A Yachting Voyage--The Destruction of Selangor--Varieties of
Slime--Swamp Fever--An Unprosperous Region--A "Deadly-Lively"
Morning--A Waif and Stray--The Superintendent of Police
STEAM-LAUNCH "ABDULSAMAT" February 7.
You will certainly think, from the dates of my letters, that I am
usually at sea. The Resident, his daughter, Mrs. Daly, Mr. Hawley, a
revenue officer, and I, left Klang this morning at eight for a two
days' voyage in this bit of a thing. Blessed be "the belt of calms!"
There was the usual pomp of a body-guard, some of whom are in
attendance, and a military display on the pier, well drilled, and well
officered in quiet, capable, admirable, unobtrusive Mr. Syers; but
gentle Mrs. Douglas, devoted to her helpless daughter, standing above
the jetty, a lone woman in forlorn, decayed Klang, haunts me as a
vision of sadness, as I think of her sorrow and her dignified
hospitality in the midst of it.
Now, at half-past eleven, we are aground with an ebb-tide on the bar of
the Selangor river; so I may write a little, though I should like to be
asleep.
Bernam River, Selangor, February 8th.--"Chi-laka!" (worthless
good-for-nothing wretch), "Bodo!" (fool). I hear these words repeated
incessantly in tones of thunder and fury, with accompaniments which
need not be dwelt upon. The Malays are a revengeful people. If any
official in British service were to knock them about and insult them,
one can only say what has been said to me since I came to the native
States: "Well, some day--all I can say is, God help him!" But then if
an official were to be krissed, no matter how deservedly in Malay
estimation, a gunboat would be sent up the river to "punish," and would
kill, burn, and destroy; there would be a "little war," and a heavy war
indemnity, and the true bearings of the case would be lost forever.
Yesterday, after a detention on the bar, we steamed up the broad, muddy
Selangor river, margined by bubbling slime, on which alligators were
basking in the torrid sun, to Selangor. Here the Dutch had a fort on
the top of the hill. We destroyed it in August, 1871. Some Chinese
whose connection with Selangor is not traceable, after murdering nearly
everybody on board a Pinang-owned junk, took the vessel to Selangor. We
demanded that the native chiefs should give up the pirates, and they
gave up nine readily, but refused the tenth, against whom "it does not
appear that there was any proof," and drew their krises on our police
when they tried to arrest the man in defiance of them. The (acting)
Governor of the Straits Settlements, instead of representing to the
Sultan the misconduct, actual or supposed, of his officers, sent a
war-ship to seize and punish them. This attempt was resented by the
Selangor chiefs, and they fired on those who made it. The Rinaldo
destroyed the town in consequence, and killed many of its inhabitants.
When the Viceroy, a brother of the Sultan of Kedah, retook Selangor two
years afterward, he found that what had been a populous and thriving
place was almost deserted, the few hovels which remained were in ruins,
the plantations were overgrown with rank jungle growths, and their
owners had fled; the mines in the interior were deserted, and the roads
and jungle paths were infested by bands of half-starved robbers.*
[*This account of Selangor does not rest on local hearsay, but on the
authority of two of the leading officials of the Colonial Government.]
Selangor is a most wretched place--worse than Klang. On one side of the
river there is a fishing village of mat and attap hovels on stilts
raised a few feet above the slime of a mangrove swamp; and on the other
an expanse of slime, with larger houses on stilts, and an attempt at a
street of Chinese shops, and a gambling-den, which I entered, and found
full of gamblers at noonday. The same place serves for a spirit and
champagne shop. Slime was everywhere oozing, bubbling, smelling putrid
in the sun, all glimmering, shining, and iridescent, breeding fever and
horrible life; while land-crabs boring holes, crabs of a brilliant
turquoise-blue color, which fades at death, and reptiles like fish,
with great bags below their mouths, and innumerable armor-plated
insects, were rioting in it under the broiling sun.
We landed by a steep ladder upon a jetty with a gridiron top, only safe
for shoeless feet, and Mr. Hawley and I went up to the fort by steps
cut in the earth. There are fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to
have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly
oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round it, in which, near the
entrance, some of the Dutch brickwork is still visible. The trees round
it are much tattered and torn by English shell. In front of the
entrance there is a large flat stone on a rude support. On this a young
girl was sacrificed some years ago, and the Malay guns were smeared
with her blood, in the idea that it would make them successful. I was
told this story, but have no means of testing its accuracy.
Within the fort the collector and magistrate--a very inert-looking
Dutch half-caste--has a wretched habitation, mostly made of attap. We
sat there for some time. It looked most miserable, the few things about
being empty bottles and meat-tins. A man would need many resources,
great energy, and an earnest desire to do his duty, in order to save
him from complete degeneracy. He has no better prospect from his
elevation, than a nearly level plateau of mangrove swamps and jungle,
with low hills in the distance, in which the rivers rise. It was
hot--rather.
In the meantime the Resident was trying a case, and when it was
concluded we steamed out to sea and hugged all day the most monotonous
coast I ever saw, only just, if just, above high-water mark, with a
great level of mangrove swamps and dense jungle behind, with high,
jungle-covered hills in the very far distance, a vast area of
beast-haunted country, of which nothing is known by Europeans, and
almost nothing by the Malays themselves. So very small a vessel tumbles
about a good deal even with a very light breeze, and instead of going
to dinner I lay on the roof of the cabin studying blue-books. At
nightfall we anchored at the mouth of the Bernam river, to avoid the
inland mosquitoes, but we must have brought some with us, for I was
malignantly bitten. Mrs. Daly and I shared the lack of privacy and
comfort of the cabin. Perfect though the Abdulsamat is, there is very
little rest to be got in a small and overcrowded vessel, and besides,
the heat was awful. I think we were not far enough from the swampy
shore, for Mrs. Daly was seized with fever during the night, and a
Malay servant also. In the morning Mrs. Daly. who is comely and has a
very nice complexion, looked haggard, yellow, and much shaken.
At daylight we weighed anchor and steamed for many miles up the muddy,
mangrove-fringed river Bernam, the mangroves occasionally varied by the
nipah palm. We met several palm-trees floating with their roots and
some of their fruits above the water, like those we saw yesterday
evening out on the Malacca Straits, looking like crowded Malay prahus
with tattered mat-sails.
Before nine we anchored at this place, whose wretchedness makes a great
impression on me, because we are to deposit Mr. Hawley here as revenue
collector. I have seen him every day for a week; he is amiable and
courteous, as well as intelligent and energetic, and it is shocking to
leave him alone in a malarious swamp. This dismal revenue station
consists of a few exceptionally poor-looking Malay houses on the river
bank, a few equally unprosperous-looking Chinese dwellings, a police
station of dilapidated thatch among the trees, close to it a cage in
which there is a half-human looking criminal lying on a mat, a new
house or big room, raised for Mr. Hawley, with the swamp all round it
and underneath it, and close to it some pestiferous ditches which have
been cut to drain it, but in which a putrid-looking brown ooze has
stagnated. There is a causeway about two hundred yards long on the
river bank, but no road anywhere. The river is broad, deep, swift and
muddy; on its opposite side is Perak, the finest State in the
peninsula, and the cluster of mat houses on the farther shore is under
the Perak Government.* Sampans are lying on the heated slime. Cocoa-nut
trees fringe the river bank for some distance, and there are some
large, spreading trees loaded with the largest and showiest crimson
blossoms I ever saw, throwing even the gaudy Poinciana regia into the
shade; but nothing can look very attractive here, with the swamp in
front and the jungle behind, where the rhinoceros is said to roam
undisturbed.
[*The Bernam district has recently been handed over to Perak, and is now
under Mr. Low's very capable administration.]
We landed in the police boat at a stilted jetty approached by a ladder
with few and slippery rungs. At the top there was a primitive gridiron
of loose nibong bars, and the river swirled so rapidly and dizzily
below that I was obliged ignominiously to hold on to a Chinaman in
order to reach the causeway safely. To add to the natural insecurity of
the foothold, some men were killing a goat at the top of the ladder,
and its blood made the whole gridiron slippery. The banks of the river
are shining slime giving off fetid exhalations under the burning sun;
there is a general smell of vegetable decomposition, and miasma fever
(one would suppose) is exhaling from every bubble of the teeming slime
and swamp.
In the veranda of Mr. Hawley's house a number of forlorn-looking
Rajahs are sitting, each with his forlorn-looking train of followers,
and in front of the police station a number of forlorn-looking Malays
are sitting motionless hour after hour. The Chinese have a row of shops
above the river bank, and even on this deadly-looking shore they
display some purpose and energy. Mrs. Daly and I are sitting in Mr.
Hawley's side veranda with the bubbling swamp below us. She reads a
dull novel, I watch the dead life, pen in hand, and think how I can
convey any impression of it to you. The Resident has gone snipe-
shooting to replenish our larder. A boat now and then crosses from the
Perak side, a sauntering Malay occasionally joins the squatting group,
a fishing hawk now and then swoops down upon a fish, a policeman
occasionally rouses up the wretch in the cage, and so the torrid hours
pass.
I take this up again as the dew falls, and the sea takes on the
coloring of a dying dolphin. The Resident returned with a good bag of
snipe, and with Rajah Odoot, a gentle, timid-looking man, and another
Rajah with an uncomfortable, puzzled face, took his place at a table, a
policeman with a brace of loaded revolvers standing behind him.
Policemen filed in; one or two cases were tried and dismissed, the
Malay witnesses trembling from head to foot, and then the wretch from
the cage was brought in looking hardly human, as, from under his
shaggy, unshaven hair and unplaited pigtail which hung over his chest,
he cast furtive, frightened glances at the array before him. He was
charged with being a waif. A Malay had picked him up at sea in a boat,
of which he could give no account, neither of himself. So he is
supposed to have been implicated in the murder of Mr. Lloyd, and we are
bringing him, heavily ironed, and his boat up to Pinang. I wonder how
many of the feelings which we call human exist in the lowest order of
Orientals! It is certain that many of them only regard kindness as a
confession of weakness. The Chinese seem specially inscrutable; no one
seems really to understand them. Even the Canton missionaries said that
they knew nearly nothing of them and their feelings. This wretched
criminal, with his possible association with a brutal murder, is a most
piteous object on deck, and comes between me and the enjoyment of this
entrancing evening.
We reembarked late in the afternoon, and with the flood-tide in our
favor have left Selangor behind. It has impressed me unfavorably as
compared with Sungei Ujong. Of Kwalor Lumpor I cannot give any opinion,
but I have seen no signs of progress or life anywhere else. The people
of the State are harassed by vexatious imposts which yield very little,
cost a great deal to collect, repress industry, and drive away
population. Among such are taxes on individuals moving about the
country up or down the rivers, cutting wood or in boats, oppressively
heavy export duties on certain kinds of produce, and ad valorem duties
on all articles of import and export not otherwise specially taxed. The
costs of litigation are enormous, and the legal expenses to litigants
are as great as in settlements where with the same money every
advantage can be obtained. The stamps on all legal documents are also
oppressive. The various departments are said to be in a state of
"hugger-mugger."
With all this there is a good deal of display of military power on a
small scale, and of such over-aweing implements as bayonets and
revolvers, together with marching and counter-marching, body-guards and
guards of honor. There must surely be a want of the right kind of vigor
in the administration, and a "laisser aller" on the part of some of the
minor officials, the result of which is that the great capabilities of
the State are not developed, and its resources seem very little known.
There has not been any disturbance in Selangor since 1874; and as
neither the Sultan, the Malays, nor the Chinese have ever raised
objections of any serious kind to the proposals of the British
advisers, the "far back" state of things is very singular.
Mr. Syers, the superintendent of military police, appears a thoroughly
efficient man, as sensible in his views of what would conduce to the
advancement of the State as he is conscientious and careful in all
matters of detail which concern his rather complicated position. He is
a student of the people and of the country, speaks Malay fluently, and
for a European seems to have a sympathetic understanding of the Malays,
is studying the Chinese and their language, as well as the flora,
fauna, and geology of the country, and is altogether unpretending. I
have formed a very high opinion of him and should rely implicitly on
anything which he told me as a fact. This is a great blessing, for
conflicting statements on every subject, and the difficulty of
estimating which one comes probably nearest the truth, are among the
great woes of traveling!