"Oh, yes, you do; that is why you send so many missionaries among
us. But," he went on pleasantly, "look around my table. Not one of
my court has touched the wine. A Mohammedan never drinks. Can you
say as much for your people?"
Then he raised his glass once more to his lips and said quietly,
while his eyes twinkled at my confusion:--
"Tell your great President that Abubaker, Sultan of Johore, drank
his health in simple pineapple juice."
As the sun sank behind the misty dome of Mount Pulei we embarked once
more at the broad palace steps in the royal barges, amid the booming
of guns and the strains of the international "God Save the Queen,"
"My Country, 'tis of Thee," and bared our heads to the royal standard
of Johore that floated so proudly above the palace, thankful for this
short peep into the heart of an Oriental court.
So the young Prince received the crown from the hands of his
father. To-day, the bones of that grand old statesman, the Sultan of
Johore, rest beside those of his royal fathers within the shadow of
the mosque.
In 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles purchased the island on which
Singapore now stands from the father of the late Sultan of Johore,
the royal palace was a palm-thatched bungalow, the country an
unbroken jungle, and the inhabitants pirates and fishermen by turns;
the notorious Strait of Malacca was infested with long, keen, swift
pirate praus, and the snake-like kris menaced the merchant marine of
the world.
The advancement of the United States has not been more rapid since
that date than the advancement of Johore. The attap istana, or palace,
has given place to a series of palaces that rival those of many a much
better-known country; the jungle has given place to plantations of
gambier, tea, coffee, and pepper; the few elephant tracks and forest
paths, to a network of macadamized roads and projected railways;
and the native praus, to English-built barks and deeply laden cargo
steamers.
Two hundred thousand hard-working, money-making Chinese have been
added to the thirty-five thousand Malay aborigines, and the revenue
of this remnant of an empire is far greater than was the revenue of
the original state.
It remains to be seen whether the young Sultan will follow in the
footsteps of his father and preserve to Johore the distinction of
being, with the one exception of Siam, the only independent native
kingdom in southern Asia. One misstep and he will become but a
dependency of the great British Empire, a king only in name.