A Pleasant Canter--A Morning Hymn--The Pass of Bukit Berapit--The
"Wearing World" Again!--A Bad Spirit--Malay Demonology--"Running
Amuck"--An Amok-Runner's Career--The Supposed Origin of Amok--Jungle
Openings in Perak--Debt-Slavery--The Fate of Three Runaway
Slaves--Moslem Prayers--"Living Like Leeches"--Malay Proverbs--A
"Ten-Thousand-Man Umbrella"
BRITISH RESIDENCY, TAIPENG, February 21.
I am once again on this breezy hill, watching the purple cloud-shadows
sail over the level expanse of tree-tops and mangroves, having
accomplished in about four hours the journey, which took nearly twelve
in going up. The sun was not up when I left the bungalow at Kwala
Kangsa this morning. I rode a capital pony, on Mr. Low's English
saddle, a Malay orderly on horseback escorting me, and the royal
elephant carried my luggage. It was absurd to see this huge beast lie
down merely to receive my little valise and canvas roll, with a small
accumulation of Malacca canes, mats, krises, tigers' teeth and claws,
and an elephant's tusk, the whole not weighing 100 lbs.
Mr. Low was already at his work, writing and nursing Eblis at the same
time, the wild ape sitting on a beam looking on. I left, wishing I were
coming instead of going, and had a delightful ride of eighteen miles.
The little horse walked very fast and cantered easily. How peaceful
Perak is now, to allow of a lady riding so far through the jungle with
only an unarmed Malay attendant! Major M'Nair writes: "The ordinary
native is a simple, courteous being, who joins with an intense love of
liberty a great affection for his simple home and its belongings," and
I quite believe him. Stories of amok running, "piracies," treachery,
revenge, poisoned krises, and assassinations, have been made very much
of, and any crime or slight disturbance in the native States throws the
Settlements into a panic. It must have been under the influence of one
of these that such a large sea and land force was sent to Perak three
years ago. Crime in the Malay districts in these States is so rare,
that were it not for the Chinese, a few policemen would be all the
force that would be needed. The "village system," the old Malay system
with its head man and village officials, though formerly abused, seems
under the new regime to work well, and by it the Malays have been long
accustomed to a species of self-government, and to the maintenance of
law and order. I notice that all the European officials who speak their
language and act righteously toward them like them very much, and this
says much in their favor.
I met with no adventures on the journey. I had a delightful canter of
several miles before the sun was above the tree-tops, the morning
mists, rose-flushed, rolled grandly away, and just as I reached the
beautiful pass of Bukit Berapit, the apes were hooting their morning
hymn, and the forests rang with the joyous trills and songs of birds.
"All Thy works praise Thee, O Lord!"
There were gorgeous butterflies. Among them I noticed one with the
upper part of its body and the upper side of its wings of jet black
velvet, and the lower half of its body and the under side of its wings
of peacock-blue velvet, spotted; another of the same "make," but with
gold instead of blue, and a third with the upper part of the body and
wings of black velvet with cerise spots, the lower part of the body
cerise, and the under side of the wings white with cerise spots. All
these measured fully five inches across their expanded wings. In one
opening only I counted thirty-seven varieties of these brilliant
creatures, not in hundreds but in thousands, mixed up with blue and
crimson dragon-flies and iridescent flies, all joyous in the sunshine.
The loud-tongued stream of crystal water was very full, and through the
deep greenery, and among the great, gray, granite boulders, it flung
its broad drifts of foam, rejoicing in its strength; and every green
thing leaned lovingly toward it or stooped to touch it, and all
exquisite things which love damp, all tender mosses and selaginellas,
all shade-loving ferns and aroids, flourish round it in perennial
beauty; while high above, in the sunshine, amid birds and butterflies,
the graceful areca palm struggles with the feathery bamboo for
precarious root-hold on rocky ledges, and spikes of rose-crimson
blossoms, and dark green fronds of bananas, and all the leafy wealth
born of moisture and sunshine, cling about it tenderly. And lower down
the great forest trees arch over it, and the sunbeams trickle through
them, and dance in many a quiet pool, turning the far-down sands to
gold, brightening majestic tree-ferns, and shining on the fragile
polypodium tamariscinum which clings tremblingly to the branches of the
graceful waringhan, on a beautiful lygodium which adorns the uncouth
trunk of an artocarpus, on glossy ginger-worts and trailing yams, on
climbers and epiphytes, and on gigantic lianas which, climbing to the
tops of the tallest trees, descend in vast festoons, many of them with
orange and scarlet flowers and fruitage, passing from tree to tree, and
interlacing the forest with a living network, while selaginellas and
lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in
feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns.
Little rivulets flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and mingle
their musical warble with the deep bass of the torrent, and there are
twilight depths of leafy shade into which the sunshine never
penetrates, damp and cool, in which the music of the water is all too
sweet, and the loveliness too entrancing, creating that sadness hardly
"akin to pain" which is latent in all intense enjoyment.
Gunong Pondok, the limestone butte, twelve hundred feet in nearly
perpendicular height, showed all its brilliancy of color, and Gunong
Bubu, one of the highest mountains in Perak, reared his granite crest
above the forest. The lotus lake at Bukit Gantang was infinitely more
beautiful than under the grayer sky of Friday; a thousand rosy vases
were drinking in the sunshine, and ten thousand classic leaves were
spreading their blue-green shields below them; all nature smiled and
sang. I was loath to exchange my good horse for a gharrie, with a Kling
driver draped slightly in Turkey-red cotton sitting on the shafts, who,
statuesque as he was, had a far less human expression than Mahmoud and
Eblis. In the noonday the indigo-colored Hijan hills, with their
swollen waterfall coming down in a sheet of foam, looked cool, but as
we dashed through Taipeng I felt overpowered once more by what seems
the "wearing world," after beautiful, silent Kwala Kangsa, for there
are large shops with gaudy sign-boards, stalls in the streets, tribal
halls, buffalo-carts with buffaloes yoked singly, for the spread of
their huge horns is so great that they cannot be yoked in pairs; trains
of carts with cinnamon-colored, humped bullocks yoked in pairs standing
at shop doors, gharries with fiery Sumatra ponies dashing about, crowds
of Chinese coolies, busy and half-naked, filling the air with the din
of their ceaseless industry, and all the epitomized stir of a world
which toils, and strives, and thirsts for gain.
But I must give these coolies their due, for in some ways they show
more self-respect than the ordinary English laborer, inasmuch as in bad
times they don't become chargeable to anyone, and when the price of the
commodity which they produce falls, as that of tin has done, instead of
"striking" and abusing everybody all round, they accept the situation,
keep quiet, live more frugally, and work for lower wages till things
mend. But I don't intend to hold up the Taipeng Chinese as patterns of
the virtues in other respects, for they are not. They are turbulent;
and crime, growing chiefly out of their passion for gain, is very rife
among them. The first thing I heard on arriving here was that a Chinese
gang had waylaid a revenue officer in one of the narrow creeks, and
that his hacked and mutilated body had drifted down to Permatang this
morning.
Mr. Maxwell tells me that, as he returned from escorting me to Bukit
Gantang, he overtook a gharrie with a Malay woman in it, and
dismounting joined her husband who was walking, but did not speak to
the woman. to-day the man told him that his wife woke the following
night with a scream which was succeeded by a trance; and that, knowing
that a devil had entered into her, he sent for a pawan (a wise man or
sorcerer), who on arriving asked questions of the bad spirit, who
answered with the woman's tongue. "How did you come?" "With the tuan,"
i.e., Mr. Maxwell. "How did you come with him?" "On the tail of his
gray horse." "Where from?" "Changat-Jering." The husband said that
these Changat-Jering devils were very bad ones. The pawan then
exorcised the devil, and burned strong-smelling drugs under the woman's
nose, after which he came out of her, and she fell asleep, the "wise
man" receiving a fee.
I never heard of any country of such universal belief in devils,
familiars, omens, ghosts, sorceries, and witchcrafts. The Malays have
many queer notions about tigers, and usually only speak of them in
whispers, because they think that certain souls of human beings who
have departed this life have taken up their abode in these beasts, and
in some places, for this reason, they will not kill a tiger unless he
commits some specially bad aggression. They also believe that some men
are tigers by night and men by day!
The pelisit, the bad spirit which rode on the tail of Mr. Maxwell's
horse, is supposed to be the ghost of a woman who has died in
childbirth. In the form of a large bird uttering a harsh cry, it is
believed to haunt forests and burial-grounds and to afflict children.
The Malays have a bottle-imp, the polong, which will take no other
sustenance than the blood of its owner, but it rewards him by aiding
him in carrying out revengeful purposes. The harmless owl has strange
superstitions attaching to it, and is called the "specter bird;" you
may remember that the fear of encountering it was one of the reasons
why the Permatang Pasir men would not go with us through the jungle to
Rassa.
A vile fiend called the penangalan takes possession of the forms of
women, turns them into witches, and compels them to quit the greater
part of their bodies, and flyaway by night to gratify a vampire craving
for human blood. This is very like one of the ghoul stories in the
_Arabian Nights Entertainments_. Then they have a specter huntsman with
demon dogs who roams the forests, and a storm fiend who rides the
whirlwind, and spirits borrowed from Persia and Arabia. It almost seems
as if the severe monotheism to which they have been converted compels
them to create a gigantic demonology.
They have also many odd but harmless superstitions: For instance, that
certain people have the power of making themselves invulnerable by the
agency of spirits; that the regalia of the States are possessed of
supernatural powers; that the wearing of a tiger claw prevents disease;
that rude "Aeolian harps" hung up in trees will keep the forest goblins
from being troublesome; that charms and amulets worn or placed about a
house ward off many evils; that at dangerous rapids, such as those of
Jerom Pangong on the Perak river, the spirits must be propitiated by
offerings of betel-nut and bananas; that to insure good luck a betel-
chewer must invariably spit to the left; that it is unlucky either to
repair or pull down a house; that spirits can be propitiated and
diseases can be kept away by hanging up palm leaves and cages in the
neighborhood of kampongs, and many others. They also believe as firmly
as the Chinese do in auspicious and inauspicious days, spells, magic,
and a species of astrology. I hope that Mr. Maxwell will publish his
investigations into these subjects.
"Running amuck" (amok) is supposed by some to be the result of
"possession;" but now, at least, it is comparatively uncommon in these
States. A Malay is on some points excessively sensitive regarding his
honor, and to wipe out a stain upon it by assassinating the offender is
considered as correct and in accordance with etiquette as dueling
formerly was in our own country. In cases, however, in which the
offender is of higher rank than the injured man, the latter in despair
sometimes resorts to opium, and, rushing forth in a frenzy, slays all
he can lay hands upon. This indiscriminate slaying is the amok proper.
In certain cases, such as those arising out of jealousy, the desire for
vengeance gains absolute possession of a Malay. Mr. Newbold says that
he has seen letters regarding insults in which the writers say, "I
ardently long for his blood to clean my face," or "I ardently long for
his blood to wash out the pollution of the hog's flesh with which he
has smeared me!"
Considering how punctilious and courteous the Malays are, how rough
many of the best of us are, how brutal in manner many of us are, and
how inconsiderate our sailors are of the customs of foreign peoples,
especially in regard to the seclusion of their women, it is wonderful
that bloody revenge is not more common than it is.
"Amok" means a furious and reckless onset. When Mr. Birch was murdered,
the cry "amok! amok!" was raised, and the passion of murder seized on
all present. Only about a year ago one of the sons of the Rajah Muda
Yusuf, a youth of twenty, was suddenly seized with this monomania, drew
his kris, and rushing at people killed six, wounded two, and then
escaped into the jungle. Major M'Nair says that a Malay, in speaking of
amok, says: "My eyes got dark, and I ran on."
In Malacca Captain Shaw told me that "running amuck" was formerly very
common, and that on an expedition he made, one of his own attendants
was suddenly seized with the "amok" frenzy. He mentioned that he had
known of as many as forty people being injured by a single "amok"
runner. When the cry "amok! amok!" is raised, people fly to the right
and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman's kris has once
"drank blood," his fury becomes ungovernable, his sole desire is to
kill; he strikes here and there; men fall along his course; he stabs
fugitives in the back, his kris drips blood, he rushes on yet more
wildly, blood and murder in his course; there are shrieks and groans,
his bloodshot eyes start from their sockets, his frenzy gives him
unnatural strength; then all of a sudden he drops, shot through the
heart, or from sudden exhaustion, clutching his bloody kris even in the
act of rendering up his life.
As his desire is to kill everybody, so, as he rushes on, everybody's
desire is to kill him, and gashed from behind or wounded by shots, his
course is often red with his own blood. Under English rule the great
object of the police is to take the "amok" runner alive, and have him
tried like an ordinary criminal for murder; and if he can be brought to
bay, as he sometimes is, they succeed in pinning him to the wall by
means of such a stout two-pronged fork as I saw kept for the purpose in
Malacca. Usually, however the fate of the "amok" runner is a violent
death, and men feel no more scruple about killing him in his frenzy
than they would about killing a man-eating tiger. I hear that this form
of frenzy affects the Malays of all the islands of the Archipelago.
Some people attribute it to the excessive use of opium by unprepared
constitutions, and others to monomania arising from an unusual form of
digestive disturbance; but from it being peculiar to Malays, I rather
incline to Major M'Nair's view: "There can be no doubt that the amok
had its origin in the deed of some desperate Malay, that tradition
handed it down to his highly-sensitive successors, and the example was
followed and continues to be followed as the right thing to do by those
who are excited to frenzy by apprehension, or by some injury that they
regard as deadly, and only to be washed out in blood."
I have been interrupted by a visit from two disconsolate-looking
Ceylon planters, who have come "prospecting" for coffee. An
enterprising son of an Edinburgh "Bailie" has been trying
coffee-planting beyond the Perak, but he has got into difficulties with
his laborers, and is "getting out of it." This difficulty about labor
will possibly have to be solved by the introduction of coolies from
India, for the Malays won't work except for themselves; and the Chinese
not only prefer the excitement of mining, and the evening hubbub of the
mining towns, but in lonely places they are not always very manageable
by people unused to them.
Even for clearing the jungle foreign labor must be employed. Perak is a
healthy and splendid State, and while the low grounds are suited for
sugar, tapioca, and tobacco, the slopes of the hills will produce
coffee, cinchona, vanilla, tea, cloves, and nutmegs. It is a land of
promise, but at present of promise only! I understand that to start a
plantation a capital of from 2,500 pounds to 3,500 pounds would be
required. Jungle is cleared at the rate of 25s. per acre. The wages of
Javanese coolies are 1s. a day, and a hut which will hold fifty of them
can be put up for 5 pounds. Land can be had for three years free of
charge. It is then granted in perpetuity for a dollar an acre, and
there is a tax of 2-1/2 per cent. on exported produce. These
arrangements are not regarded as altogether satisfactory, and will
probably be improved upon. Tell some of our friends who have sons with
practical good sense, but more muscle than brains, that there are
openings in the jungles of Perak! Good sense, perseverance,
steadiness, and a degree of knowledge of planting, are, however,
preliminary requisites.
The two "prospectors" look as if they had heard couleur de rose
reports, and had not "struck ile." Possibly they expected to find
hotels and macadamized roads. Roads must precede planting, I think,
unless there are available lands near the rivers.
I have mentioned slavery and debt-slavery more than once. The latter
is a great curse in Perak, and being a part of "Malay custom" which our
treaties bind us to respect, it is very difficult to deal with. In the
little States of Sungei Ujong and Selangor, with their handful of
Malays, it has been abolished with comparative ease. In Perak, with its
comparatively large Malay population, about four thousand are slaves,
and the case seems full of complications.
Undoubtedly the existence of slavery has been one cause of the decay of
the native States, and of the exodus of Malays into the British
settlements. Some people palliate the system, and speak of it as "a
mild form of domestic servitude;" but Mr. Birch, the late murdered
Resident, wrote of it in these strong terms: "I believe that the system
as practiced in Perak at the present time involves evils and cruelties
which are unknown to any but those who have actually lived in these
States."
From the moment a man or woman becomes a debtor, he or she, if unable
to pay, may be taken up by the creditor, and may be treated as a slave,
being made to work in any way that the creditor chooses, the debtor's
earnings belonging to the creditor, who allows no credit toward the
reduction of the debt. To make the hardship greater, if a relative or
friend comes forward to pay the debt, the creditor has the right to
refuse payment, and to keep his slave, whose only hope of bettering
himself is in getting his owner to accept payment for him from a third
party, so that he may become the slave of the person who has ransomed
him.
But there are worse evils still, for in cases where a married man
contracts a debt, his wife and existing children, those who may
hereafter be born, and their descendants, pass into slavery; and all,
male and female, are compelled as slaves to work for their master, who
in very many cases compels the women and girls to live a life of
degradation for his benefit, and even the wives of a creditor are well
satisfied to receive the earnings of these poor creatures. If a debt be
contracted by an unmarried man or woman, and he or she marry
afterwards, the person so taken in marriage and all the offspring
become slave debtors. The worst features of the system are seen where a
Rajah is the creditor, for he is the last man to be willing to receive
payment of a debt and free the debtor, for the number of his followers,
even if they are but women and girls, increases his consequence, and
debtors when once taken into a Rajah's household are looked upon as
being as much a part of his property as his cattle or elephants. Mr.
Swettenham, the Assistant Colonial Secretary of the Straits
Settlements, writes that "in Perak the cruelties exercised toward
debtors are even exclaimed at by Malays in the other States."* In
Selangor, where it is said that slavery has been quietly abolished,
only five years ago the second son of that quiet-looking Abdul Samat
killed three slave debtors for no other reason than that he willed it;
and when two girls and a boy, slave debtors of the Sultan's, ran away,
this same bloodthirsty son caught them, took the boy into a field, and
had him krissed. His wife, saying she was going to bathe in the Langat
river, told the two girls to follow her to a log which lay in the water
a few yards from her house, where they were seized, and a boy follower
of her husband took them successively by the hair and held their heads
under the water with his foot till they were dead, when their corpses
were left upon the slimy bank. The Sultan, to do him justice, was very
angry when his son went to him and said, "I have thrown away those
children who ran away."
[*For Mr. Swettenham's _Report on Slavery in the Native States_, see
Appendix B.]
In Perak it has been the custom to hunt and capture the Jakun women and
make them and their children slaves.
Instances of cruelty have greatly diminished since British influence
has entered Perak, and I should think that Mr. Low will ere long
mature a scheme for the emancipation of all persons held in bondage.* I
heard of a curious case this morning. The aunt of a Malay policeman in
Larut, passing near a village, met an acquaintance, and taking a stone
from the roadside sat down upon it while she stopped to talk, and on
getting up forgot to remove it. An hour later a village child tripped
over the stone and slightly cut its forehead. The placing the stone in
the pathway was traced to the woman, who was arrested and sentenced to
pay a fine of $25, and being unable to pay it she and her children
became slave-debtors to the father of the child which had been hurt. In
this case, though Captain Speedy lent the policeman money wherewith to
pay his aunt's fine, the creditor repeatedly refused to receive it,
preferring to exercise his prerogative of holding the family as his
rightful slaves.
[*Such a scheme is now under consideration. See Appendix C.]
Slavery and polygamy, the usual accompaniments of Islamism, go far to
account for the decay of these States.
I wish it were possible to know to what extent the Malays are a
"religious" people as Moslems. That they are bigots and have
successfully resisted all attempts to convert them to Christianity
there is no doubt, as well as that they are ignorant and grossly
superstitious. Their prayers, so far as I can hear anything about them,
consist mainly of reiterated confessions of belief in the Divine unity,
and of simple appeals for mercy now and at the last day.
The pilgrimage to Mecca is made not only once, but twice and thrice by
those who can afford it, and at much cost earthen jars containing water
from the holy well of Zem-zem, the well said to have been shown to
Hagar in the wilderness, are brought home by the pilgrims for
themselves and their friends for use in the hour of death, when Eblis,
the devil, is supposed to stand by offering a bowl of the purest water
with which to tempt the soul to abjure its faith in the unity of God.
One of the declarations most commonly used is, "There is no God but God
alone, whose covenant is truth and whose servant is victorious. There
is no God but God without a partner. His is the kingdom, to Him be
praise, and He over all things is Almighty." There is a grand ring of
Old Testament truth about these words, though of a melancholy half
truth only.
The men who make the Mecca pilgrimage are not regarded by the English
who know them as a "holy lot"; in fact, they are said to lead idle
lives, and to "live like leeches on the toil of their fellow-men,"
inciting the people "to revolt or to make amok." Doubtless it adds to a
man's consequence for life to be privileged to wear the Arab costume
and to be styled Tuan hadji. Yet they may have been stirred to devotion
and contrition at the time as they circled the Kaabeh reciting such
special prayers as, "O God, I extend my hands to Thee, great is my
longing towards Thee. Oh accept Thou my supplications, remove my
hindrances, pity my humiliation, and mercifully grant me Thy pardon;"
and "O my God, verily I take refuge with Thee from idolatry, and
disobedience, and every hypocrisy, and from evil conversation, and evil
thoughts concerning property, and children, and family;" or, "O God, I
beg of Thee that faith which shall not fall away, and that certainty
which shall not perish, and the good aid of Thy prophet Mohammed--may
God bless and preserve him! O God, shade me with Thy shadow in that day
when there is no shade but Thy shadow, and cause me to drink from the
cup of Thy apostle Mohammed--may God bless him and preserve him! that
pleasant draught after which is no thirst to all eternity. O Lord of
honor and glory."*
[*I have preferred to give, instead of the translation of these prayers
which I obtained in Malacca, one introduced by Canon Tristram into a
delightful paper on Mecca in the _Sunday at Home_ for February, 1883.]
As I write, I look down upon Taipeng on "a people wholly given to
idolatry." This is emphatically "The dark Peninsula," though both
Protestants and Romanists have made attempts to win the Malays to
Christianity. It may be that the relentless crusade waged by the
Portuguese against Islamism has made the opposition to the Cross more
sullen and bigoted than it would otherwise have been. Christian
missionary effort is now chiefly among the Chinese, and by means of
admirable girls' schools in Singapore, Malacca, and Pinang.
In Taipeng five dialects of Chinese are spoken, and Chinamen constantly
communicate with each other in Malay, because they can't understand
each other's Chinese. They must spend large sums on opium, for the
right to sell it has been let for 4,000 pounds a year!
Mr. Maxwell tells me that the Malay proverbs are remarkably numerous
and interesting. To me the interest of them lies chiefly in their
resemblance to the ideas gathered up in the proverbs of ourselves and
the Japanese.*
[*Mr. Maxwell has since published a paper on Malay proverbs in the
Transactions of the Straits branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. I have
not been able to obtain it, but I understand that it contains a very
copious and valuable collection of Malay proverbial philosophy.]
Thus, "Out of the frying-pan into the fire" is, "Freed from the mouth
of the alligator to fall into the tiger's jaws." "It's an ill wind that
blows nobody good," is, "When the junk is wrecked the shark gets his
fill." "The creel tells the basket it is coarsely plaited" is
equivalent to "The kettle calling the pot black." "For dread of the
ghost to clasp the corpse," has a grim irony about it that I like.
Certain Scriptural proverbial phrases have their Malay counterparts.
Thus, the impossibility of the Ethiopian changing his skin or the
leopard his spots is represented by "Though you may feed a jungle-fowl
off a gold plate, it will make for the jungle all the same." "Casting
pearls before swine" by "What is the use of the peacock strutting in
the jungle?" "Can these stones become bread?" by "Can the earth become
grain?" "Neither can salt water yield sweet," by a very elaborate
axiom, "You may plant the bitter cucumber in a bed of sago, manure it
with honey, water it with molasses, and train it over sugar cane, but
it will be the bitter cucumber still," and "Clear water cannot be drawn
from a muddy fountain."
Some of their sayings are characteristic. In allusion to the sport of
cock-fighting, a coward is called "a duck with spurs." A treacherous
person is said to "sit like a cat, but leap like a tiger;" and of a
chatterer it is said, "The tortoise produces a myriad eggs and no one
knows it; the hen lays one and tells the whole word." "Grinding pepper
for a bird on the wing" is regarded as equivalent to "First catch you
hare before you cook it." "To plant sugar-cane on the lips" is to be
"All things to all men." Fatalism is expressed by a saying, "Even the
fish which inhabit the seventh depth of the sea sooner or later enter
the net." "Now it is wet, now it is fine," is a common way of saying
that a day of revenge is not far off. Secrecy is enjoined by the
cynical axiom, "If you have rice, hide it under the unhusked grain."
"The last degree of stinginess is not to disturb the mildew," is a neat
axiom; and "The plantain does not bear fruit twice," tells that the
Malays have an inkling that "There is a tide in the affairs of men,"
etc.
I have found it very interesting to be the guest of a man who studies
the Malays as sympathetically as Mr. Maxwell does. I hope he will not
get promotion too soon!*
[*As I copy this letter I hear that Mr. Maxwell has been removed to a
higher and more highly paid post, but that he leaves the Malays with
very sincere regret, and that they deeply deplore his loss, because they
not only liked but trusted him. During the time in which he was
Assistant Resident, and living in the midst of a large Chinese
population, it was necessary to be very firm, and at times almost
severely firm, but the Chinese have shown their appreciation of official
rectitude by presenting him with a gorgeous umbrella of red silk,
embroidered with gold, which they call "A ten-thousand-man umbrella,"
i.e., an offering from a community which is not only unanimous in making
it, but counts at least that number of persons.]