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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER X

STADTHAUS, MALACCA, January 23.

Malacca fascinates me more and more daily. There is, among other things, a mediaevalism about it. The noise of the modern world reaches it only in the faintest echoes; its sleep is almost dreamless, its sensations seem to come out of books read in childhood. Thus, the splendid corpse of a royal tiger has been brought in in a bullock-cart, the driver claiming the reward of fifteen dollars, and its claws were given to me. It was trapped only six miles off, and its beautiful feline body had not had time to stiffen. Even when dead, with its fierce head and cruel paws hanging over the end of the cart, it was not an object to be disrespected. The same reward is offered for a rhinoceros, five dollars for a crocodile (alligator?) and five dollars for a boa-constrictor or python. Lately, at five in the morning, a black tiger (panther?) came down the principal street of Malacca, tore a Chinamen in pieces, and then, scared by a posse of police in pursuit, jumped through a window into a house. Every door in the city was barred, as the rumor spread like wildfire. The policemen very boldly entered the house, but the animal pinned the Malay corporal to the wall. The second policeman, a white man, alas! ran away. The third, a Malay, at the risk of his life, went close up to the tiger, shot him, and beat him over the head with the butt of his rifle, which made the beast let go the corporal and turn on him, but fortunately he had scarcely got hold of him when he fell dead. The corporal is just coming out of hospital, almost completely paralyzed, to be taken care of for the rest of his life, and the man who rescued him has got promotion and a pension. A short time ago a fine young tiger was brought alive to Captain Shaw, and he ordered a proper cage to be made, in which to send him to England, telling Babu, the "double Hadji," to put it into the "godown" in its bamboo cage; but the man put it into the kitchen, and in the morning the cage was found broken into pieces, the kitchen shutters torn down, and the tiger gone! There was a complete panic in Malacca; people kept their houses shut, and did not dare to go out even on business, and not only was the whole police force turned out in pursuit, but the English garrison. It was some days before the scare subsided and the people believed that the beast had escaped to its natural home in the jungle.

A tropical thunderstorm of the most violent kind occurred yesterday, when I was quite alone in the Stadthaus. The rain fell in sheets, deluges, streams, and the lightning flashed perfectly blue through a "darkness which could be felt." There is a sort of grandeur about this old Dutch Stadthaus, with its tale of two centuries. Its smooth lawns, sloping steeply to the sea, are now brilliant with the gaudy parrot-like blossoms of the "flame of the forest," the gorgeous Poinciana regia, with which they are studded. Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of Japan and the noisy hurry of China! Its endless afternoon remains unbroken except by the dreamy, colored, slow-moving Malay life which passes below the hill. There is never any hurry or noise.

So had I written without prescience! The night of the awful silence which succeeded the thunderstorm was also the eve of the Chinese New Year, and Captain Shaw gave permission for "fireworks" from 7 P.M. till midnight. The term "fireworks" received a most liberal construction. The noise was something awful, and as it came into the lonely Stadthaus, and red, blue, crimson, and greenish-yellow glares at short intervals lighted up the picturesque Malacca steam and its blue and yellow houses, with their steep red-tiled roofs and balconies and quaint projections, and the streets were traced in fire and smoke, while crackers, squibs, and rockets went off in hundreds, and cannon, petards, and gingalls were fired incessantly, and gongs, drums, and tom-toms were beaten, the sights, and the ceaseless, tremendous, universal din made a rehearsal of the final assault on a city in old days. At 1 A.M., every house being decorated and illuminated, the Chinese men began to make their New Year's calls, and at six the din began again. After breakfast the Governor drove out in state to visit the leading Chinese merchants, with whom he is on terms of the most cordial amity, and at each house was offered two dishes of cakes, twelve dishes of candied and preserved fruits, mandarin tea (the price of this luxury is from 25s. to 45s. a pound), and champagne from the finest Rhenish vineyards! At eleven all the Chinese children came forth in carriages shaped like boats, turned up at both ends, painted red and yellow, and with white-fringed canopies over them. These were drawn by servants, and in the case of the wealthy, a train of servants accompanied each carriage. It was a sight worthy of a fabled age. The wealth of the East in all its gorgeousness was poured out upon these dignified and solemn infants, who wore coronals of gold and diamonds, stuffs of cloth of gold brocade, and satin sewn with pearls, and whose cloth-of-gold shoes flashed with diamonds!

During the morning four children of a rich Chinese merchant, attended by a train of Chinese and Malay servants, came to see Mrs. Shaw. There were a boy and girl of five and six years old, and two younger children. A literal description of their appearance reads like fiction. The girl wore a yellow petticoat of treble satin (mandarin yellow) with broad box plaits in front and behind, exquisitely embroidered with flowers in shades of blue silk, with narrow box plaits between, with a trail of blue silk flowers on each. Over this there was a short robe of crimson brocaded silk, with a broad border of cream-white satin, with the same exquisite floral embroidery in shades of blue silk. Above this was a tippet of three rows of embroidered lozenge-shaped "tabs" of satin. The child wore a crown on her head, the basis of which was black velvet. At the top was an aigrette of diamonds of the purest water, the centre one as large as a sixpenny-piece. Solitaires flashing blue flames blazed all over the cap, and the front was ornamented with a dragon in fine filigree work in red Malay gold set with diamonds. I fear to be thought guilty of exaggeration when I write that this child wore seven necklaces, all of gorgeous beauty. The stones were all cut in facets at the back; and highly polished, and their beauty was enhanced by the good taste and skilful workmanship of the setting. The first necklace was of diamonds set as roses and crescents, some of them very large, and all of great brilliancy; the second of emeralds, a few of which were as large as acorns, but spoilt by being pierced; the third of pearls set whole; the fourth of hollow filigree beads in red, burned gold; the fifth of sapphires and diamonds; the sixth a number of finely worked chains of gold with a pendant of a gold filigree fish set with diamonds; the seventh, what they all wear, a massive gold chain, which looked heavy enough even by itself to weigh down the fragile little wearer, from which depended a gold shield, on which the Chinese characters forming the child's name were raised in rubies, with fishes and flowers in diamonds round it, and at the back a god in rubies similarly surrounded. Magnificent diamond earrings and heavy gold bracelets completed the display.

And all this weight of splendor, valued at the very least at $40,000, was carried by a frail human mite barely four feet high, with a powdered face, gentle, pensive expression, and quiet grace of manner, who came forward and most winsomely shook hands with us, as did all the other grave gentle mites. They were also loaded with gold and diamonds. Some sugar-plums fell on the floor, and as the eldest girl stooped to pick them up, diamond solitaires fell out of her hair, which were gathered up by her attendants as if they were used to such occurrences. Whenever she moved her diamonds flashed, scintillated, and gave forth their blue light. Then came the children of the richest Chinaman in Malacca, but the little gentle creatures were motherless, and mourning for a mother lasts three years, so they were dressed in plain blue and white, and as ornaments wore only very beautiful sapphires and diamonds set in silver.

Do not suppose that the Chinese New Year is a fixed, annual holiday lasting a day, as in Scotland, and to a minor extent in England. In Canton a month ago active preparations were being made for it, and in Japan nine weeks ago. It is a "movable feast," and is regulated by the date on which the new moon falls nearest to the day "when the sun reaches the 15 degrees of Aquarius," and occurs this year on January 21st. Everything becomes cheap before it, for shopkeepers are anxious to realize ready money at any loss, for it is imperative that all accounts be closed by the last day of the old year, on pain of a man being disgraced, losing all hope of getting credit, and of having his name written up on his door as a defaulter. It appears also that debts which are not settled by the New Year's Eve cannot thereafter be recovered, though it is lawful for a creditor who has vainly hunted a debtor throughout that last night to pursue him for the first hours after daybreak, provided he still carries a lantern!

The festival lasts a fortnight, and is a succession of feasts and theatrical entertainments, everybody's object being to cast care and work to the winds. Even the official seals of the mandarins are formally and with much rejoicing sealed up and laid aside for one month. On the 20th day of the 12th month houses and temples are thoroughly washed and cleaned, rich and poor decorate with cloth-of-gold, silk embroideries, artificial and real flowers, banners, scrolls, lucky characters, illuminated strips of paper, and bunches of gilt-paper flowers, and even the poorest coolie contrives to greet the festival with some natural blossom. There is no rest either by night or day, joss-sticks burn incessantly, and lamps before the ancestral tablets, gongs are beaten, gingalls fire incessantly, and great crackers like cartridges fastened together in rows are let off at intervals before every door to frighten away evil spirits; there are family banquets of wearisome length, feasts to the household gods, offerings in the temples, processions in the street by torch and lantern light, presents are given to the living, and offerings to the dead, the poor are feasted, and the general din is heightened by messengers perambulating the streets with gongs, calling them to the different banquets. When the fortnight of rejoicing is over its signs are removed, and after the outbreak of extravagant expenditure the Chinese return to their quiet, industrious habits and frugal ways.

Just as this brilliant display left the room, a figure in richer coloring of skin appeared—Babu, the head servant, in his beautiful Hadji dress. He wore white full trousers, drawn in tightly at the ankles over black shoes, but very little of these trousers showed below a long, fine, linen tunic of spotless white, with a girdle of orange silk. Over this was a short jacket of rich green silk, embroidered in front with green of the same color, and over all a pure white robe falling from the shoulders. The turban was a Mecca turban made of many yards of soft white silk, embroidered in white silk. It was difficult to believe that this gorgeous Mussulman, in the odor of double sanctity, with his scornful face and superb air, could so far demean himself as to wait on "dogs of infidels" at dinner, or appear in my room at the Stadthaus, with matutinal tea and bananas!

This magnificence heralded the Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman, the reigning prince of the native State of Sungei Ujong, his principal wife, and his favorite daughter, a girl of twelve. It has been decided that I am to go to Sungei Ujong, and that I am to be escorted by Mr. Hayward, the superintendent of police, but, unfortunately, I am to go up in the Datu Klana's absence, and one object of his visit was to express his regret. This prince has been faithful to British interests, and is on most friendly terms with the resident, Captain Murray, and the Governor of Malacca. During his visit Babu interpreted, but Miss Shaw, who understands Malay, said that, instead of interpreting faithfully, he was making enormous demands on my behalf! At all events, Syed Abdulrahman, with truly exaggerated Oriental politeness, presented me with the key of his house in the interior.

This prince is regarded by British officials as an enlightened ruler, though he is a rigid Mussulman. His dress looked remarkably plain beside that of the splendid Babu. He wore a Malay bandana handkerchief round his head, knotted into a peak, a rich brocade baju or short jacket, a dark Manilla sarong, trousers of Mandarin satin striped with red, a girdle clasp set with large diamonds, and sandals with jeweled cloth-of-gold straps. His wife, though elderly and decidedly plain looking, has a very pleasing expression. She wore a black veil over her head, and her kabaya, or upper garment, was fastened with three diamond clasps. The bright little daughter wore a green veil with gold stars upon it over her head, and ornaments of rich, red gold elaborately worked. The Datu Klana apologized for the extreme plainness of their dress by saying that they had only just arrived, and that they had called before changing their traveling clothes. When they departed the two ladies threw soft silk shawls over their heads, and held them so as to cover their faces except their eyes.

There are now sixty-seven thousand Malays in the British territory of Malacca, and the number is continually increased by fugitives from the system of debt-slavery which prevails in some of the adjacent States, and by immigration from the same States of Malays who prefer the security which British rule affords.

[The police force is Malay, and it seems as if the Malays had a special aptitude for this semi-military service, for they not only form the well-drilled protective forces of Malacca, Sungei Ujong, and Selangor, but that fine body of police in Ceylon of which Mr. George Campbell has so much reason to be proud. Otherwise very few of them enter British employment, greatly preferring the easy, independent life of their forest kampongs.]

The commercial decay of Malacca is a very interesting fact.* Formerly fifty merchantmen were frequently lying in its roads at one time. Here the Portuguese fleet lay which escorted Xavier from Goa, and who can say how many galleons freighted with the red gold of Ophir floated on these quiet waters! Now, Chinese junks, Malay prahus, a few Chinese steamers, steam-launches from the native States, and two steamers which call in passing, make up its trade. There is neither newspaper, banker, hotel, nor resident English merchant, The half-caste descendants of the Portuguese are, generally speaking, indolent, degraded with the degradation that is born of indolence, and proud. The Malays dream away their lives in the jungle, and the Chinese, who number twenty thousand, are really the ruling population. [*Linscholt, two hundred and seventy years ago, writes:—"This place is the market of all India, of China, and the Moluccas, and of other islands round about, from all which places, as well as from Banda, Java, Sumatra, Siam, Pegu, Bengal, Coromandil, and India, arrive ships which come and go incessantly charged with an infinity of merchandises."]

The former greatness of Malacca haunts one at all times. The romantic exploits of Albuquerque, who conquered it in 1511, apostrophized in the Lusiad—

"Not eastward far though fair Malacca lie, Her groves embosomed in the morning sky, Though with her amorous sons the valiant line Of Java's isle in battle rank combine, Though poisoned shafts their ponderous quivers store, Malacca's spicy groves and golden ore, Great Albuquerque, thy dauntless toils shall crown," live again, though my sober judgment is that Albuquerque and most of his Portuguese successors were little better than buccaneers.

I like better to think of Francis Xavier passing through the thoroughfares of what was then the greatest commercial city of the East, ringing his bell, with the solemn cry, "Pray for those who are in a state of mortal sin." For among the "Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics" who then thronged its busy streets, there were no worse livers than the roistering soldiers who had followed Albuquerque. Tradition among the present Portuguese residents says that coarse words and deeds disappeared from the thoroughfares under his holy influence, and that little altars were set up in public places, round which the children sang hymns to Jesus Christ, while the passers-by crossed themselves and bowed their heads reverently. Now, the cathedral which crowns the hill, roofless and ruinous, is only imposing from a distance, and a part of it is used for the storage of marine or lighthouse stores under our prosaic and irreverent rule. Xavier preached frequently in it and loved it well, yet the walls are overgrown with parasites, and the floor, under which many prelates and priests lie, is hideous with matted weeds, which are the haunt of snakes and lizards. Thus, in the city which was so dear to Xavier that he desired to return to it to die (and actually did die on his way thither), the only memento of him is the dishonored ruin of the splendid church in which his body was buried, with all the population of Malacca following it from the yellow strand up the grass-crowned hill, bearing tapers. This wretched ruin is a contrast to the splendid mausoleum at Goa, where his bones now lie, worthily guarded, in coffins of silver and gold.

If the Portuguese were little better than buccaneers, the Dutch, who drove them out, were little better than hucksters—mean, mercenary traders, without redeeming qualities; content to suck the blood of their provinces and give nothing in return. I should think that the colony is glad to be finally rid of them. The English took possession of it in 1795, but restored it to the Dutch in 1818, regaining it again by treaty in 1824, giving Bencoolen, in Sumatra, in exchange for it, stipulating at the same time that the Dutch were not to meddle with Malayan affairs, or have any settlement on the Malay Peninsula. The ruined cathedral of Notre Dame del Monte is a far more interesting object than the dull, bald, commonplace, flat-faced, prosaic, Dutch meeting-house, albeit the latter is in excellent repair. Even this Stadthaus, with its stately solitudes, smells of trade, and suggests corpulent burgomasters and prim burgomasters' wives in wooden hoops and stiff brocades. The influence of Holland has altogether vanished, as is fitting, for she cared only for nutmegs, sago, tapioca, tin and pepper.

The variety of races here produces a ludicrous effect sometimes. In the Stadthaus one never knows who is to appear—whether Malay, Portuguese, Chinaman, or Madrassee. Yesterday morning, at six, the Chinaman who usually "does" my room, glided in, murmuring something unintelligible, and on my not understanding him, brought in a Portuguese interpreter. At seven, came in the Madrassee, Babu, with a cluster of bananas, and after him, two Malays, in red sarongs, who brushed and dusted all my clothes as slowly as they could—men of four races in attendance before I was up in the morning! This Chinese attendant, besides being a common coolie in a brown cotton shirt over a brown cotton pair of trousers, is not a good specimen of his class, and is a great nuisance to me. My doors do not bolt properly, and he appears in the morning while I am in my holoku, writing, and slowly makes the bed and kills mosquitoes; then takes one gown after another from the rail, and stares at me till I point to the one I am going to wear, which he holds out in his hands; and though I point to the door, and say "Go!" with much emphasis, I never get rid of him, and have to glide from my holoku into my gown with a most unwilling dexterity.

Two days ago Captain Shaw declared that "pluck should have its reward," and that I should have facilities for going to Sungei Ujong. Yesterday, he asked me to take charge of his two treasured daughters. Then Babu said, "If young ladies go, me go," and we are to travel under the efficient protection of Mr. Hayward, the superintendent of police. This expedition excites great interest in the little Malacca world. This native State is regarded as "parts unknown;" the Governor has never visited it, and there are not wanting those who shake their heads and wonder that he should trust his girls in a region of tigers, crocodiles, rogue elephants and savages! The little steam-launch Moosmee (in reality by far the greatest risk of all) has been brought into the stream below the Stadthaus, ready for an early start to-morrow, and a runner has been sent to the Resident to prepare him for such an unusual incursion into his solitudes.

I. L. B.


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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER XI

SEMPANG POLICE STATION (At the junction of the Loboh-Chena, and Linggi rivers), Territory of the Datu Klana of Sungei Ujong, Malay Peninsula. January 24, 1 P.M. Mercury, 87 degrees.

We left Malacca at seven this morning in the small, unseaworthy, untrustworthy, unrigged steam-launch Moosmee, and after crawling for some hours at a speed of about five miles an hour along brown and yellow shores with a broad, dark belt of palms above them, we left the waveless, burning sea behind, and after a few miles of tortuous steaming through the mangrove swamps of the Linggi river, landed here to wait for sufficient water for the rest of our journey.

This is a promontory covered with cocoa-palms, bananas, and small jungle growths. On either side are small rivers densely bordered by mangrove swamps. The first sight of a real mangrove swamp is an event. This mangi-mangi of the Malays (the Rhizophera mangil of botanists) has no beauty. All along this coast within access of tidal waters there is a belt of it many miles in breadth, dense, impenetrable, from forty to fifty feet high, as nearly level as may be, and of a dark, dull green. At low water the mangroves are seen standing close packed along the shallow and muddy shores on cradles or erections of their own roots five or six feet high, but when these are covered at high tide they appear to be growing out of the water. They send down roots from their branches, and all too quickly cover a large space. Crabs and other shell-fish attach themselves to them, and aquatic birds haunt their slimy shades. They form huge breeding grounds for alligators and mosquitoes, and usually for malarial fevers, but from the latter the Peninsula is very free. The seeds germinate while still attached to the branch. A long root pierces the covering and grows rapidly downward from the heavy end of the fruit, which arrangement secures that when the fruit falls off the root shall at once become embedded in the mud. Nature has taken abundant trouble to insure the propagation of this tree, nearly worthless as timber. Strange to say, its fruit is sweet and eatable, and from its fermented juice wine can be made. The mangrove swamp is to me an evil mystery.

Behind, the jungle stretches out—who can say how far, for no European has ever penetrated it?—and out of it rise, jungle-covered, the Rumbow hills. The elephant, the rhinoceros, the royal tiger, the black panther, the boar, the leopard, and many other beasts roam in its tangled, twilight depths, but in this fierce heat they must be all asleep in their lairs. The Argus-pheasant too, one of the loveliest birds of a region whose islands are the home of the Bird of Paradise, haunts the shade, and the shade alone. In the jungle too, is the beautiful bantam fowl, the possible progenitor of all that useful race. The cobra, the python (?), the boa-constrictor, the viper, and at least fourteen other ophidians, are winding their loathsome and lissom forms through slimy jungle recesses; and large and small apes and monkeys, flying foxes, iguanas, lizards, peacocks, frogs, turtles, tortoises, alligators, besides tapirs, rarely seen, and the palandok or chevrotin, the hog deer, the spotted deer, and the sambre, may not be far off. I think that this part of the country, intersected by small, shallow, muddy rivers, running up through slimy mangrove swamps into a vast and impenetrable jungle, must be like many parts of Western Africa.

One cannot walk three hundred yards from this station, for there are no tracks. We are beyond the little territory of Malacca, but this bit of land was ceded to England after the "Malay disturbances" in 1875, and on it has been placed the Sempang police station, a four-roomed shelter, roofed with attap, a thatch made of the fronds of the nipah palm, supported on high posts—an idea perhaps borrowed from the mangrove—and reached by a ladder. In this four Malay policemen and a corporal have dwelt for three years to keep down piracy. "Piracy," by which these rivers were said to be infested, is a very ugly word, suggestive of ugly deeds, bloody attacks, black flags, and no quarter; but here it meant, in our use of the word at least, a particular mode of raising revenue, and no boat could go up or down the Linggi without paying black-mail to one or more river rajahs.

Our wretched little launch, moored to a cocoa-palm, flies a blue ensign, and the Malay policemen wear an imperial crown upon their caps, both representing somewhat touchingly in this equatorial jungle the might of the small island lying far off amidst the fogs of the northern seas, and in this instance at least not her might only, but the security and justice of her rule.

Two or three canoes hollowed out of tree trunks have gone up and down the river since we landed, each of the inward bound being paddled by four men, who ply their paddles facing forward, which always has an aboriginal look, those going down being propelled by single, square sails made of very coarse matting. It is very hot and silent. The only sounds are the rustle of the palm fronds and the sharp din of the cicada, abruptly ceasing at intervals. In this primitive police station the notices are in both Tamil and Arabic, but the reports are written in Arabic only. Soon after we sat down to drink fresh cocoa-nut milk, the great beverage of the country, a Malay bounded up the ladder and passed through us, with the most rapid and feline movements I have ever seen in a man. His large prominent eyes were fixed, tiger-like, on a rifle which hung on the wall, at which he darted, clutched it, and, with a feline leap, sprang through us again. I have heard much of amok running lately, and have even seen the two-pronged fork which was used for pinning a desperate amok runner to the wall, so that for a second I thought that this Malay was "running amuck;" but he ran down toward Mr. Hayward, our escort, and I ran after him, just in time to see a large alligator plunge from the bank into the water. Mr. Hayward took a steady aim at the remaining one, and hit him, when he sprang partly up as if badly wounded, and then plunged into the river after his companion, staining the muddy water with his blood for some distance.

Police Station, Permatang Pasir, Sungei Ujong, 5 P.M.—We are now in a native State, in the Territory of the friendly Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman, and the policemen wear on their caps not an imperial crown, but a crescent, with a star between its horns.

This is a far more adventurous expedition than we expected. Things are not going altogether as straight as could be desired, considering that we have the Governor's daughters with us, who, besides being very precious, are utterly unseasoned and inexperienced travelers, quite unfit for "roughing it." For one thing, it turns out to be an absolute necessity for us to be out all night, which I am very sorry for, as one of the girls is suffering from the effects of exposure to the intense heat of the sun.

We left Sempang at two, the Misses Shaw reeling rather than walking to the launch. I cannot imagine what the mercury was in the sun, but the copper sheathing of the gunwale was too hot to be touched. Above Sempang the river narrows and shoals rapidly, and we had to crawl, taking soundings incessantly, and occasionally dragging heavily over mud banks. We saw a large alligator sleeping in the sun on the mud, with a mouth, I should think, a third of the length of his body; and as he did not wake as we panted past him, a rifle was loaded and we backed up close to him; but Babu, who had the weapon, and had looked quite swaggering and belligerent so long as it was unloaded, was too frightened to fire; the saurian awoke, and his hideous form and corrugated hide plunged into the water, so close under the stern as to splash us. After this, alligators were so common, singly or in groups, or in families, that they ceased to be exciting. It is difficult for anything to produce continuous excitement under this fierce sun; and conversation, which had been flagging before noon, ceased altogether. It was awfully hot in the launch, between fire and boiler-heat and solar fury. I tried to keep cool by thinking of Mull, and powdery snow and frosty stars, but it would not do. It was a solemn afternoon, as the white, unwinking sun looked down upon our silent party, on the narrow turbid river, silent too, except for the occasional plunge of an alligator or other water monster—on mangrove swamps and nipah palms dense along the river side, on the blue gleam of countless kingfishers, on slimy creeks arched over to within a few feet of their surface by grand trees with festoon of lianas, on an infinite variety of foliage, on an abundance of slender-shafted palms, on great fruits brilliantly colored, on wonderful flowers on the trees, on the hoya carnosa and other waxen-leaved trailers matting the forest together and hanging down in great festoons, the fiery tropic sunblaze stimulating all this over-production into perennial activity, and vivifying the very mud itself.

Occasionally we passed a canoe with a "savage" crouching in it fishing, but saw no other trace of man, till an hour ago we came upon large cocoa groves, a considerable clearing in the jungle, and a very large Malayan-Chinese village with mosques, one on either side of the river, houses built on platforms over the water, large and small native boats covered and thatched with attap, roofed platforms on stilts answering the purpose of piers, bathing-houses on stilts carefully secluded, all forming the (relatively) important village of Permatang Pasir.

Up to this time we had expected to find perfectly smooth sailing, as a runner was sent from Malacca to the Resident yesterday. We supposed that we should be carried in chairs six miles through the jungle to a point where a gharrie could meet us, and that we should reach the Residency by nine tonight at the latest. On arriving at Sempang, Mr. Hayward had sent a canoe to this place with instructions to send another runner to the Resident; but

"The best laid schemes of men and mice gang aft aglee."

The messenger seemed to have served no other purpose than to assemble the whole male population of Permatang Pasir on the shore—a sombre-faced throng, with an aloofness of manner and expression far from pleasing. The thatched piers were crowded with turbaned Mussulmen in their bajus or short jackets, full white trousers, and red sarongs or plaitless kilts—the boys dressed in silver fig-leaves and silver bangles only. All looked at our unveiled faces silently, and, as I thought, disapprovingly.

After being hauled up the pier with great difficulty, owing to the lowness of the water, we were met by two of the Datu Klana's policemen, who threw cold water on the idea of our getting on at all unless Captain Murray sent for us. These men escorted us to this police station—a long walk through a lane of much decorated shops, exclusively Chinese, succeeded by a lane of detached Malay houses, each standing in its own fenced and neatly sanded compound under the shade of cocoa-palms and bananas. The village paths are carefully sanded and very clean. We emerged upon the neatly sanded open space on which this barrack stands, glad to obtain shelter, for the sun is still fierce. It is a genuine Malay house on stilts; but where there should be an approach of eight steps there is only a steep ladder of three round rungs, up which it is not easy to climb in boots! There is a deep veranda under an attap roof of steep slope, and at either end a low bed for a constable, with the usual very hard, circular Malay bolsters, with red silk ends, ornamented with gold and silk embroidery. Besides this veranda there is only a sort of inner room, with just space enough for a table and four chairs. The wall is hung with rifles, krises, and handcuffs, with which a "Sam Slick" clock, an engraving from the Graphic, and some curious Turkish pictures of Stamboul, are oddly mixed up. Babu, the Hadji, having recovered from a sulk into which he fell in consequence of Mr. Hayward having quizzed him for cowardice about an alligator, has made everything (our very limited everything) quite comfortable, and, with as imposing an air as if we were in Government House, asks us when we will have dinner! One policeman has brought us fresh cocoa-nut milk, another sits outside pulling a small punkah, and two more have mounted guard over us. This stilted house is the barrack of eleven Malay constables. Under it are four guns of light calibre, mounted on carriages, and outside is a gong on which the policemen beat the hours.

At the river we were told that the natives would not go up the shallow, rapid stream by night, and now the corporal says that no man will carry us through the jungle; that trees are lying across the track; that there are dangerous swamp holes; that though the tigers which infest the jungle never attack a party, we might chance to see their glaring eyeballs; that even if men could be bribed to undertake to carry us, they would fall with us, or put us down and run away, for no better reason than that they caught sight of the "spectre bird" (the owl); and he adds, with a gallantry remarkable in a Mohammedan, that he should not care about Mr. Hayward, "but it would not do for the ladies." So we are apparently stuck fast, the chief cause for anxiety and embarrassment being that the youngest Miss Shaw is lying huddled up and shivering on one of the beds, completely prostrated by a violent sick headache, brought on by the heat of the sun in the launch. She declares that she cannot move; but our experienced escort, who much fears bilious fever for her, is resolved that she shall as soon as any means of transit can be procured. Heretofore, I have always traveled "without encumbrance." Is it treasonable to feel at this moment that these fair girls are one?

I. L. B.

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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/429

Rh There rose no day, there rolled no hour

Of pleasure unembittered;

And not a trapping decked my Power

That galled not while it glittered.

III.

The serpent of the field, by art

And spells, is won from harming;

But that which coils around the heart,

Oh! who hath power of charming?

It will not list to Wisdom's lore,

Nor Music's voice can lure it;

But there it stings for evermore

The soul that must endure it. Seaham, 1815.

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

I.

coldness wraps this suffering clay,

Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?

It cannot die, it cannot stay,

But leaves its darkened dust behind.

Then, unembodied, doth it trace

By steps each planet's heavenly way?


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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/LETTER XII

BRITISH RESIDENCY, SERAMBANG, SUNGEI UJONG, January 26.

By the date of my letter you will see that our difficulties have been surmounted. I continue my narrative in a temperature which, in my room—shaded though it is—has reached 87 degrees. After hearing many pros and cons, and longing much for the freedom of a solitary traveler, I went out and visited the tomb of a famous Hadji, "a great prophet," the policeman said, who was slain in ascending the Linggi. It is a raised mound, like our churchyard graves, with a post at each end, and a jar of oil upon it, and is surrounded by a lattice of reeds on which curtains are hanging, the whole being covered with a thatched roof supported on posts.

The village looks prosperous, and the Chinaman as much at home as in China,—striving, thriving, and oblivious of everything but his own interests, the sole agent in the development of the resources of the country, well satisfied with our, or any rule, under which his gains are quick and safe.

There are village officers, or headmen, Pangulus, in all villages, and every hamlet of more than forty houses has its mosque and religious officials, though Mohammedanism does not recognize the need of a priesthood. If one see a man, with the upper part of his body unclothed, paddling a log canoe, face forward, one is apt to call him a savage, specially if he be dark-skinned; but the Malays would be much offended if they were called savages, and, indeed, they are not so. They have an elaborate civilization, etiquette, and laws of their own; are the most rigid of monotheists, are decently clothed, build secluded and tolerably comfortable houses, and lead domestic lives after their fashion, especially where they are too poor to be polygamists, though I am of opinion that the peculiar form of domesticity which we still cultivate to some extent in England, and which is largely connected with the fireside, cannot exist in a tropical country. After the obtrusive nudity and promiscuous bathing of the Japanese, there is something specially pleasing in the little secluded bathing sheds by the Malay rivers, used by one person at a time, who throws a sarong on the thatch to show that the shed is occupied.

Babu made some excellent soup, which, together with curry made with fresh cocoa-nut, was a satisfactory meal, and though only in a simple, white, Indian costume, he waited as grandly as at Malacca. Mr. Hayward's knowledge of the peculiarities of the Malay character, at last obtained our release from what was truly "durance vile." He sent for a boatman apart from his fellows, and induced him to make a bargain for taking us up the river at night; but the man soon returned in a state of great excitement, complaining that the villagers had set on him, and were resolved that we should not go up, upon which the police went down and interfered. Even after everything was settled, Miss Shaw was feeling so ill that she wanted to stay in the police station all night, at least; but Mr. Hayward and I, who consulted assiduously about her, were of opinion that we must move her, even if we had to carry her, for if she were going to have fever, I could nurse her at Captain Murray's, but certainly not in the veranda of a police station!

This worthy man, who is very brave, and used to facing danger—who was the first European to come up here, who acted as guide to the troops during the war, and afterward disarmed the population—positively quailed at having charge of these two fragile girls. "Oh," he repeated several times, "if anything were to happen to the Misses Shaw I should never get over it, and they don't know what roughing it is; they never should have been allowed to come." So I thought, too, as I looked at one of them lying limp and helpless on a Malay bed; but my share of the responsibility for them was comparatively limited. Doubtless his thoughts strayed, as mine did, to the days of traveling "without encumbrance." There was another encumbrance of a literal kind. They had a trunk! This indispensable impediment had been left at Malacca in the morning, and arrived in a four-paddled canoe just as we were about to start!

Mr. Hayward prescribed two tablespoonfuls of whisky for Miss Shaw, for it is somewhat of a risk to sleep out in the jungle at the rainy season, for the miasma rises twenty feet, and the day had been exceptionally hot. Our rather dismal procession started at seven, Mr. Hayward leading the way, carrying a torch made of strips of palm branches bound tightly together and dipped in gum dammar, a most inflammable resin; then a policeman; the sick girl, moaning and stumbling, leaning heavily on her sister and me; Babu, who had grown very plucky; a train of policemen carrying our baggage; and lastly, several torch-bearers, the torches dripping fire as we slowly and speechlessly passed along. It looked like a funeral or something uncanny. We crawled dismally for fully three-quarters of a mile to cut off some considerable windings of the river, crossed a stream on a plank bridge, and found our boat lying at a very high pier with a thatched roof.

The mystery of night in a strange place was wildly picturesque; the pale, greenish, undulating light of fireflies, and the broad, red waving glare of torches flashing fitfully on the skeleton pier, the lofty jungle trees, the dark, fast-flowing river, and the dark, lithe forms of our half-naked boatmen.

The prahu was a flattish-bottomed boat about twenty-two and a half feet long by six and a half feet broad, with a bamboo gridiron flooring resting on the gunwale for the greater part of its length. This was covered for seven feet in the middle by a low, circular roof, thatched with attap. It was steered by a broad paddle loosely lashed, and poled by three men who, standing at the bow, planted their poles firmly in the mud and then walked half-way down the boat and back again. All craft must ascend the Linggi by this laborious process, for its current is so strong that the Japanese would call it one long "rapid." Descending loaded with tin, the stream brings boats down with great rapidity, the poles being used only to keep them off the banks and shallows. Our boat was essentially "native."

The "Golden Chersonese" is very hot, and much infested by things which bite and sting. Though the mercury has not been lower than 80 degrees at night since I reached Singapore, I have never felt the heat overpowering in a house; but the night on the river was awful, and after the intolerable blaze of the day the fighting with the heat and mosquitoes was most exhausting, crowded as we were into very close and uneasy quarters, a bamboo gridiron being by no means a bed of down. Bad as it was, I was often amused by the thought of the unusual feast which the jungle mosquitoes were having on the blood of four white people. If it had not been for the fire in the bow, which helped to keep them down by smoking them (and us), I at least should now be laid up with "mosquito fever."

The Misses Shaw and I were on a blanket on the gridiron under the roof, which just allowed of sitting up; Mr. Hayward, who had never been up the river before, and was anxious about the navigation, sat, vigilant and lynx-eyed, at the edge of it; Babu, who had wrapped himself in Oriental impassiveness and a bernouse, and Mr. Hayward's police attendant sat in front, all keeping their positions throughout the night as dutifully as the figures in a tableau vivant, and so we silently left Permatang Pasir for our jungle voyage of eighteen hours, in which time, by unintermitting hard work, we were propelled about as many miles, though some say twenty-nine.

No description could exaggerate the tortuosity of the Linggi or the abruptness of its windings. The boatmen measure the distance by turns. When they were asked when we should reach the end they never said in so many hours, but in so many turns.

Silently we glided away from the torchlight into the apparently impenetrable darkness, but the heavens, of which we saw a patch now and then, were ablaze with stars, and ere long the forms of trees above and around us became tolerably distinct. Ten hours of darkness followed as we poled our slow and tedious way through the forest gloom, with trees to right of us, trees to left of us, trees before us, trees behind us, trees above us, and, I may write, trees under us, so innumerable were the snags and tree trunks in the river. The night was very still,—not a leaf moved, and at times the silence was very solemn. I expected, indeed, an unbroken silence, but there were noises that I shall never forget. Several times there was a long shrill cry, much like the Australian "Coo-ee," answered from a distance in a tone almost human. This was the note of the grand night bird, the Argus pheasant, and is said to resemble the cry of the "orang-outang," the Jakkuns, or the wild men of the interior. A sound like the constant blowing of a steam-whistle in the distance was said to be produced by a large monkey. Yells, hoarse or shrill, and roars more or less guttural, were significant of any of the wild beasts with which the forest abounds, and recalled the verse in Psalm civ., "Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move." Then there were cries as of fierce gambols, or of pursuit and capture, of hunter and victim; and at times, in the midst of profound stillness, came huge plungings, with accompanying splashings, which I thought were made by alligators, but which Captain Murray thinks were more likely the riot of elephants disturbed while drinking. There were hundreds of mysterious and unfamiliar sounds great and small, significant of the unknown beast, reptile, and insect world which the jungle hides, and then silences.

Sheet lightning, very blue, revealed at intervals the strong stream swirling past under a canopy of trees falling and erect, with straight stems one hundred and fifty feet high probably, surmounted by crowns of drooping branches; palms with their graceful plumage; lianas hanging, looping, twisting—their orange fruitage hanging over our heads; great black snags; the lithe, wiry forms of our boat-men always straining to their utmost; and the motionless white turban of the Hadji,—all for a second relieved against the broad blue flame, to be again lost in darkness.

The Linggi above Permatang Pasir, with its sharp turns and muddy hurry, is, I should say, from thirty to sixty feet wide, a mere pathway through the jungle. Do not think of a jungle, as I used to think of it, as an entanglement or thicket of profuse and matted scrub, for it is in these regions at least a noble forest of majestic trees, many of them supported at their roots by three buttresses, behind which thirty men could find shelter. On many of the top branches of these, other trees have taken root from seeds deposited by birds, and have attained considerable size; and all send down, as it appears, extraordinary cylindrical strands from two to six inches in diameter, and often one hundred and fifty feet in length, smooth and straight until they root themselves, looking like the guys of a mast. Under these giants stand the lesser trees grouped in glorious confusion,—cocoa, sago, areca, and gomuti palms, nipah and nibong palms, tree ferns fifteen and twenty feet high, the bread-fruit, the ebony, the damar, the india rubber, the gutta-percha, the cajeput, the banyan, the upas, the bombax or cotton tree, and hosts of others, many of which bear brilliant flowers, but have not yet been botanized; and I can only give such barbarous names as chumpaka, Kamooning, marbow, seum, dadap; and, loveliest of all, the waringhan, a species of ficus, graceful as a birch; and underneath these again great ferns, ground orchids, and flowering shrubs of heavy, delicious odor, are interlocked and interwoven. Oh that you could see it all! It is wonderful; no words could describe it, far less mine. Mr. Darwin says so truly that a visit to the tropics (and such tropics) is like a visit to a new planet. This new wonder-world, so enchanting, tantalizing, intoxicating, makes me despair, for I cannot make you see what I am seeing! Amidst all this wealth of nature and in this perennial summer heat I quite fail to realize that it is January, and that with you the withered plants are shriveling in the frost-bound earth, and that leafless twigs and the needles of half-starved pines are shivering under the stars in the aurora-lighted winter nights.

But to the jungle again, The great bamboo towers up along the river sides in its feathery grace, and behind it the much prized Malacca cane, the rattan, creeping along the ground or climbing trees and knotting them together, with its tough strands, from a hundred to twelve hundred feet in length, matted and matting together while ferns, selaginellas, and lycopodiums struggle for space in which to show their fragile beauty, along with hardier foliaceous plants, brown and crimson, green and crimson, and crimson flecked with gold; and the great and lesser trees alike are loaded with trailers, ferns, and orchids, among which huge masses of the elk-horn fern and the shining five-foot fronds of the Asplenium Nidus are everywhere conspicuous.

Not only do orchids crowd the branches, and the hoya carnosa, the yam, the blue-blossomed Thunbergia, the vanilla (?), and other beautiful creepers, conceal the stems, while nearly every parasitic growth carries another parasite, but one sees here a filament carelessly dangling from a branch sustaining some bright-hued epiphyte of quaint mocking form; then a branch as thick as a clipper's main-mast reaches across the river, supporting a festooned trailer, from whose stalks hang, almost invisibly suspended, oval fruits, almost vermilion colored; then again the beautiful vanilla and the hoya carnosa vie with each other in wreathing the same tree; or an audacious liana, with great clusters of orange or scarlet blossoms, takes possession of several trees at once, lighting up the dark greenery with its flaming splotches; or an aspiring trailer, dexterously linking its feebleness to the strength of other plants, leaps across the river from tree to tree at a height of a hundred feet, and, as though in mockery, sends down a profusion of crimson festoons far out of reach. But it is as useless to attempt to catalogue as to describe. To realize an equatorial jungle one must see it in all its wonderment of activity and stillness—the heated, steamy stillness through which one fancies that no breeze ever whispers, with its colossal flowering trees, its green twilight, its inextricable involvement, its butterflies and moths, its brilliant but harsh voiced birds, its lizards and flying foxes, its infinite variety of monkeys, sitting, hanging by hands or tails, leaping, grimacing, jabbering, pelting each other with fruits; and its loathsome saurians, lying in wait on slimy banks under the mangroves. All this and far more the dawn revealed upon the Linggi river; but strange to say, through all the tropic splendor of the morning, I saw a vision of the Trientalis Europea, as we saw it first on a mossy hillside in Glen Cannich!

But I am forgetting that the night with its blackness and mystery came before the sunrise, that the stars seldom looked through the dense leafage, and that the pale green lamps of a luminous fungus here and there, and the cold blue sheet-lightning only served to intensify the solemnity of the gloom. While the blackest part of the night lasted the "view" was usually made up of the black river under the foliage, with scarcely ten yards of its course free from obstruction—great snags all along it sticking up menacingly, trees lying half or quite across it, with barely room to pass under them, or sometimes under water, when the boat "drave heavily" over them, while great branches brushed and ripped the thatch continually; and as one obstacle was safely passed, the rapidity of the current invariably canted us close on another, but the vigilant skill of the boatmen averted the slightest accident. "Jaga! Jaga!"—caution! caution!—was the constant cry. The most unpleasant sensations were produced by the constant ripping and tearing sounds as we passed under the low tunnel of vegetation, and by the perpetual bumping against timber.

The Misses Shaw passed an uneasy night. The whisky had cured the younger one of her severe sick headache, and she was the prey of many terrors. They thought that the boat would be ripped up; that the roof would be taken off; that a tree would fall and crush us; that the boatmen, when they fell overboard, as they often did, would be eaten by alligators; that they would see glaring eyeballs whenever the cry "Rimou!"—a tiger!—was raised from the bow; and they continually awoke me with news of something that was happening or about to happen, and were drolly indignant because they could not sleep; while I, a blasee old campaigner, slept whenever they would let me. Day broke in a heavy mist, which disappeared magically at sunrise. As the great sun wheeled rapidly above the horizon and blazed upon us with merciless fierceness, all at once the jungle became vociferous. Loudly clattered the busy cicada, its simultaneous din, like a concentration of the noise of all the looms in the world, suddenly breaking off into a simultaneous silence; the noisy insect world chirped, cheeped, buzzed, whistled; birds hallooed, hooted, whooped, screeched; apes in a loud and not inharmonious chorus greeted the sun; and monkeys chattered, yelled, hooted, quarreled, and spluttered. The noise was tremendous. But the forest was absolutely still, except when some heavy fruit, over ripe, fell into the river with a splash. The trees above us were literally alive with monkeys, and the curiosity of some of them about us was so great that they came down on "monkey ropes" and branches for the fun of touching the roof of the boat with their hands while they hung by their tails. They were all full of frolic and mischief.

Then we had a slim repast of soda water and bananas, the Hadji worshiped with his face toward Mecca, and the boatmen prepared an elaborate curry for themselves, with salt fish for its basis, and for its tastiest condiment blachang—a Malay preparation much relished by European lovers of durion and decomposed cheese. It is made by trampling a mass of putrefying prawns and shrimps into a paste with bare feet. This is seasoned with salt. The smell is penetrating and lingering. Our men made the boat fast, rinsed their mouths, washed their hands, and ate, using their fingers instead of chopsticks. Poor fellows! they had done twelve hours of splendid work.

Then one of them prepared the betel-nut for the rest. I think I have not yet alluded to this abominable practice of betel-nut chewing, which is universal among the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula; the betel-nut being as essential to a Malay as tobacco is to a Japanese, or opium to the confirmed Chinese opium-smoker. It is a revolting habit, and if a person speaks to you while he is chewing his "quid" of betel, his mouth looks as if it were full of blood. People say that the craving for stimulants is created by our raw, damp climate; but it is as strong here, at the equator, in this sunny, balmy air. I have not yet come across a region in which men, weary in body or spirit, are not seeking to stimulate or stupefy themselves. The Malay men and women being prohibited by the Koran from using alcohol, find the needed fillip in this nut, but it needs preparation before it suits their palates.

The betel-nut is the fruit of the lovely, graceful, slender-shafted areca palm. This tree at six years old begins to bear about one hundred nuts a year, which grow in clusters, each nut being about the size of a nutmeg, and covered with a yellow, fibrous husk. The requisites for chewing are: a small piece of areca nut, a leaf of the Sirih or betel pepper, a little moistened lime, and, if you wish to be very luxurious, a paste made of spices. The Sirih leaf was smeared with a little fine lime taken from a brass box; on this was laid a little, brownish paste; on this, a bit of the nut; the leaf was then folded neatly round its contents, and the men began to chew, and to spit—the inevitable consequence. The practice stains the teeth black. I tasted the nut, and found it pungent and astringent, not tempting. The Malays think you look like a beast if you have white teeth.

The heat was exhausting; the mercury 87 degrees in the shade as early as 8:30, and we all suffered, more or less, from it in our cramped position and enforced inactivity. At nine, having been fourteen hours on the river, we came on a small cleared space, from which a bronzed, frank-faced man, dressed in white linen, hallooed to us jovially, and we were soon warmly greeted by Captain Murray, the British Resident in the State of Sungei Ujong. On seeing him, we hoped to find a gharrie and to get some breakfast; and he helped us on shore, as if our hopes were to be realized, and dragged us under the broiling sun to a long shed, the quarters of a hundred Chinese coolies, who are making a road through the jungle. We sat down on one of the long matted platforms, which serve them for beds, and talked; but there was no hint of breakfast; and we soon learned that the Malacca runner had not reached the Residency at all, and that the note sent from Permatang Pasir, which should have been delivered at 1 A.M., had not been received till 8 A.M., so that Captain Murray had not been able to arrange for our transport, and had had barely time to ride down to meet us at such "full speed," as a swampy and partially made road would allow. So our dreams of breakfast ended in cups of stewed tea, given to us by a half-naked Chinaman, and, to our chagrin, we had to go back to the boat and be poled up the shallowing and narrowing river for four hours more, getting on with difficulty, the boat-men constantly jumping into the water to heave the boat off mud banks.

When we eventually landed at Nioto, a small village, Captain Murray again met us, and we found a road; and two antiquated buggies, sent by a Chinaman, with their component parts much lashed together with rope. I charioteered one of these, with reins so short that I could only reach them by sitting on the edge of the seat, and a whip so short that I could not reach the pony with it. At a Chinese village some policemen brought us cocoa-nut milk. After that, the pony could not, or would not, go; and the Malay syce with difficulty got it along by dragging it, and we had to walk up every hill in the fierce heat of a tropic noon. At the large Chinese village of Rassa, a clever little Sumatra pony met us; and after passing through some roughish clearings, on which tapioca is being planted, we arrived here at 4 P.M., having traveled sixty miles in thirty-three hours.

The Residency is on a steepish hill in the middle of an open valley, partially cleared and much defaced by tin diggings. The Chinese town of Serambang lies at the foot of the hill. The valley is nearly surrounded by richly wooded hills, some of them fully three thousand feet high. These, which stretch away to the northern State of Selangor, are bathed in indigo and cobalt, slashed with white here and there, where cool streams dash over forest-shaded ledges. The house consists of two attap roofed bungalows, united by their upper verandas. Below there are a garden of acclimatization and a lawn, on which the Resident instructs the bright little daughter of the Datu Klana in lawn tennis. It was very hot, but the afternoon airs were strong enough to lift the British ensign out of its heavy folds and to rustle the graceful fronds of the areca palms.

Food was the first necessity, then baths, then sleep, then dinner at 7:30, and then ten hours more sleep.

I. L. B.


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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither/A CHAPTER ON SUNGEI UJONG

I had never heard of this little State until I reached Singapore, and probably many people are as ignorant as I was. The whole peninsula, from Johore in the south to Kedah in the north, is a puzzle, what with British colonies, Singapore, Malacca, and Province Wellesley, and "Protected States," Sungei Ujong, Selangor, and Perak, north, south, and east of which lie a region of unprotected Malay States, with their independent rulers, such as Kedah, Patani, Tringganu, Kelantan, Pahang, Johore, etc.* In several of these States, more or less anarchy prevails, owing to the ambitions and jealousies of the Rajahs and their followers, and a similar state of things in the three protected States formerly gave great annoyance to the Straits-Settlements Government, and was regarded as a hindrance to the dominant interests of British trade in the Straits. [*A number of small States are united into a sort of confederation known as the Negri Sembilan, or Nine States. Their relative positions and internal management, as well as their boundaries, remain unknown, as from dread of British annexation they have refused to allow Europeans to pass through their territory.]

In 1874, Sir A. Clark, the then Governor, acting in British interests, placed British residents in Perak, Selangor, and the small State of Sungei Ujong. These residents were to advise the rulers in matters of revenue and general administration, but, it may be believed, that as time has passed, they have become more or less the actual rulers of the States which they profess to advise merely. They are the accredited agents of England, reporting annually to the Straits Government, which, in its turn, reports to the Colonial Office, and the amount of pressure which they can bring to bear is overwhelming.

It is not easy to give the extent and boundaries of Sungei Ujong, the "boundary question" being scarcely settled, and the territory to the eastward being only partially explored. It is mainly an inland State, access to its very limited seaboard being by the Linggi river. The "protected" State of Selangor bounds it on the north, and joining on to it and to each other on the east, are the small "independent" States of Rumbow, Johol, Moar, Sri Menanti, Jelabu, Jompol, and Jelai. The Linggi river, which in its lower part forms the boundary between Selangor and Malacca, forks in its upper part, the right branch becoming for some distance the boundary between Sungei Ujong and Rumbow. It is doubtful whether the area of the State exceeds seven hundred square miles.

The Malays of Sungei Ujong and several of the adjacent States are supposed to be tolerably directly descended from those of the parent empire Menangkabau in Sumatra, who conquered and have to a great extent displaced the tribes known as Jakuns, Orang Bukit, Rayet Utan, Samangs, Besisik, Rayet Laut, etc., the remnants of which live mainly in the jungles of the interior, are everywhere apart from the Malays, and are of a much lower grade in the scale of civilization. The story current among the best informed Malays of this region is that a Sumatran chief with a large retinue crossed to Malacca in the twelfth century, and went into the interior, which he found inhabited only by the Jakuns, or "tree people." There his followers married Jakun women, and their descendants spread over Sungei Ujong, Rumbow, and other parts, the Rayet Laut, or "sea-people," the supposed Ichthyophagi of the ancients, and the Rayet Utan, or "forest-people," betaking themselves to the woods and the sea-board hills.

This mixed race rapidly increasing, divided into nine petty States, under chiefs who rendered feudal service to the Sultans of Malacca before its conquest by the Portuguese, and afterward to the Sultan of Johore, at whose court they presented themselves once a year. This confederation, called the Negri Sembilan, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made various commercial treaties with the Dutch, but its domestic affairs were in a state of chronic feud, and four of the States, late in the eighteenth century, becoming disgusted with the arbitrary proceedings of a ruler who, aided by Dutch influence, had gained the ascendency over the whole nine, sent to Sumatra, the original source of government, for a prince of the blood-royal of Menangkabau, and after a prolonged conflict this prince became sovereign of the little States of Sungei Ujong, Rumbow, Johol, and Sri Menanti, the chiefs of these States constituting his Council of State. This dynasty came to an end in 1832, and intrigues and discord prevailed for many years, till the Datu Klana of Sungei Ujong, troubled by a hostile neighbor in Rumbow and a hostile subject or rival at home, conceived the bright idea of supporting his somewhat shaky throne by British protection.

After some curious negotiations, he succeeded in obtaining both a Resident and the English flag to protect his little fortunes; but it is obvious that his calling in foreign intervention was not likely to make him popular with his independent neighbors or disaffected subjects, and the troubles culminated in a "little war," in which the attacking force was composed of a few English soldiers, Malay military police, and a body of about eighty so-called Arabs, enlisted in Singapore and taken to the scene of action by Mr. Fontaine. The "enemy" was seldom obvious, but during the war it inflicted a loss upon us of eight killed and twenty-three wounded. We took various stockades, shot from sixty to eighty Malays, burned a good deal of what was combustible, and gave stability to the shaky rule of the Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman. Of this prince, who owed his firm seat on the throne to British intervention, the Resident wrote in 1880:—"Loyal to his engagements, he had gained the good will of the British Government. Straightforward, honest, and truly charitable, he had gained the love and respect of almost everyone in Sungei Ujong, Chinese as well as Malay, and if he had a fault he erred on the side of a weak belief in the goodness of human nature, and often suffered in consequence." This was Captain Murray's verdict after nearly five years' experience.

The population of this tiny State, which in 1832 consisted of three thousand two hundred Malays and four hundred Chinese, at the time of my visit had risen to twelve thousand, composed of three Europeans, a few Klings, two thousand Malays, and ten thousand Chinese. It exports tin in large quantities, gutta-percha collected in the interior by the aborigines, coffee, which promises to become an important production, buffalo hides, gum dammar, and gharroo. In 1879 the exports amounted to 81,976 pounds; 81,451 pounds being the value of tin. Its imports are little more than half this amount. Rice heads the list with an import of 18,150 pounds worth, and opium comes next, valued at 14,448 pounds. The third import in value is oil; the next Chinese tobacco, the next sugar, the next salt fish, and the next pigs! The Chinese, of course, consume most of what is imported, being in a majority of five to one, and here as elsewhere they carry with them their rigid conservatism in dress, mode of living, food, and amusements, and have a well-organized and independent system of communication with China. It is the Chinese merchant, not the British, who benefits by the rapidly augmenting Chinese population. Thus in the import list the Chinese tobacco, pigs, lard, onions, beans, vermicelli, salted vegetables, tea, crackers, joss-sticks, matches, Chinese candles, Chinese clothing, Chinese umbrellas, and several other small items, are all imported from China.

Having been debited with a debt of 10,000 pounds for war expenses, to be paid off by installments, the finances were much hampered, and the execution of road-making and other useful work has been delayed. This war debt, heavy as it was, was exclusive of 6,000 pounds previously paid off, and of heavy disbursements made to supply food and forage for the British soldiers who were quartered in Sungei Ujong for a considerable time. Apart from this harassing debt, the expenses are pre-eminently for "establishments," the construction of roads and bridges, and pensions to Rajahs whose former sources of revenue have been interfered with or abolished. The sources of revenue are to some extent remarkable, and it is possible that some of them might be altogether abolished if public attention became focussed upon them. Export duties are levied only on tin, the great product of Sungei Ujong, and gutta-percha. The chief import duty is on opium, and in 1879 this produced 4,182 pounds, or about one-fourth of the whole revenue. Besides this fruitful and growing source of income, 3,074 pounds was raised in 1879 under the head "Farms;" a most innocuous designation of a system which has nothing to do with the "kindly fruits of the earth" at all, but with spirits, gambling, oil, salt, opium, and a lottery! In other words, the "farms" are so many monopolies, sold at intervals to the highest bidder, the "gambling farm" being the most lucrative of the lot to the Government, and of course to the "farmer"!

The prison expenses are happily small, and the hospital expenses also, owing mainly in the former case to the efforts of the "Capitans China," who are responsible for their countrymen, and in the latter to the extreme healthiness of the climate. The military police force now consists of a European superintendent, ninety-four constables, paid 45s. per month, and twelve officers, all Malays; but as it is Malay nature to desire a change, and it is found impossible to retain the men for any lengthened periods, it is proposed to employ Sikhs, as in Perak.

Sungei Ujong, like the other States of the Peninsula, is almost entirely covered with forests, now being cleared to some extent by tapioca, gambier, and coffee-planters. Its jungles are magnificent, its hill scenery very beautiful, and its climate singularly healthy. Pepper, coffee, tapioca, cinchona, and ipecacuanha, are being tried successfully; burnt earth, of which the natives have a great opinion, and leaf mould being used in the absence of other manure.

The rainfall is supposed to average 100 inches a year, and since thermometrical observations have been taken the mercury has varied from 68 degrees to 92 degrees. From the mangrove swamps at the mouths of turbid, sluggish rivers, where numberless alligators dwell in congenial slime, the State gradually rises inland, passing through all the imaginable wealth of tropical vegetation and produce till it becomes hilly, if not mountainous. Sparkling streams dash through limestone fissures, the air is clear, and the nights are fresh and cool. Its mineral wealth lies in its tin mines, which have been worked mainly by Chinamen for a great number of years.

The British Resident, who was called in to act as adviser, is practically the ruler of this little State, and the arrangement seems to give tolerable satisfaction. At all events it has secured to Sungei Ujong since the war an amount of internal tranquillity which is not possessed by the adjacent States which are still under native rule, though probably the dread of British intervention and of being reduced to mere nominal sovereignty, being "pensioned off" in fact, keeps the Rajahs from indulging in the feuds and exactions of former years. Since my visit the Datu Klana died of dysentery near Jeddah in Arabia in returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, and three out of six of his followers perished of the same disease. The succession was quietly arranged, but the hope that the State to which its late ruler was intensely, even patriotically attached might remain prosperous under the new Rajah, has not been altogether fulfilled. Affairs are certainly not as satisfactory as they were, judging from recent official statements. The import of opium has largely increased. Rice planting had failed owing to the mortality and sickness among the buffaloes used in ploughing, the scanty crop was nearly destroyed by rats, and the Malays had shown a "determined opposition" to taking out titles to their lands.

The new Datu Klana is very unpopular, and so remarkably weak in character as not to be able to bring any influence to bear upon the settlement of any difficult question. The Datu Bandar (alluded to in my letter) is entirely opposed to progress of every kind, and, having a great deal of influence, obstructs the present Resident in every attempt to come to an understanding on the land grant question. A virulent cattle disease had put an end for the time being to cart traffic; and the Linggi, the great high-road to the tin mines, had become so shallow that the means of water transport were very limited. Large numbers of jungle workers had returned to Malacca. The Resident's report shows very significantly the formidable difficulties which attend on the system of a "Dual Control," and on making any interference with "Malay custom" regarding land, etc. It is scarcely likely, however, that Sungei Ujong and the other feeble protected States which have felt the might of British arms, and are paying dearly through long years for their feeble efforts at independence, will ever seek to shake off the present system, which, on the whole, gives them security and justice.


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text:
Author:James Ellsworth De Kay

Works

 * Zoology of New York, in six volumes (1842–1844).

title: Author:James Ellsworth De Kay


text:
Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/430

396 Or fill at once the realms of space,

A thing of eyes, that all survey?

II.

Eternal—boundless,—undecayed,

A thought unseen, but seeing all,

All, all in earth, or skies displayed,

Shall it survey, shall it recall:

Each fainter trace that Memory holds

So darkly of departed years,

In one broad glance the Soul beholds,

And all, that was, at once appears.

III.

Before Creation peopled earth,

Its eye shall roll through chaos back;

And where the farthest heaven had birth,

The Spirit trace its rising track.

And where the future mars or makes,

Its glance dilate o'er all to be,

While Sun is quenched—or System breaks,

Fixed in its own Eternity.

IV.

Above or Love—Hope—Hate—or Fear,

It lives all passionless and pure:

An age shall fleet like earthly year;

Its years as moments shall endure.

Away—away—without a wing,

O'er all—through all—its thought shall fly,

A nameless and eternal thing,

Forgetting what it was to die. Seaham, 1815.


text:
1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rennenkampf, Paul

RENNENKAMPF, PAUL (1854-1918), Russian general, was born in 1854 and entered the army in 1873. On passing out of the Academy of the General Staff in 1882, he was appointed to the General Staff. From 1895 to 1899 he commanded a regiment and in 1900 he was promoted to the rank of general. In the war with China in 1900 he distinguished himself by his resolute action when commanding a column in Manchuria. In the war with Japan 1904-5 he commanded first a Cossack division, and later large forces of all arms, and again won distinction by his energy. From 1905 to 1913 he was a corps

commander and in 1913 he was appointed to command the troops of the Vilna Military District. At the beginning of military operations in Aug. 1914 he commanded the I. Army which invaded Eastern Prussia. His inaction during the battle of Tannenberg, where the neighbouring army of Samsonov was destroyed Aug. 26-29, was a bitter disappointment, and, by the masses of the people, he was even accused of treachery. Personally brave, daring in small actions, Rennenkampf, as an army commander, showed himself in the strategic sphere alternately rash and timid, owing to his inability to grasp the situation as a whole. At the beginning of 1915 he was recalled from his duties of army commander, and later, under the pressure of public indignation, he was dismissed from the service. In 1918 he was killed by the Bolsheviks.


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Renner, Karl

RENNER, KARL (1870-), Austrian politician, was born on Dec. 14 1870, the son of a peasant, at Unter-Tannowitz, Moravia. He studied law at the university of Vienna, occupying himself especially with questions of administration, and early attached himself to the Social Democratic party. He became an official in the library of the Reichsrat, and under the pseudonyms of “Synopticus” and “Rudolf Springer” showed a fertile literary activity, especially in connexion with the problems of the Austrian State, whose existence he justified on geographical, economic and political grounds. On the nationality question he upheld the so-called “personal autonomy,” on the basis of which the super-national state should develop, and thereby influenced the programme and tactics of the Social Democratic party in dealing with it. As a theorist he was reckoned as one of the leaders of Neo-Marxism. He had been a deputy since 1907 and after the revolution of Oct. 1918 he became state chancellor of the republic of Austria, headed the Austrian peace delegation at St. Germain, and took over, after Otto Bauer's retirement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which he conducted from the time of the retirement of the Coalition Cabinet in the summer of 1920 until the new elections in Oct. 1920. His principal works are:—Grundlagen und Entwicklungsziele der oesterreichischen-ungarischen Monarchie (1906); Der Kampf der oesterreichischen Nationen um den Staat; Marxismus, Krieg und Internationale.


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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/431

Rh VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.

I.

King was on his throne,

The Satraps thronged the hall:

A thousand bright lamps shone

O'er that high festival.

A thousand cups of gold,

In Judah deemed divine—

Jehovah's vessels hold

The godless Heathen's wine!

II.

In that same hour and hall,

The fingers of a hand

Came forth against the wall,

And wrote as if on sand:

The fingers of a man;—

A solitary hand

Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

III.

The monarch saw, and shook,

And bade no more rejoice;

All bloodless waxed his look,

And tremulous his voice.

"Let the men of lore appear,

The wisest of the earth,


text: Author:Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest

title: Author:Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest


text: 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Repplier, Agnes


text:
Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/432

398 And expound the words of fear,

Which mar our royal mirth."

IV.

Chaldea's seers are good,

But here they have no skill;

And the unknown letters stood

Untold and awful still.

And Babel's men of age

Are wise and deep in lore;

But now they were not sage,

They saw—but knew no more.

V.

A captive in the land,

A stranger and a youth,

He heard the King's command,

He saw that writing's truth.

The lamps around were bright,

The prophecy in view;

He read it on that night,—

The morrow proved it true.

VI.

"Belshazzar's grave is made,

His kingdom passed away,

He, in the balance weighed,

Is light and worthless clay;

The shroud, his robe of state,

His canopy the stone;

The Mede is at his gate!

The Persian on his throne!"


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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/433

Rh SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS!

WERE MY BOSOM AS FALSE AS THOU DEEM'ST IT TO BE.


text: Author:Karl Eduard von Eichwald

title: Author:Karl Eduard von Eichwald


text:
Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/86

 slightly pallid. His features were regular, his face a bit chubby, and his eyes held the expression of a startled fawn. They were brown, like his hair, and he had a pug nose.

He shivered slightly as the glass-paneled door opened. A Back appeared. Under it were two short, slightly bowed legs, and it was surmounted by a scarlet billiard-ball of a head. There was no neck. The Bade was draped in tweeds, and a strong smell of tobacco, brandy, and horses emanated from it.

The Back extended a large, capable hand, clenched it into a fist, and shook it warningly at someone inside the office.

"Gad, sir!" a deep voice boomed, "Gad! This is the last straw! Mrs. Quester will be furious. And I warn you, Walker, that I shall be furious too. I have stood enough of your trifling. Twice already you promised exclusive models of a dress for my wife, and then failed to deliver."

"But—" said a Voice.

"Silence!" bellowed the Back, and the Voice was cowed. "You have promised Model Forty-Three to Mrs. Quester. If you dare to exhibit it at your fashion show this afternoon, I shall call upon you with a riding-whip. I shall be here after the show, and you will have the dress ready for me to take to Mrs. Quester. You have had enough time to make alterations. Gad, sir—in Burma I have had men broken—utterly broken—for less than this."

The Voice, with a faint spark of antagonism, rallied. It said, "But."

"But me no buts, damn your eyes! This isn't Burma, but you will find that Colonel Quester still knows how to use his fists—you tradesman! I shall be back this afternoon, and—brrrrmph!"

"Yes, Colonel," the Voice assented weakly, and the Back turned, revealing to the watching Vanderhof a round, crimson face with a bristling, iron-gray mustache, and beetling brows from beneath which lightning crackled menacingly. Brrmphing, Colonel Quester moved like a mastodon past the quaking Vanderhof and vanished through a door that seemed to open coweringly of its own accord at the man's advance. Vanderhof immediately turned and started to tiptoe away.

The Voice detected the sound of his departure. "Vanderhof!" it screamed. "Come here!"

Thus summoned, the unfortunate official halted, retraced his steps, and entered the inner sanctum. There he paused like a hypnotized rabbit, watching the Voice, who was also known as S. Horton Walker, president of The Svelte Shop.

HARD man, S. Horton Walker. As a child. he had pulled the wings off butterflies, and maturity had not improved him. He looked like a shaved ape, with a bristling crop of blue-black hair and a gleaming, vicious eye that was now engaged in skinning Vanderhof.

"UIp," the later remarked, in a conciliatory tone.

"Don't give me that," Walker growled, crouching behind his desk like the gorilla he resembled. "I told you to keep that so-and-so out of my office. Well?"

"I said you were out," Vanderhof explained. "I—I—"

"You—you—" Walker mocked, pointing a stubby sausage of a finger. "Bah! And, again, bah! What the hell are you, a man or a jellyfish?"

"A man," Vanderhof said hopefully.

Walker's grunt was profoundly skeptical. "You"re a weakfish. A non-entity. By God, when I was your age I had twenty-nine men under me. By sheer force of personality I made myself what I am today. And I like men with drive—push—get-up-and-go."

Vanderhof, seeing an opportunity of escape, began to get-up-and-go, but relapsed at Walker's furious yelp. "Why, do you


text:
1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Reynolds, Osborne

REYNOLDS, OSBORNE (1842-1912), British engineer, was born at Belfast in 1842. He was educated at Dedham grammar school and at Cambridge, and in 1868 became professor of engineering at Owens College, Manchester, holding that post

for nearly 40 years. He was elected F.R.S. in 1877. He was the author of over 70 papers on mechanics and physics published in the transactions of learned societies, notably Sub-Mechanics of the Universe, issued by the Royal Society, whose gold medal he won in 1888. (For his work see .) He died at Watchet, Som., Feb. 21 1912.


text: Author:Gertrude Lilian Elles

title: Author:Gertrude Lilian Elles


text:
Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/434

400 HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE.

I.

, Mariamne! now for thee

The heart for which thou bled'st is bleeding;

Revenge is lost in Agony

And wild Remorse to rage succeeding.

Oh, Mariamne! where art thou?

Thou canst not hear my bitter pleading:

Ah! could'st thou—thou would'st pardon now,

Though Heaven were to my prayer unheeding.

II.

And is she dead?—and did they dare

Obey my Frenzy's jealous raving?

My Wrath but doomed my own despair:

The sword that smote her 's o'er me waving.—

But thou art cold, my murdered Love!

And this dark heart is vainly craving


text:
1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Reynolds, Stephen

REYNOLDS, STEPHEN (1881-1919), English author, was born at Devizes May 16 1881. Educated at Manchester University and the École des Mines at Paris, he became sub-editor of an Anglo-French review in 1902 and the following year began an association with the Woolley brothers, fishermen of Sidmouth, which lasted for some years. He thus familiarized himself with fishing and the fisherman's point of view so far as to become a recognised authority on the subject and a medium of communication between fishermen and the Government. He was a member of the committee of inquiry into Devon and Cornwall Fisheries (1912), and of the departmental committee on Inshore Fisheries (1913), and in that year he was appointed adviser on Inshore Fisheries to the Development Commission. In 1914 he became also resident inspector of fisheries for the S.W. area. His publications included A Poor Man's House (1908); Alongshore (1910); The Lower Deck, the Navy and the Nation (1912); as well as a novel, The Holy Mountain, (1909) and a volume of tales. He died at Sidmouth Feb. 14 1919.


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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/435

Rh For he who soars alone above,

And leaves my soul unworthy saving.

III.

She's gone, who shared my diadem;

She sunk, with her my joys entombing;

I swept that flower from Judah's stem,

Whose leaves for me alone were blooming;

And mine's the guilt, and mine the hell,

This bosom's desolation dooming;

And I have earned those tortures well,

Which unconsumed are still consuming! Jan. 15, 1815.

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

I.

the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome,

I beheld thee, oh Sion! when rendered to Rome:

'Twas thy last sun went down, and the flames of thy fall

Flashed back on the last glance I gave to thy wall.

II.

I looked for thy temple—I looked for my home,

And forgot for a moment my bondage to come;

I beheld but the death-fire that fed on thy fane,

And the fast-fettered hands that made vengeance in vain.


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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/436

402 III.

On many an eve, the high spot whence I gazed

Had reflected the last beam of day as it blazed;

While I stood on the height, and beheld the decline

Of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy shrine.

IV.

And now on that mountain I stood on that day,

But I marked not the twilight beam melting away;

Oh! would that the lightning had glared in its stead,

And the thunderbolt burst on the Conqueror's head!

V.

But the Gods of the Pagan shall never profane

The shrine where Jehovah disdained not to reign;

And scattered and scorned as thy people may be,

Our worship, oh Father! is only for thee. 1815.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT.

I.

sate down and wept by the waters

Of Babel, and thought of the day


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Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/437

Rh When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters,

Made Salem's high places his prey;

And Ye, oh her desolate daughters!

Were scattered all weeping away.

II.

While sadly we gazed on the river

Which rolled on in freedom below,

They demanded the song; but, oh never

That triumph the Stranger shall know!

May this right hand be withered for ever,

Ere it string our high harp for the foe!

III.

On the willow that harp is suspended,

Oh Salem! its sound should be free;

And the hour when thy glories were ended

But left me that token of thee:

And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended

With the voice of the Spoiler by me! Jan. 15, 1813.