it. Perak is the land of palms, and produces the invaluable cocoa-palm, most parts of which have their commercial value, the areca palm which produces the betel-nut, the gomuti palm from whose strong black fibres they make ropes, cordage, and strands for capturing the alligator; the jaggary-palm, from which sugar is made, as well as a fermented beverage; the nibong palm, which grows round the Malay kampong, and is used for their gridiron floors and for the posts of their houses; the dwarf-palms which serve no other purpose than to gladden the eyes by their beauty; and the nipah palm which fringes the rivers, and, under the name of attap, forms the thatch of both native and foreign houses.

Road-making has not made great strides in Perak, but railroads are being planned, and a good road extends from the port of Larut to the great Chinese mining town of Taipeng, and thence to the British residency at Kwala Kangsa, a distance of over thirty-three miles, the electric telegraph accompanying the road. Others are in course of construction, and there are numerous elephant and jungle tracks through the western parts of the State.

Still, the rivers form the natural highways. Perak has two ports—Teluk Anson on the Perak river, thirty-four miles from its mouth, and Teluk Kertang, a few miles up the Larut river, and eight miles from the great tin mines of Taipeng. The import and export trade is carried on mainly with Pinang, and at this time one of several small steamers leaves Larut for that port daily. A steamer calls at Teluk Anson once a fortnight on her voyage from and to Singapore and Pinang, and another calls at the same port every fourth day, as well as at the Dindings and the Bernam river.

Trade is rapidly advancing. The exports of the State, which were valued at 147,993 pounds in 1876, amounted to 513,317 pounds in 1881; and the imports which amounted to 166,275 pounds in 1876, had reached 488,706 pounds in 1881, the whole import and export trade of that year amounting to 1,002,023 pounds. The free population of Perak is now estimated at

Malays 56,000 Chinese 40,000 Other Asiatics 850 Europeans 90 Aborigines 1,000 ——— 97,940 To which may be added a slave and bond debtor population of nearly four thousand souls.

The revenue of Perak has risen from 42,683 pounds in 1876 to 138,572 pounds in 1881; and the expenditure, keeping pace with it, has risen from 45,277 pounds in 1876 to 130,587 pounds in 1881. The chief sources of the Perak revenue are customs duties, opium and other farms and licenses, and land revenue; and the chief items of expenditure are for civil and police establishments, roads and bridges, and allowances and pensions to chiefs. It is worthy of remark that the military establishment—for so the magnificent Sikh armed police force may be called—costs more than the civil establishment. It may also be remarked that the revenue of Perak, thanks to the financial sagacity and wise discrimination of the Resident, is collected with little difficulty, and without inflicting any real vexations or hardships on the taxpayers.

Public works, such as the construction of good cart roads and bridges, the making of canals, the clearing rivers from impediments to navigation, the enlargement of experimental gardens, the introduction and breeding of sheep, cattle, and improved breeds of poultry, surveying wild land, and rebuilding and draining mining towns, are being carried on energetically. It has been found, after long and carefully-conducted experiments, that the lower mountains of Perak are admirably suited for the growth of tea, cinchona, and Arabian coffee, while Liberian coffee grows equally well on the lower lands. Coffee appears to be so nearly "played out" in Ceylon, that many coffee-planters have been "prospecting" in Perak; and now that the Government of India has consented to the importation of Indian coolie labor into the State, under certain restrictions, as an experimental measure, a future of coffee may be predicted with tolerable certainty. One of the causes for satisfaction in connection with this State is that the Malays themselves are undoubtedly contented with British rule, and are prospering under it. Crime of any kind in the Malay districts is very rare. The "village system" works well, and the courts of law conduct their business with an efficiency and economy which compare favorably with the transactions of our colonial courts; English law is being gradually introduced and gives general satisfaction, and the native Rajahs are being trained to administer even-handed justice according to its provisions, and at the same time without trenching upon Malay religion and custom. Slavery and debt bondage, which, as hitherto practiced in Perak, have involved evils and cruelties which are unknown to any but those who have actually lived in the State, will, it is hoped, be abolished by equitable arrangement in 1883. Various difficulties remain to be settled; the large Chinese element, with its criminal tendencies, requires great firmness of dealing, and the introduction of foreign capital and an additional form of alien labor may lead to new perplexities; but on the whole the outlook for Perak and its people is a favorable one, especially if the present Resident, Mr. Hugh Low, is able to remain to continue his task of developing the resources, settling the difficulties, and consolidating the well-being of the State.

Nothing is known of the early settlement of Perak. It was formerly tributary to the Malay sovereigns of Malacca, and afterward to those of Acheen, to whom the Perak Sultans sent gold and silver flowers as tribute. Siam has also at different times asserted sovereign rights and demanded tribute, but the Siamese were expelled in 1822 with the help of Rajah Ibrahim, the warlike chief of the neighboring State of Selangor. The Government was a despotism, administered during the last three centuries by Sultans who were connected with the ruling dynasties of Johore and Acheen.

Our connection with Perak began in 1818 by a commercial treaty between the East India Company and the Sultan, the chief object of which was to circumvent the Dutch on the subject of tin. By another treaty, in 1826, it was agreed that the Sultan should govern his country according to his own will; that no force should be sent either by Siam to "molest, attack, or disturb" Perak; and while it was stipulated that the Siamese should not attack or disturb Selangor, the English engaged not to allow Selangor to attack or disturb Perak.

So things jogged along till 1871, when the Sultan died, and the Rajahs, passing over two men who by blood were nearest to the throne, elected Ismail, an old and somewhat inoffensive man. Three years of intrigue followed, and many singular complications, which would be quite uninteresting to the general reader, and they furnished no excuse for English interference.

It is singular that the fall of Perak as an independent State was brought about by what may be called a civil war among the Chinese, who in 1871 were estimated at thirty thousand, and were principally engaged in tin-mining in Larut. These Chinamen were divided into two sections—the Go Kwans and the Si Kwans; and a few months after Sultan Ismail was elected, a dispute arose between the factions. Both parties flew to arms, and were aided with guns, ammunition, military stores, and food from Pinang, Pinang Chinese having previously supplied the capital needed for working the mines. The settlement was kept in perpetual hot water, its trade languished, and in return for military equipments the Chinese of Larut sent over two thousand wounded and starving men. The Mentri, the Malay "Governor" of Larut, although aided by Captain Speedy and a force of well-drilled troops recruited by him in India, and possessing four Krupp guns, was powerless to restore order, and Larut was destroyed, being absolutely turned into a wilderness, in which all but three houses had been burned, and, while the Malays had fled, the surviving Si Kwans were living behind stockades, while those of the faction opposed to that with which the Mentri and his Commander-in-Chief, Captain Speedy, had allied themselves, were living on the products of orchards from which their owners had been driven, and on booty, won by a wholesale system of piracy and murder, practiced not only on the Perak waters but on the high seas.

The war waged between the two parties threatened to become a war of extermination; horrible atrocities were perpetrated on both sides; and it is said and believed that as many as three thousand belligerents were slain on one day early in the disturbances. If the course of prohibiting the export of munitions of war had been persevered the strife would have died a natural death; but the Mentri made representations which induced the authorities of the Straits to accord a certain degree of support to himself and the Si Kwans, by limiting the prohibition to his enemies the Go Kwans. Things at last became so intolerable in Larut, and as a consequence in Pinang, that the Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir A. Clarke, thought it was time to interfere. During these disturbances in Larut, Lower Perak and the Malays generally were living peaceably under Ismail, their elected Sultan. Abdullah, who was regarded as his rival, was a fugitive, with neither followers, money, nor credit. He had, however, friends in Singapore, to one of whom, Kim Cheng, a well-known Chinaman, he had promised a lucrative appointment if he would prevail on the Straits authorities to recognize him as Sultan. Lord Kimberley had previously instructed the Governor to consider the expediency of introducing the "Residential system" into "any of the Malay States," and the occasion soon presented itself.

An English merchant in Singapore and Kim Cheng drafted a letter to the Governor, which Abdullah signed, in which this chief expressed his desire to place Perak under British protection,* and "to have a man of sufficient abilities to show him a good system of government." Sir A. Clarke, thus appealed to, went to Pulo Pangkor, off the Perak coast, summoned the Chinese head men and the Malay chiefs to meet him there, and so effectively reconciled the former, who were bound over to keep the peace, that they were not again heard of. The Governor stated to the Malay chief and Abdullah that it was the duty of England to take care that the proper person in the line of succession was chosen for the throne. He inquired if there were any objection to Abdullah, and on none being made, the chiefs signed a paper dictated by Sir A. Clarke, since known as the "Pangkor Treaty." Its articles deposed Ismail, created Abdullah Sultan, ceded two tracts of territory to England, and provided that the new ruler should receive an English Resident and Assistant Resident, whose salaries and expenses should be the first charge on the revenue of the country, whose counsel must be asked and "acted upon" on all questions other than those of religion and custom, and under whose advice the collection and control of all revenues and the general administration should be regulated. After the signing of this treaty piracy ceased in the Perak waters, and Larut was repeopled and became settled and prosperous. [*Abdullah informs "our friend" Sir W. Jervois, that his position and that of Perak are "in a most deplorable state," that there are two Sultans between whom no arrangement can be made, that the revenues are badly raised, and the laws are not executed with justice. "For these reasons," he says, "we see that Perak is in very great distress, and, in our opinion, the affairs of Perak cannot be settled except with strong, active assurance from our friend the representative of Queen Victoria, the greatest and most noble….We earnestly beg our friend to give complete assistance to Perak, and govern it, in order that this country may obtain safety and happiness, and that proper revenues may be raised, and the laws administered with justice, and all the inhabitants of the country may live in comfort."]

So far, as regards the Sultanate, I have followed the account given by Sir Benson Maxwell. Mr. Swettenham, however, writes that Abdullah failed to obtain complete recognition of himself as Sultan, and instead of fulfilling the duties of his position, devoted himself to opium- smoking, cock-fighting, and other vices, estranging, by his overbearing manner and pride of position, those who only needed forbearance to make them his supporters. It may be remarked that Abdullah was not as yielding as had been expected to his English advisers.

The Pangkor Treaty was signed in January, 1874. On November 2d, 1875, Mr. Birch, the British Resident, who had arrived the evening before at the village of Passir Salah to post up orders and proclamations announcing that the whole kingdom of Perak was henceforth to be governed by English officers, was murdered as he was preparing for the bath.

On this provocation we entered upon a "little war," Perak became known in England, and the London press began to ask how it was that colonial officers were suffered to make conquests and increase Imperial responsibilities without the sanction of Parliament. Lord Carnarvon telegraphed to Singapore that he could not sanction the use of troops "for annexation or any other large political aims," supplementing his telegram by a despatch stating that the residential system had been only sanctioned provisionally, as an experiment, and declaring that the Government would not keep troops in a country "continuing to possess an independent jurisdiction, for the purpose of enforcing measures which the natives did not cheerfully accept."

As the sequel to the war and Mr. Birch's murder, Ismail, who had retained authority over a part of Perak, was banished to Johore; Abdullah, the Sultan, and the Mentri of Larut, who was designated as an "intriguing character," were exiled to the Seychelles, and the Rajah Muda Yusuf, a prince who, by all accounts, was regarded as exceedingly obnoxious, was elevated to the regency, Perak at the same time passing virtually under our rule.

A great mist of passion and prejudice envelops our dealings with the chiefs and people of this State, both before and after the war. Sir Benson Maxwell in "Our Malay Conquests," presents a formidable arraignment against the Colonial authorities, and Major M'Nair, in his book on Perak, justifies all their proceedings. If I may venture to give an opinion upon so controverted a subject, it is, that all Colonial authorities in their dealings with native races, all Residents and their subordinates, and all transactions between ourselves and the weak peoples of the Far East, would be better for having something of "the fierce light which beats upon a throne" turned upon them. The good have nothing to fear, the bad would be revealed in their badness, and hasty counsels and ambitious designs would be held in check. Public opinion never reaches these equatorial jungles; we are grossly ignorant of their inhabitants and their rights, of the manner in which our interference originated, and how it has been exercised; and unless some fresh disturbance and another "little war" should concentrate our attention for a moment on these distant States, we are likely to remain so, to their great detriment, and not a little, in one respect of the case at least, to our own.

When the changes in Perak were completed, Mr. Hugh Low, formerly administrator of the Government of Labuan, was appointed Resident, and Mr. W. E. Maxwell, who had had considerable experience in Malay affairs, Assistant Resident. Both these gentlemen speak the Malay tongue readily and idiomatically, and Mr. Maxwell is an accomplished Malay scholar. Of both the superior and subordinate it may truly be said that, by tact, firmness, patience, and a uniformly just regard for both Malay and Chinese interests, they have not only pacified the State, but have conciliated the Rajahs, and in the main have reconciled the people to the new order of things.

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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER XIX

BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT.

I am remaining here for another day or two, so have time to tell you a little about the surroundings.

Larut province is a strip of land about seventy miles long, and from twenty-five to forty-five broad. It was little known, and almost unexplored till 1848, when a Malay, while bathing, found some coarse, black sand, which, on being assayed, proved to be tin. He obtained twenty Chinese coolies, opened a mine which turned out lucrative, and the Chinese at home hearing that money was to be made, flocked into Larut, but after some years took to quarreling about the ownership of mines, and eventually to a war between the two leading clans, which threatened to be a war of extermination, and resulted in British interference, and the appointment of a Resident; and then Chinese merchants in Pinang made advances of money and provisions to such of their countrymen as were willing to work the abandoned mines. Very soon the population increased to such an extent that it became necessary to choose sites for mining towns, granting one to each faction; the Go Kwan town being called Taipeng, and the Si Kwan town Kamunting.

American mining enterprise could hardly go ahead faster. At the end of 1873 the population of Larut was four thousand, the men of the fighting factions only. Eleven months later these two mining towns contained nine thousand inhabitants, a tenth of whom were shopkeepers, and the district thirty-three thousand. Larut is level from the sea-shore to the mountain range, twenty miles inland, and is very uninteresting.

We have been in a gharrie to Kamunting, a Chinese mining town of four thousand people, three miles from here, approached through a pretty valley full of pitcher plants with purple cups and lids. You can imagine the joy of getting into my hands these wonderful nepenthes or "monkey cups" for the first time. I gathered five in the hope of finding one free from insects, but the cups of all were full of dried flies and ants, looking much as flies do when they have been clutched for a few days by the hairs of the "sun-dew." The lid has a quantity of nectar on its under side which attracts insects; but below the rolled rim of the cup, which is slightly corrugated, the interior is as smooth as glass, and the betrayed flies must fall at once into the water at the bottom and be drowned. As these ingenious arrangements are made for their destruction, doubtless the plant feeds upon their juices.* [*I have since learned that this is an ascertained fact, and that nepenthes are among the insectiverous plants.]

We went first to a very large tin mine belonging to a rich and very pleasant-looking Chinaman, who received us and took us over it. The mine is like a large quarry, with a number of small excavations which fill with water, and are pumped by most ingenious Chinese pumps worked by an endless chain, but there are two powerful steam pumps at work also. About four hundred lean, leathery-looking men were working, swarming up out of the holes like ants in double columns, each man carrying a small bamboo tray holding about three pounds of stanniferous earth, which is deposited in a sluice, and a great rush of water washes away the sand, leaving the tin behind, looking much like "giant" blasting powder. The Chinese are as much wedded to these bamboo baskets as to their pigtails, but they involve a great waste of labor. A common hoe is the other implement used. The coolies are paid by piece-work, and are earning just now about one shilling and sixpence per day. Road-making and other labor is performed by Klings, who get one shilling a day.

The tin is smelted during the night in a very rude furnace, with most ingenious Chinese bellows, is then run into moulds made of sand, and turned out as slabs weighing 66 lbs. each. The export duty on tin is the chief source of revenue. Close to the smelting furnaces there are airy sheds with platforms along each side, divided into as many beds as there are Chinamen. A bed consists only of a mat and a mosquito-net. There are all the usual joss arrangements, and time is measured by the burning of joss-sticks. Several rain-cloaks, made of palm leaves, were hanging up. These, and nearly all the other articles consumed by this large population are imported from China.

Our Chinese host then took us to some rooms which he had built for a cool retreat, to which, in anticipation of our visit, he had conveyed champagne, sherry, and bitter beer! His look of incredulity when we said that we preferred tea, was most amusing; but on our persisting, he produced delicious tea with Chinese sweetmeats, and Huntley and Palmer's cocoa-nut biscuits. He then insisted on taking our hired gharrie and scrubby pony and sending us on in his buggy with a fine Australian horse, but Mr. Maxwell says that this was as much from policy as courtesy, as it gives him importance to be on obviously friendly terms with the Resident.

We went on to Kamunting, a forlorn town, mainly built of attap, with roads and ditches needing much improvement, and I bargained for some Chinese purses and visited a gambling saloon, the place in which one sees the peculiar expression of the Chinese face at its fullest development. There is nothing very shocking about it, nothing more than an intensified love of gain without a mask. Each coolie takes his pipe of opium after his day's work, and each has a pot of tea kept always hot in a thickly wadded basket, a luxury which no Chinaman seems able to do without.

We called at a Sikh guard-house, and the magnificent sergeant took me to see his wife, the woman of the regiment, who is so rigidly secluded that not even the commanding officer nor Mr. Maxwell have seen her. She is very beautiful, and has an exquisite figure, but was overloaded with jewelry. She wore a large nose-jewel, seven rings of large size weighing down her finely formed ears, four necklaces, and silver bangles on each arm from the wrist to the elbow, besides some on her beautiful ankles. She had an infant boy, the child of the regiment, in her arms, clothed only in a silver hoop, and the father took him and presented him to me with much pride. It was a pleasant family group.

The few days here have been a real rest, I have been so much alone. There are no women to twitter; and when Mr. Maxwell is not at work he talks of things that are worth talking about. The climate, too, is bracing and wholesome, and the boisterous afternoon wind, which sweeps letters and papers irreverently away, keeps off the mosquitoes.

I. L. B.


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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER XX-I

BRITISH RESIDENCY, KWALA KANGSA, February 16.

This is rather exciting, for I have had an unusual journey, and my circumstances are unusual, for Mr. Low, the Resident, has not returned, and I am not only alone in his bungalow in the heart of the jungle, but so far as I can learn I am the only European in the region.

"Of all my wild adventures past This frantic feat will prove the last," for in a fortnight I propose to be at Pinang on my way to conventional Ceylon, and the beloved "wilds" will be left behind.

At 4:30 this morning Mr. Maxwell's energetic voice roused me, and I got up, feeling for the first time in Larut very tired from the unwonted dissipation of another "dinner party," and from having been kept awake late by the frantic rushes of the lemur and the noise of the "trumpeter beetle," besides being awoke in a fright at 2 A.M., by the noise made in changing guard, from a dream that the Sikhs had mutinied and were about to massacre the Europeans, myself included! We had bananas and chocolate, and just at daybreak walked down the hill, where I got into a little trap drawn by a fiery little Sumatra pony, and driven by Mr. Gibbons, a worthy Australian miner who is here road-making, and was taken five miles to a place where the road becomes a quagmire not to be crossed. Elephants had been telegraphed for to meet me there, but the telegraph was found to be broken. Mr. Maxwell, who accompanied us on horseback, had sent a messenger on here for elephants, and was dismayed on getting to the quagmire to meet the news that they had gone to the jungle; so there was no means of conveyance but the small pachyderm which was bringing my bag, and which was more than two hours behind.

There was nothing for it but to walk, and we tramped for four miles. I could not have done the half of it had I not had my "mountain dress" on, the identical mud-colored tweed, in which I waded through the mud of Northern Japan. The sun had risen splendidly among crimson clouds, which, having turned gray, were a slight screen, and the air is so comparatively dry that, though within 5 degrees of the equator, it was not oppressively hot.

The drive had brought us out of the Chinese country into a region very thinly peopled by Malays only, here and there along the roadside, living in houses of all Malay styles, from the little attap cabin with its gridiron floor supported on stilts, to the large picturesque house with steep brown roofs, deep eaves and porches, and walls of matting or bamboo basket work in squares, light and dark alternately, reached by ladders with rungs eighteen inches apart, so difficult for shod feet.

The trees and plants of the jungle were very exciting. Ah! what a delight it is to see trees and plants at home which one has only seen as the exotics of a hothouse, or read of in books! In the day's journey I counted one hundred and twenty-six differing trees and shrubs, fifty-three trailers, seventeen epiphytes, and twenty-eight ferns. I saw more of the shrubs and epiphytes than I have yet done from the altitude of an elephant's back. There was one Asplenium nidus [bird's nest fern] which had thirty-seven perfect fronds radiating from a centre, each frond from three and a quarter to five and a half feet long, and varying from myrtle to the freshest tint of pea-green!

There was an orchid with hardly visible leaves, which bore six crowded clusters of flowers close to the branch of the tree on which it grew; each cluster composed of a number of spikes of red coral tipped with pale green. In the openings there were small trees with gorgeous erythrina-like flowers, glowing begonias, red lilies, a trailer with trumpet-shaped blossoms of canary yellow, and a smaller trailer, which climbs over everything that is not high, entwining itself with the blue Thunbergia, and bearing on single stalks single blossoms, primrose-shaped, of a salmon orange color with a velvety black centre. In some places one came upon three varieties of nepenthes or "monkey cups," some of their pitchers holding (I should think) a pint of fluid, and most of them packed with the skeletons of betrayed guests; then in moist places upon steel blue aspleniums and luxuriant selaginellas; and then came caelogynes with white blossoms, white flowered dendrobiums (crumentatum?), all growing on or clinging to trees, with scarlet-veined bauhinias, caladiums, ginger worts, and aroids, inclining one to make incessant exclamations of wonder and delight. You cannot imagine how crowded together this tropical vegetation is. There is not room for half of it on the ground, so it seeks and finds its home high up on the strong, majestic trees which bear it up into the sunshine, where, indeed one has to look for most of the flowers.

It is glorious to see the vegetation of eternal summer and the lavish prodigality of nature, and one revels among hothouse plants "at home," and all the splendor of gigantic leaves, and the beauty and grace of palms, bamboos, and tree-ferns; the great, gaudy flowers are as marvelous as the gaudy plumaged birds, and I feel that no words can convey an idea of the beauty and magnificence of an equatorial jungle; but the very permanence of the beauty is almost a fault. I should soon come to long for the burst of spring with its general tenderness of green, and its great broad splashes of sociable flowers, its masses of buttercups, or ox-eye daisies, or dandelions, and for the glories of autumn with its red and gold, and leagues of purple heather. These splendid orchids and other epiphytes grow singly. One sees one and not another, there are no broad masses of color to blaze in the distance, the scents are heavy and overpowering, the wealth is embarrassing. I revel in it all and rejoice in it all; it is intoxicating, yet I am haunted with visions of mossy banks starred with primroses and anemones, of stream sides blue with gentian, of meadows golden with buttercups, and fields scarlet with poppies, and in spite of my enjoyment and tropical enthusiasm, I agree with Mr. Wallace and others that the flowers of a temperate climate would give one more lasting pleasure.

On either side of the road the ground is densely carpeted with the sensitive plant, whose lovely tripartite leaves are green above and brown below. It is a fascinating plant, and at first one feels guilty of cruelty if one does more than look at it, but I have already learned, as all people do here, to take delight in wounding its sensibilities. Touch any part of a leaf ever so lightly, and as quick as thought it folds up. Touch the centre of the three ever so lightly, and leaf and stalk fall smitten. Touch a branch and every leaf closes, and every stalk falls as if weighted with lead. Walk over it, and you seem to have blasted the earth with a fiery tread, leaving desolation behind. Every trailing plant falls, the leaves closing, show only their red-brown backs, and all the beauty has vanished, but the burned and withered-looking earth is as fair as ever the next morning.

After walking for four miles we came upon a glorious sight at a turn of the road, a small lake behind which the mountains rise forest-covered, with a slope at their feet on which stand the cocoa-nut groves, and the beautiful Malay house of the exiled Mentri of Larut. I have written of a lake, but no water was visible, for it was concealed by thousands and thousands of the peltate leaves of the lotus, nearly round, attaining a diameter of eighteen inches, cool and dewy-looking under the torrid sun, with a blue bloom upon their intense green. Above them rose thousands of lotus flowers, buds, and seed-vessels, each one a thing of perfect beauty, and not a withered blossom was to be seen. The immense corollas varied in color from a deep rose crimson to a pink as pale as that of a blush rose. Some were just opening, others were half open, and others wide open, showing the crowded golden stamens and the golden disk in the centre. From far off the deep rose pink of the glorious blossoms is to be seen, and their beauty carried me back to the castle moats of Yedo, and to many a gilded shrine in Japan, on which the lotus blooms as an emblem of purity, righteousness, and immortality. Even here, where no such symbolism attaches to it, it looks a sacred thing. It was delightful to see such a sociable flower rejoicing in a crowd.

Beyond is the picturesque kampong of Matang, with many good houses and a mosque. Passing through a gateway with brick posts, we entered a large walled inclosure containing a cocoa-grove, some fine trees, and the beautiful dwellings of the Malay whom we have deported to the Seychelles. This is one of the largest Malay houses on the peninsula. It is built of wood painted green and white, with bold floral designs on a white ground round some of the circular windows, and a very large porch for followers to wait in, up a ladder of course. In a shed there were three gharries, and behind the house several small houses for slaves and others. A number of girls and children, probably mostly slaves, mirthfully peeped at us from under the tasteful mat blinds.

Really the upper class of Malay houses show some very good work. The thatch of the steep roof is beautifully put on, and between the sides of finely woven checked matting interspersed with lattice work and bamboo work, the shady inner rooms with their carved doorways and portieres of red silk, the pillows and cushions of gold embroidery laid over the exquisitely fine matting on the floors, the light from the half-shaded windows glancing here and there as the breeze sways the screens, there is an indescribable appropriateness to the region.

I waited for the elephant in a rambling empty house, and Malays brought pierced cocoa-nuts, buffalo milk, and a great bouquet of lotus blossoms and seed-vessels, out of which they took the seeds, and presented them on the grand lotus leaf itself. Each seed is in appearance and taste like a hazel-nut, but in the centre, in an oval slit, the future lotus plant is folded up, the one vivid green seed leaf being folded over a shoot, and this is intensely bitter.

The elephant at last came up and was brought below the porch. They are truly hideous beasts, with their gray, wrinkled, hairless hides, the huge ragged "flappers" which cover their ears, and with which they fan themselves ceaselessly, the small, mean eyes, the hideous proboscis which coils itself snakishly round everything; the formless legs, so like trunks of trees; the piggish back, with the steep slope down to the mean, bare tail, and the general unlikeness to all familiar and friendly beasts. I can hardly write, for a little wah-wah, the most delightful of apes, is hanging with one long, lean arm round my throat, while with its disengaged hand it keeps taking my pen, dipping it in the ink, and scrawling over my letter. It is the most winsome of creatures, but if I were to oppose it there is no knowing what it might do, so I will take another pen. The same is true of an elephant. I am without knowledge of what it may be capable of!

Before I came I dreamt of howdahs and cloth of gold trappings, but my elephant had neither. In fact there was nothing grand about him but his ugliness. His back was covered with a piece of raw hide, over which were several mats, and on either side of the ridgy backbone a shallow basket, filled with fresh leaves and twigs, and held in place by ropes of rattan. I dropped into one of these baskets from the porch, a young Malay lad into the other, and my bag was tied on behind with rattan. A noose of the same with a stirrup served for the driver to mount. He was a Malay, wearing only a handkerchief and sarong, a gossiping, careless fellow, who jumped off whenever he had a chance of a talk, and left us to ourselves. He drove with a stick with a curved spike at the end of it, which, when the elephant was bad, was hooked into the membranous "flapper," always evoking the uprearing and brandishing of the proboscis, and a sound of ungentle expostulation, which could be heard a mile off. He sat on the head of the beast, sometimes cross-legged, and sometimes with his legs behind the huge ear covers. Mr. Maxwell assured me that he would not send me into a region without a European unless it were perfectly safe, which I fully believed, any doubts as to my safety, if I had any, being closely connected with my steed.

This mode of riding is not comfortable. One sits facing forward with the feet dangling over the edge of the basket.* This edge soon produces a sharp ache or cramp, and when one tries to get relief by leaning back on anything, the awkward, rolling motion is so painful, that one reverts to the former position till it again becomes intolerable. Then the elephant had not been loaded "with brains," and his pack was as troublesome as the straw shoes of the Japanese horses. It was always slipping forward or backward, and as I was heavier than the Malay lad, I was always slipping down and trying to wriggle myself up on the great ridge which was the creature's backbone, and always failing, and the mahout was always stopping and pulling the rattan ropes which bound the whole arrangement together, but never succeeding in improving it. [*See Frontispiece.]

Before we had traveled two hours, the great bulk of the elephant, without any warning, gently subsided behind, and then as gently in front, the huge, ugly legs being extended in front of him, and the man signed to me to get off, which I did by getting on his head and letting myself down by a rattan rope upon the driver, who made a step of his back, for even when "kneeling," as this queer attitude is called, a good ladder is needed for comfortable getting off and on. While the whole arrangement of baskets was being re-rigged, I clambered into a Malay dwelling of the poorer class, and was courteously received and regaled with bananas and buffalo milk. Hospitality is one of the Malay virtues. This house is composed of a front hut and a back hut with a communication. Like all others it is raised to a good height on posts. The uprights are of palm, and the elastic, gridiron floor of split laths of the invaluable nibong palm (oncosperma filamentosum). The sides are made of neatly split reeds, and the roof, as in all houses, of the dried leaves of the nipah palm (nipa fruticans) stretched over a high ridge pole and steep rafters of bamboo. I could not see that a single nail had been used in the house. The whole of it is lashed together with rattan. The furniture consists entirely of mats, which cover a part of the floor, and are used both for sitting on and sleeping on, and a few small, hard, circular bolsters with embroidered ends. A musket, a spear, some fishing-rods, and a buffalo yoke hung against the wall of the reception room. In the back room, the province of the women and children, there were an iron pot, a cluster of bananas, and two calabashes. The women wore only sarongs, and the children nothing. The men, who were not much clothed, were lounging on the mats.

The Malays are passionately fond of pets, and are said to have much skill in taming birds and animals. Doubtless their low voices and gentle, supple movements never shock the timid sensitiveness of brutes. Besides this, Malay children yield a very ready obedience to their elders, and are encouraged to invite the confidence of birds and beasts, rather than to torment them. They catch birds by means of bird-lime made of gutta, by horse-hair nooses, and by imitating their call. In this small house there were bamboo cages containing twenty birds, most of them talking minas and green-feathered small pigeons. They came out of their cages when called, and perched in rows on the arms of the men. I don't know whether the mina can learn many words, but it imitates the human voice so wonderfully that in Hawaii when it spoke English I was quite deceived by it. These minas articulated so humanly that I did know whether a bird or a Malay spoke. There were four love-birds in an exquisitely made bamboo cage, lovely little creatures with red beaks and blue and green plumage. The children catch small grasshoppers for their birds with a shovel-shaped instrument of open rattan work. When I add that there were some homely domestic fowls and a nearly tailless cat, I think I have catalogued the visible possessions of this family, with the exception of a bamboo cradle with a small brown inmate hanging from the rafters, and a small shed, used, I believe, for storing rice.

The open floor, while it gives air and ventilation, has also its disadvantages, for solid and liquid refuse is thrown through it so conveniently that the ground under the house is apt to contain stagnant pools and heaps of decomposing matter, and men lying asleep on mats on these gridirons have sometimes been stabbed with a kris inserted between the bars from below by an enemy seeking revenge.

I must not, however, give the impression that the Malays are a dirty people. They wash their clothes frequently, and bathe as often as is possible. They try to build their houses near water, and use small bathing-sheds.

I went into another house, rather poorer than the former, and, with a touching hospitality, they made signs to me to know if I would like a cocoa-nut. I hinted that I would, and the man at once got up and called to him an ape or monkey about three feet high, which was playing with a child, and the animal went out with him, and in no time was at the top of a tall cocoa-nut tree. His master said something to him, and he moved about examining the nuts till he decided upon a green one, which he wrung off, using teeth and hands for the operation. The slightly acid milk was refreshing, but its "meat," which was of the consistency and nearly the tastelessness of the white of an egg boiled for five minutes, was not so good as that of the riper nuts.

I had walked on for some distance, and I had to walk back again before I found my elephant. I had been poking about in the scrub in search of some acid fruits, and when I got back to the road, was much surprised to find that my boots were filled with blood, and on looking for the cause I found five small brown leeches, beautifully striped with yellow, firmly attached to my ankles. I had not heard that these were pests in Perak, and feared that they were something worse; but the elephant driver, seeing my plight, made some tobacco juice and squirted it over the creatures, when they recoiled in great disgust. Owing to the exercise I was obliged to take, the bites bled for several hours. I do not remember feeling the first puncture. I have now heard that these blood-suckers infest leaves and herbage, and that when they hear the rustling made by man or animal in passing, they stretch themselves to their fullest length, and if they can touch any part of his body or dress they hold on to it, and as quickly as possible reach some spot where they can suck their fill.

I am making my narrative as slow as my journey, but the things I write of will be as new to you as they were to me. New it was certainly to stand upon a carpet of the sensitive plant at noon, with the rays of a nearly vertical sun streaming down from a cloudless, steely blue sky, watching the jungle monster meekly kneeling on the ground, with two Malays who do not know a word of English as my companions, and myself unarmed and unescorted in the heart of a region so lately the scene of war, about which seven blue books have been written, and about the lawlessness and violence of which so many stories have been industriously circulated.

Certainly I always dreamed that there must be something splendid in riding on an elephant, but I don't feel the least accession of dignity in consequence. It is true, however, here, that though the trappings are mean and almost savage, a man's importance is estimated by the number of his elephants. When the pack was adjusted, the mahout jumped on the back, and giving me his hands hauled me up over the head, after which the creature rose gently from the ground, and we went on our journey.

But the ride was "a fearful joy," if a joy at all! Soon the driver jumped off for a gossip and a smoke, leaving the elephant to "gang his ain gates" for a mile or more, and he turned into the jungle, where he began to rend and tear the trees, and then going to a mud-hole, he drew all the water out of it, squirted it with a loud noise over himself and his riders, soaking my clothes with it, and when he turned back to the road again, he several times stopped and seemed to stand on his head by stiffening his proboscis and leaning upon it, and when I hit him with my umbrella he uttered the loudest roar I ever heard. My Malay fellow- rider jumped off and ran back for the driver, on which the panniers came altogether down on my side, and I hung on with difficulty, wondering what other possible contingencies could occur, always expecting that the beast, which was flourishing his proboscis, would lift me off with it and deposit me in a mud-hole.

On the driver's return I had to dismount again, and this time the elephant was allowed to go and take a proper bath in a river. He threw quantities of water over himself, and took up plenty more with which to cool his sides as he went along. Thick as the wrinkled hide of an elephant looks, a very small insect can draw blood from it, and, when left to himself, he sagaciously plasters himself with mud to protect himself like the water buffalo. Mounting again, I rode for another two hours, but he crawled about a mile an hour, and seemed to have a steady purpose to lie down. He roared whenever he was asked to go faster, sometimes with a roar of rage, sometimes in angry and sometimes in plaintive remonstrance. The driver got off and walked behind him, and then he stopped altogether. Then the man tried to pull him along by putting a hooked stick in his huge "flapper," but this produced no other effect than a series of howls; then he got on his head again, after which the brute made a succession of huge stumbles, each one of which threatened to be a fall, and then the driver, with a look of despair, got off again. Then I made signs that I would get off, but the elephant refused to lie down, and I let myself down his unshapely shoulder by a rattan rope, till I could use the mahout's shoulders as steps. The baskets were taken off and left at a house, the elephant was turned loose in the jungle; I walked the remaining miles to Kwala Kangsa, and the driver carried my portmanteau! Such was the comical end of my first elephant ride. I think that altogether I walked about eight miles, and I was not knocked up; this says a great deal for the climate of Perak. The Malay who came with me told the people here that it was "a wicked elephant," but I have since been told "that it was very sick and tired to death," which I hope is the true version of its most obnoxious conduct.

I have said nothing about the magnificence of the scenery for a part of the way, where the road goes through a grand mountain pass, where all the vegetable glories of the tropics seem assembled, and one gets a new idea of what scenery can be; while beneath superb tree-ferns and untattered bananas, and palms, and bright-flowered lianas, and graceful trailers, and vermilion-colored orchids, and under sun-birds and humming birds and the most splendid butterflies I ever saw, a torrent, as clear as crystal, dashes over the rocks, and adds the music of tumbling water to the enchantment of a scene whose loveliness no words can give any idea of. The pass of Bukit Berapit, seen in solitude on a glorious morning, is almost worth a journey round the world.

Another wonder of the route is Gunong Pondok, a huge butte or isolated mass of red and white limestone, much weather-stained and ore-stained with very brilliant colors, full of caverns, many of which are quite inaccessible, their entrances fringed with immense stalactites. Some of the accessible caves have roofs seventy feet in height. Gunong Pondok is shaped like the Bass Rock, and is about twelve hundred feet in height. Its irregular top is forest-crowned, but its nearly perpendicular walls of white or red rock afford scarcely roothold for trees, and it rises in comparatively barren solitude among the forest-covered mountains of the interior.

At the end of ten hours' traveling, as I was tramping along alone, I began to meet Malays, then I met nine elephants in groups of three, with men, women, and children on their backs, apparently taking "an airing," the beasts looking grand, as their fronts always do. But that part of the road passes through a lonely jungle region, tiger, elephant, and rhinoceros haunted, and only broken here and there by some rude Malay cultivation of bananas or sugar-cane. When the sun was low I looked down upon a broad and beautiful river, with hills and mountains on its farther side, a village on the shores of a promontory, and above that a grassy hill with a bungalow under cocoa-palms at its top, which I knew must be the Residency, from the scarlet uniforms at the door. There was a small bridge over the Kangsa, then a guard-room and some official residences on stilts, and at the top of a steep slope the bungalow, which has a long flight of stairs under a latticed porch, leading to a broad and comfortably furnished veranda used as the Resident's office and sitting-room, the centre part, which has a bed- room on each side of it and runs to the back of the house, serving for the eating-place. It is as unpretending a dwelling as can be. It keeps out the sun and rain, and gives all the comfort which is needed in this climate, but nothing more. My journey of thirty-three miles from the coast has brought me into the interior of the State, where the Kangsa river joins the Perak, at a distance of a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth, and I am alone in the wilds!