Province Wellesley--Water Buffaloes--A Glorious Night--Perak
Officials--A "Dismal Swamp"--Elephants at Home--An Epigrammatic
Description--The British Residency at Taipeng--Sultan Abdulla's Boys--A
Chinese Mining Town--The "Armed Police"--An Alligator's Victim--Major
Swinburne--A Larut Dinner Party--A Morning Hymn
BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT, February 11.
I left Mr. Justice Wood's yesterday, and his servant dispatched me from
the jetty in a large boat with an attap awning and six Kling rowers,
whose oars worked in nooses of rope. The narrow Strait was very calm,
and the hot, fiery light of the tropic evening resting upon it, made it
look like oil rather than water. In half an hour I landed on the other
side in the prosperous Province Wellesley, under a row of magnificent
casuarina trees, with gray, feathery foliage drooping over a beach of
corals and, behind which are the solemn glades of cocoa-nut groves. On
the little jetty a Sikh policeman waited for me; and presently Mrs.
Isemonger, wife of the police magistrate of the Province, met me on the
bright, green lawn studded with clumps of alamanda, which surrounds
their lovely, palm-shaded bungalow.
Though the shadows were falling, Mr. Isemonger took me to see something
of the back country in a trap with a fiery Sumatra pony. There are
miles of cocoa-nut plantations belonging to Chinamen all along the
coast, with the trees in straight lines forming long, broad avenues,
which have a certain gloomy grandeur about them. Then come sugarcane
and padi, and then palm plantations again.
The cocoa-nut palm grows best near salt water, no matter how loose and
sandy the soil is, and in these congenial circumstances needs neither
manure nor care of any kind. It bends lovingly toward the sea, and
drops its ripe fruit into it. But if it is planted more than two
hundred yards from the beach, it needs either rich or well-manured
soil, or the proximity of human habitations. It begins to bear fruit
between its fourth and tenth years, according to soil, and a
well-placed, generous tree bears from one hundred and forty to one
hundred and fifty nuts a year. They are of wonderfully slow growth. It
is three months from the time the blossom appears before the fruit
sets, then it takes six months to grow, and three months more to ripen,
and after that will hang two months on the tree before it
falls--fourteen months from the first appearance of the flower!
It is certainly not beautiful as grown in Province Wellesley, and I am
becoming faithless to my allegiance to it in this region of areca and
other more graceful palms.
In returning we saw many Malay kampongs under the palms, each with a
fire lighted underneath it, and there were many other fires for the
water-buffaloes, with groups of these uncouth brutes gathered
invariably on the leeward side, glad to be smoked rather than bitten by
the mosquitoes. These huge, thin-skinned animals have a strange
antipathy to white people. They are petted and caressed by the Malays,
and even small boys can do anything with them, and can ride upon their
backs, but constantly when they see white people they raise their
muzzles, and if there be room charge them madly. A buffalo is
enormously strong, but he objects to the sun, and likes to bathe in
rivers, and plaster himself with mud, and his tastes are much humored
by his owners. A buffalo has often been known to vanquish a tiger when
both have had fair play. Most of the drive back was accomplished by
nearly incessant flashes of sheet lightning.
We had a most pleasant evening. Mrs. Isemonger, who is a sister of Mr.
Maxwell, my present host, is gentle, thoughtful, well-informed, and
studious, and instead of creating and living in an artificial English
atmosphere which is apt to make a residence in a foreign country a very
unproductive period, she has interested herself in the Malays, and has
not only acquired an excellent knowledge of Malayan, but is translating
a Malayan book.
I felt much humiliated by my ignorance of Province Wellesley, of which
in truth I had never heard until I reached Malacca. It is a mere strip,
however, only thirty-five miles long by about ten broad, but it is
highly cultivated, fertile, rich, prosperous, and populous. From Pinang
one sees its broad stretches of bright green sugar-cane and the
chimneys of its sugar factories, and it grows rice and cocoa-nuts, and
is actually more populous than Pinang or Malacca, and contains as many
Malays as Sungei Ujong, Selangor and Pinang together--fifty-eight
thousand! Mr. Maxwell had promised to bring the Kinta, a steam-
launch, across from Georgetown by 8 P.M., and it shows how very
pleasant the evening was, that though I was very tired, eight, nine,
ten, and eleven came, and the conversation never flagged.
Soon after eleven the Kinta appeared, a black shadow on a silver sea,
roaring for a boat, but the surf was so heavy that it was some time
before the police boat was got off; and then Mr. Maxwell, whose cheery,
energetic voice precedes him, and Mr. Walker landed, bullying
everybody, as people often do when they know that they are the
delinquents! It was lovely in the white moonlight with the curving
shadows of palms on the dewy grass, the grace of the drooping
casuarinas, the shining water, and the long drift of surf. It was hard
to get off, and the surf broke into the boat; but when we were once
through it, the sea was like oil, the oars dripped flame, and, seen
from the water, the long line of surf broke on the shore not in snow,
but in a long drift of greenish fire.
The Kinta is a steam-launch of the Perak Government. Her boilers, to
use an expressive Japanese phrase, are "very sick," and she is not
nearly so fine as the Abdulsamat, but a quiet, peaceful boat, without
any pretensions; and really any "old tub" is safe on the Straits of
Malacca except in a "Sumatran." I stayed on deck for some time enjoying
the exquisite loveliness of the night, and the vivacity of two of my
companions, Mr. Maxwell, the Assistant Resident here, a really able and
most energetic man, very argumentative, bright, and pleasant; and
Captain Walker, A.D.C. to Sir W. Robinson, on his way from the
ceaseless gayeties of Government House at Singapore to take command of
the Sikh military police in the solitary jungles of Perak. The third,
Mr. Innes, Superintendent of Lower Perak, whose wife so nearly lost her
life in the horrible affair at Pulo Pangkor, was in dejected spirits,
as if the swamps of Durion Sabatang had been too much for him.
The little cabin below was frightfully hot, and I shared it not only
with two nice Malay boys, sons of the exiled Abdullah, the late Sultan,
who are being educated at Malacca, but with a number of large and
rampant rats. Finding the heat and rats unbearable, I went on deck in
the rosy dawn, just as we were entering the Larut river, a muddy
stream, flowing swiftly between dense jungles and mangrove swamps, and
shores of shining slime, on which at low water the alligators bask in
the sun--one of the many rivers of the Peninsula which do not widen at
their mouths.
The tide was high and the river brimming full, looking as if it must
drown all the forest, and the trestle-work roots on which the mangroves
are hoisted were all submerged. It is a silent, lonely land, all
densely green. Many an uprooted palm with its golden plumes and wealth
of golden husked nuts came floating down on the swirling waters, and
many a narrow creek well suited for murder, overarched with trees, and
up which one might travel far and still be among mangrove swamps and
alligators, came down into the Larut river; and once we passed a small
clearing, where some industrious Chinamen are living in huts on some
festering slime between the river and the jungle; and once a police
station on stilts, where six policemen stood in a row and saluted as we
passed, and at seven we reached Teluk Kartang, with a pier, a long
shed, two or three huts, and some officialism, white and partly white,
all in a "dismal swamp." A small but very useful Chinese trading
steamer, the Sri Sarawak, was lying against the pier, and we landed
over her filthy deck, on which filthy Chinese swine, among half-naked
men almost as filthy, were wrangling for decomposing offal. Dismal as
this place looks, an immense trade in imports and exports is done
there; and all the tin from the rich mines of the district is sent
thence to Pinang for transhipment.
While my friends transacted business, I waited for an age in an empty
office where was one chair, a table dark with years of ink splotches, a
mouldy inkstand, a piece of an old almanac, and an empty gin bottle.
Outside, cockle-shells were piled against the wall; then there were
ditches or streamlets cutting through profuse and almost loathsome
vegetation, and shining slime fat and iridescent, swarming with
loathsome forms of insect and reptile life all rioting under the fierce
sun, and among them, almost odious by proximity to such vileness, were
small crabs with shells of a heavenly blue. The strong vegetable stench
was nearly overpowering, but I wrote to you and worked at your
embroidery a little, and so got through this detention pleasantly, as
through many a longer, though never a hotter one.
After a time three gharries arrived, and Mr. Innes and I went in one,
the two other gentlemen in another, and Sultan Abdullah's boys in the
third. No amount of world-wide practice in the getting in and out of
strange vehicles is any help to the tortuous process necessary for
mounting and dismounting from a Larut gharrie. A gharrie is a two-
wheeled cart with a seat across it for two people and a board in front
on which the driver sits when he is not running by his horse. This
board and the low roof which covers the whole produce the complication
in getting in and out. The bottom of the cart is filled up with grass
and leaves, and you put your feet on the board in front, and the little
rats of fiery Sumatra ponies, which will run till they drop, jolt you
along at great speed. Klings, untroubled by much clothing, own and
drive these vehicles, which are increasing rapidly. The traffic on the
road of heavy buffalo carts, loaded with tin, cuts it up so badly that
without care one might often be thrown upon the pony's back at the
river end of it.
Near the port we met three elephants, the centre one of great size,
rolling along, one of them with a mahout seated behind his great
flapping ears. These are part of the regalia of the deposed Sultan, and
were sent down from the interior for me and my baggage. The smallest of
them would have carried me and my "Gladstone bag" and canvas roll. The
first sight of "elephants at home" is impressive, but they are
fearfully ugly, and their rolling gait does not promise well for the
ease of my future journey.
We passed through a swampy, but busy-looking Chinese village, masculine
almost solely, where Chinamen were building gharries and selling all
such things as Chinese coolies buy, just the same there as everywhere,
and at home there as everywhere; yellow, lean, smooth-shaven, keen,
industrious, self-reliant, sober, mercenary, reliable, mysterious,
opium-smoking, gambling, hugging clan ties, forming no others, and
managing their own matters even to the post and money-order offices,
through which they are constantly sending money to the interior of
China. I hope that it is not true that they look at us, as a singularly
able and highly educated Chinaman lately said to me that they do, as
"the incarnation of brute force allied to brute vices!" This is a
Chinese region, so the degression is excusable.
It was bright and hot, the glorious, equable equatorial heat, and when
we got out of the mangrove swamps through which the road is causewayed,
there was fine tropical foliage, and the trees were festooned with a
large, blue Thunbergia of great beauty. It is eight miles from the
landing at Teluk Kartang to Taipeng, where the British Residency is.
The road crosses uninteresting level country, but every jolt brings one
nearer to the Hijan mountains, which rise picturesquely from the plain
to a height of over three thousand feet. In the distance there is an
extraordinary "butte" or isolated hill, Gunong Pondok, a landmark for
the whole region, and on the right to the east a grand mountain range,
the highest peak of which cannot fall far short of eight thousand feet;
and the blue-green ranges showing the foam of at least one waterfall
almost helped one to be cool.
We reached Permatang, another Chinese village of some pretensions and
population, near which are two very large two-storied Malay houses in
some disrepair, in which the wife of the banished Mentri of Larut
lives, with a number of slaves. A quantity of mirthful-looking slave
girls were standing behind the window bars looking at us
surreptitiously. We alighted at the house of Mr. Wynne, the Government
Agent, who at once said something courteous and hospitable about
breakfast, which I was longing for; but after I had had a bath I found
that we were to pursue our journey, I regretting for the second time
already Mr. Maxwell's abstemiousness and power of going without food!
From this point we drove along an excellent road toward the mountains,
over whose cool summits cloud mists now and then drifted; and near noon
entered this important Chinese town, with a street about a mile long,
with large bazaars and shops making a fine appearance, being much
decorated in Chinese style; halls of meeting for the different tribes,
gambling houses, workshops, the Treasury (a substantial dark wood
building), large detached barracks for the Sikh police, a hospital, a
powder magazine, a parade ground, a Government store-house, a large,
new jail, neat bungalows for the minor English officials, and on the
top of a steep, isolated terraced hill, the British Residency. This
hill is really too steep for a vehicle to ascend, but the plucky pony
and the Kling driver together pulled the gharrie up the zigzags in a
series of spasms, and I was glad to get out of the sunshine into a
cool, airy house, where there was a hope of breakfast, or rather
tiffin.
The Residency is large and lofty, and thoroughly draughty, a high
commendation so near the equator. It consists of a room about thirty
feet wide by sixty long, and about twenty feet high at its highest
part, open at both ends, the front end a great bow window without glass
opening on an immense veranda. This room and its veranda are like the
fore cabin of a great Clyde steamer. It has a red screen standing
partly across it, the back part being used for eating, and the front
for sitting and occupation. My bedroom and sitting-room, and the room
in which Sultan Abdullah's boys sleep are on one side, and Mr.
Maxwell's room and office on the other. Underneath are bath-rooms, and
guard-rooms for the Sikh sentries. There are no ornaments or
superfluities. There are two simple meals daily, with tea and bananas
at 7 A.M., and afternoon tea at 5 P.M. Mr. Maxwell is most abstemious,
and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There
is a perpetual coming and going of Malays, and an air of business
without fuss. There is a Chinese "housemaid," who found a snake, four
feet long, coiled up under my down quilt yesterday, and a Malay butler,
but I have not seen any other domestic.
Those boys of Sultan Abdullah's are the most amusing children I ever
saw. They are nine and twelve years old, with monkey-like,
irrepressible faces. They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and
are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for
their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never
use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one
instant; they chatter, read snatches from books, ask questions about
everything, but are too volatile to care for the answers, turn
somersaults, lean over my shoulders as I write, bring me puzzles, and
shriek and turn head over heels when I can't find them out, and jump on
Mr. Maxwell's shoulders begging for dollars. I like them very much,
for, though they are so restless and mercurial, they are neither rude
nor troublesome. They have kept the house alive with their antics, but
they are just starting on my elephants for Kwala Kangsa, on a visit to
the Regent. I wonder what will become of them? Their father is an exile
in the Seychelles, and though it was once thought that one of them
might succeed the reigning Rajah, another Rajah is so popular with the
Malays, and so intelligent, that it is now unlikely that his claims
will be set aside.
The steep little hill on which the Residency stands is planted with
miserable coffee, with scanty yellow foliage. The house on my side has
a magnificent view of the beautiful Hijan hills, down which a waterfall
tumbles in a broad sheet of foam only half a mile off, and which breed
a rampageous fresh breeze for a great part of the day. The front
veranda looks down on Taipeng and other Chinese villages, on neat and
prolific Chinese vegetable gardens, on pits, formerly tin mines, now
full of muddy, stagnant water, on narrow, muddy rivulets bearing the
wash of the tin mines to the Larut river, on all the weediness and
forlornness of a superficially exhausted mining region, and beyond upon
an expanse of jungle, the limit of which is beyond the limit of vision,
miles of tree tops as level as the ocean, over which the cloud shadows
sail in purple all day long. In the early morning the parade ground is
gay with "thin red" lines of soldiers, and all day long with a glass I
can see the occupations and bustle of Taipeng.
Taipeng is a thriving, increasing place, of over six thousand
inhabitants, solely Chinese, with the exception of a small Kling
population, which keeps small shops, lends money, drives gharries and
bullock-carts, and washes clothes. This place was the focus of the
disturbances in 1873, and the Chinese seem still to need to be held in
check, for they are not allowed to go out at night without passes and
lanterns. They are miners, except those who keep the innumerable shops
which supply the miners, and some of them are rich. Taipeng is
tolerably empty during the day, but at dusk, when the miners return,
the streets and gambling dens are crowded, and the usual Babel of
Chinese tongues begins. There are scarcely any Malays in the town.
Mr. Maxwell walks and rides about everywhere unattended and without
precautions, but Sikh sentries guard this house by night and day. They
wear large blue turbans, scarlet coats and white trousers. There are
four hundred and fifty of them, recruited in India from among the Sikhs
and Pathans, and many of them have seen service under our flag. They
are, to all intents and purposes, soldiers, drilled and disciplined as
such, though called "Armed Police," and are commanded by Major
Swinburne of the 80th Regiment. There is a half battery of mountain
train rifled guns, and many of these men are drilled as gunners. Their
joy would be in shooting and looting, but they have not any scent for
crime. They are splendid-looking men, with long moustaches and
whiskers, but they plait the long ends of the latter and tuck them up
under their turbans. They have good-natured faces generally, and are
sober, docile and peaceable, but Major Swinburne says that they indulge
in violent wordy warfare on "theological subjects." They are devoted to
the accumulation of money, and very many of them being betrothed to
little girls in India, save nearly all their pay in order to buy land
and settle there. When off duty they wear turbans and robes nearly as
white as snow, and look both classical and colossal. They get on
admirably with the Malays, but look down on the Chinese, who are much
afraid of them. One sees a single Sikh driving four or five Chinamen in
front of him, having knotted their pigtails together for reins. I have
been awoke each night by the clank which attends the change of guard,
and as the moonlight flashes on the bayonets, I realize that I am in
Perak.
The air is so bracing here and the nights so cool, that I have been out
by seven each morning, and have been into Taipeng in the evening. This
morning I went to see the hospital, mainly used by the Sikhs, who,
though very docile patients, are most troublesome in other ways, owing
to religious prejudices, which render it nearly impossible to cook for
them. There was one wretched Chinaman there, horribly mangled. He was
stealing a boat on one of the many creeks, when an alligator got hold
of him, and tore both legs, one arm, and his back in such a way that it
is wonderful that he lives. The apothecary is a young Madrassee. One or
two cases of that terrible disease known in Japan as Kakke, and
elsewhere as Beri-Beri, have just appeared.* We walked also to a clear
mountain torrent which comes thundering down among great boulders and
dense tropical vegetation at the foot of the mountains, as clear and
cold as if it were a Highland stream dashing through the purple
heather.
[*Since my visit there have been three fatal outbreaks of this epidemic,
three thousand deaths having occurred among the neighboring miners and
coolies. So firmly did the disease appear to have established itself,
that a large permanent hospital was erected by the joint efforts of the
chief mining adventurers and the Government, but it has now been taken
over altogether by the Government, and is supported by an annual tax of
a dollar, levied upon every adult Chinaman. Extensive hospital
accommodation and sufficient medical attendance have also been provided
in other stricken localities. In the jail, where the disease was very
fatal, it has nearly died out, in consequence, it is believed, of
supplying the prisoners with a larger quantity of nitrogenous food. It
has been proposed to compel the employers of mining coolies to do the
same thing, for the ravages of the disease are actually affecting the
prosperity of Larut.]
There are "trumpeter beetles" here, with bright green bodies and
membranous-looking transparent wings, four inches across, which make
noise enough for a creature the size of a horse. Two were in the house
tonight, and you could scarcely hear anyone speak. But there is a
blessed respite from mosquitoes.
Major Swinburne and Captain Walker have dined here, and we had a simple
dinner of roast mutton, the first that I have tasted for ten months. It
is a great treat. One becomes tired of made dishes, consisting chiefly
of impoverished fowls, disguised in about twenty different ways.
When I left Malacca, Captain Shaw said: "When you see Paul Swinburne
you'll see a man you'll not see twice in a lifetime," so yesterday,
when a tall, slender, aristocratic-looking man, who scarcely looks
severable from the door-steps of a Pall Mall club, strode down the room
and addressed me abruptly with the words: "The sooner you go away again
the better; there's nothing to see, nothing to do, and nothing to
learn," I was naturally much interested. He has a dash of acquired
eccentricity of tone and manner, is very proud, but, unlike some proud
people, appreciates the co-humanity of his inferiors, is a brilliant
talker, dashing over art, literature, politics, society, tells stories
brilliantly, never flags, is totally regardless of "the equities of
conversation," and is much beloved by the Sikhs, to whom he is just.
At Pinang I heard an anecdote of him which is quite credible. The
regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female
runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very
opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a
man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine,
and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept
insult. I take no future orders from your highness." Nor, it is said,
has he.
My human surroundings have an unusual amount of piquancy. Mr. Maxwell
is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and
upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the
Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able,
combative, dogmatic, well-read and well-informed, expresses himself
incisively, is self-reliant, strong-willed, thoroughly just, thoroughly
a gentleman, and has immense energy and business capacity, and a large
amount of governing power. He, too, likes talking, and talks well, but
with much perfectly good-natured vehemence. He is a man on whose word
one may implicitly rely. Brought up among Malays, and speaking their
language idiomatically, he not only likes them, but takes the trouble
to understand them and enter into their ideas and feelings. He studies
their literature, superstitions, and customs carefully, and has made
some valuable notes upon them. I should think that few people
understand the Malays better than he does. He dislikes the Chinese. I
have the very pleasant feeling regarding him that he is the right man
in the right place, and that his work is useful, conscientious, and
admirable. As Assistant Resident he is virtually dictator of Larut,
only subject to Mr. Low's interference. He is a judge, and can inflict
the penalty of death, the Regent's signature, however, being required
for the death-warrant. He rules the Chinese rigidly.
Captain Walker is a new comer, and does not know more about Perak than
I do.
At this dinner of four there was as much noise as twenty stupid people
would make! Something brought up the dead lock in Victoria, which
excited violent feeling for some reason not obvious. Captain Walker
threw off his somewhat suave A.D.C. manner, and looked dangerous, Mr.
Maxwell fought for victory, and Major Swinburne to beat Mr. Maxwell,
and the row was deafening. I doubt whether such an argument could have
been got up in moist, hot Singapore, or steamy Malacca! An energetic
difference seems of daily occurrence, and possibly is an essential
ingredient of friendship. That it should be possible shows what an
invigorating climate this must be. Major Swinburne, in an aggravating
tone, begins upon some peculiarity or foible, real or supposed, of his
friend, with a deluge or sarcasm, mimicry, ridicule, and invective,
torments him mercilessly, and without giving him time to reply,
disappears, saying, Parthian-like, "Now, my dear fellow, its no use
resenting it, you haven't such a friend as me in the world--you know if
it were not for me you'd be absolutely intolerable!" All this is very
amusing. How many differing characters are required to make up even the
world that I know!
It is strange to be in a house in which there are no pets, for a small
Malay bear which lives at the back can scarcely be called one.
Sometimes in the evening a wild animal called a lemur rushes wildly
through the house and out at the front veranda. I am always afraid of
being startled by his tearing through my room in the depths of the
night, for here, as in many other houses, instead of doors there are
screens raised a foot from the ground.
This morning I got up before daylight, and went up a hill which is
being cleared, to enjoy the sunrise, the loveliest time of the tropic
day. It was all dew and rose color, with a delicious freshness in the
air, prolonged unusually, because the sun was so slow to climb above
the eastern mountain tops. Then there was a sudden glory, and birds,
beasts, and insects broke into a vociferous chorus, the tuneless hymn
which ascends daily without a discord. There are sumptuously colored
sunsets to be seen from this elevation, but one has no time to enjoy
them, and they make one long for the lingering gold and purple of more
northern latitudes. I have really been industrious since I came here,
both in writing to you, and in "reading up" the native states in blue
books, etc.