question and then, before he had a chance to speak, say: "_Jângan
fîkir--jawâb ya tîdak_. _Sahya bûlih fîkir_. (Don't think--answer
yes or no. I'll do the thinking)." Then he would generally admit
immediately that he didn't know, but he would always offer to bring
his brother or some other person that he thought might know. It is a
trait that makes business relations between the whites and the
natives difficult, and is to a large degree responsible for the fact
that much of the business in the Archipelago is done through the
Chinese. The Chinese have sufficient patience and understanding to
deal with the Malays, and they know how to make them work.
There are two distinct classes of Malay: the _Orang Ulu_, living in
the jungle, and the _Orang Laut_, living on the coast. Through their
association with the Chinese merchants, some of the latter develop
into clever dealers, but for the most part they are content to spend
their lives in loafing. They work when they need money, but they
need so little of it that they can afford to idle along through life.
When the supply of food runs low, they put out in their boats at
daybreak and return at sundown with fish. These are sorted and left
to dry, afterward sorted again, according to their market value, and
sold to the Chinese, who ship them in palm-leaf baskets to Singapore.
Then the Malays have finished their work for another month or so.
Often the merchant advances money for future delivery, and the Malays
find themselves obliged to work for long periods to keep from being
punished for debt. That is a favorite method of making them work.
They consider themselves gentlemen and despise the Chinese as
pig-eating heathens. If they must submit to working for the Chinese
merchants, they have the satisfaction of watching the coolies do most
of the hard labor while they spend their days at games.
The day's routine while I stayed in Palembang with the old hadji was
simple and pleasant. I lived with him and his first wife--he had
three others. We rose early and went for a swim in the river, and
then, squatting on the floor and eating with our fingers, we
breakfasted on fish and rice. After breakfast, the hadji and I would
stretch out on our mats and smoke and talk until my servant came to
prepare my lunch. A Malay eats but two meals a day--always rice and
fish--but I found that two weren't enough for me. After lunch I
slept through the heat of the day, with the thermometer climbing up
to about 125°. Then, when evening came, Palembang stirred into life.
The Malays liked games and they were continually after me to show
them some new kind of kindergarten pastime. It made no difference
whether it was tag or diving into buckets of treacle after money; if
it was a game, they liked it. Some of them knew how to play chess
and they gave whole days and nights to it. They are especially fond
of gambling, and they repeatedly lose all their money and borrow from
the kind merchant, with the result that, to make good their debts,
they spend weeks in fishing.
Occasionally I went to the Dutch quarter to seek a few hours of
companionship with white people, but I got little satisfaction out of
these visits because I could speak better Malay than Dutch, and at
Palambang there were few people who knew English. The white people
could not understand why I preferred living with the natives, and
some of them looked down on me for it. However, that fact did not
trouble me, because I knew what I wanted and I was on the way to
getting it. With the hadji I learned the Malay language rapidly, and
before long I knew the natives far better than the average white man
who goes to work in the Archipelago. For the most part, the whites
make no effort to understand them and are thus largely responsible
for the troubles that arise. In recent years, the attitude of the
colonial governments has changed for the better and there have been
fewer disturbances.
The natives came to have confidence in me, especially after the
capture of the python, and accepted me as a friend. Often during the
evening, when the hadji and I sat talking on the veranda, thirty or
forty natives would squat near us, listening to the conversation. If
the hadji or I cracked a joke, they would laugh uproariously--not
that they understood what had been said, but simply because they
wanted to do the proper thing.
The hadji's nephew, Ali, became my devoted servant. He was about
twenty years old and far more intelligent than the average; also he
was brave and resourceful--qualities that made him my most valuable
aid until he was killed during one of our expeditions several years
later.
When I went to Singapore with the python, I took Ali with me, and for
weeks after, he entertained the natives of Palembang--and me--with
his stories of what he had seen and done. It was an excellent
example of the feats that Malay imagination can perform.
In Singapore I found an agent of Cross, of Liverpool, of whom I have
spoken, and sold the snake to him for $300 (Mexican), which was
considered a banner price. I was glad to have the opportunity of
making myself known to the agent, because I foresaw future
commissions. He, like many others, was tired of doing business with
Mahommed Ariff, who took every possible advantage of his customers,
and he was pleased to find a white man in the field of collecting.
We re-crated the python and shipped him off to Liverpool, after
feeding him twelve ducks each day for five days. With that
stomachful, he could last out the entire voyage and arrive in England
with a good appetite.
It was difficult to get the Malays from the coast to go up into the
jungle. They fear it and have superstitions about the _hantu_ that
live there. Most of the men refused point-blank when I asked them to
accompany me, and others thought of various things they had to do at
Palembang. Ali was willing, however, and he developed into an expert
jungle-man. Boatmen from the coast poled us up the rivers, but they
returned to the coast immediately because they were unwilling to
remain away from their families.
It was after my return to Palembang that I became acquainted with the
inland of Sumatra and with the Orang Ulu, who are quite different
from their brothers on the coast. They are more industrious and have
not lost their simplicity and honesty by coming into contact with
Chinese business methods. They received us kindly and I had no
difficulty in making friends with them. During the next year I spent
much of my time inland, in hunting and fishing, and I discovered that
Sumatra was not the field for collecting that I had expected it to
be. But it served my purposes of learning the language and becoming
acquainted with the people quite as well as any other part of the
Archipelago would have done; and I was too busy studying jungle-craft
from the Orang Ulu to think of leaving. Ali, who was always with me,
was an invaluable aid. He was a first-rate spear-thrower, but he
wanted to be a good shot. He took great pride in my 50-110 express
gun, which he carried behind me. He had a trait peculiar in
Malays--he was always busy. And he spent a great deal of his energy
in cleaning and polishing the gun, hoping for the great reward of
being allowed to shoot it. Eventually he became a good marksman.
The other servant who accompanied me on my trips into the jungle was
a Chinese coolie. He had been my rickshaw boy and I promoted him to
the position of cook and store-keeper. Ali was intensely jealous of
him but they worked well together.
Though the natives made a sport of spear-throwing, they had given
over that method of hunting. They were armed with guns that I
honestly believe dated back to Revolutionary times--old,
muzzle-loading flintlocks. Where they got them I have never been
able to discover. They were fascinated by my 50-110, of course, and,
when Ali cleaned it, they squatted about him, wide-eyed. Whenever I
saw a native about to shoot his old muzzle-loader, I yelled to him to
wait until I got well behind, because the thing sometimes exploded.
It was a wonder to me that it didn't always explode. Except when he
was after small game, a native loaded his gun nearly to the end of
the muzzle with powder before putting in the wads and a huge slug of
metal. When he pulled the trigger, he closed his eyes and flinched
because the recoil always knocked him flat. But he expected that and
cheerfully picked himself up from the ground with the question, "Did
I hit it?" And often he did hit it--if the barrel did not explode.
I have seen some of the natives with ordinary iron pipe fitted on
their guns to replace the barrels that had not been able to stand the
strain.
I learned in the jungle that the hunter must always be on the lookout
for the unexpected. At first it was difficult for me to distinguish
between all the sights and sounds and to interpret each of them, but
I soon learned under the tuition of the natives. One great danger
came from the leopards, both spotted and black, who lie along the
limbs of trees and spring without warning. A tiger slinks away when
disturbed in the daytime, but a leopard almost always stands his
ground and springs as one passes beneath him. And he can do more
biting and scratching in one minute than a tiger can in three or four
minutes.
Ali's alertness saved me one day from a terrible mauling, if not from
death. We were breaking through the jungle on our way to some traps;
Ali shouted and pushed me to one side, shoving my gun into my hands.
I looked up, setting my gun, just as a black leopard sprang. Ali's
spear whizzed by my head, I fired, catching the animal in mid-air
squarely in the chest with an explosive bullet. Ali's spear hit him
in the side. I took it as a good lesson in carefulness. It was well
enough to be on the alert for the animal I was trailing, but it was
also important to be on the alert for the animal that might be
trailing me.
A favorite native method of hunting is with birdlime, which is a
mucilage made from the gum of a tree. In catching tigers or
leopards, the hunter spreads out the birdlime where they will pass
and carefully covers it with leaves. Immediately after a cat animal
has put his foot in the stuff, he becomes so enraged and helpless
that he is easily captured. It is very much like putting butter on a
house cat's paws to keep him busy until he becomes accustomed to a
new home. The tiger or leopard that steps in birdlime doesn't step
gracefully out of it and run away; he tries to bite the stuff from
his feet and then he gets it on his face. When he tries to rub it
off, he plasters it over his eyes. Finally, when he is thoroughly
covered with it, he is so helpless that without much danger he can be
put into a cage; and there he spends weeks in working patiently to
remove the gum from his fur. Birds and monkeys are captured in
birdlime smeared on the limbs of trees; they stay in it until some
one goes up and pulls them out.
Another way of capturing small monkeys is by means of a sweetened rag
in a bottle. The bottle is covered with green rattan and tied to a
tree. The monkey puts his hand through the neck and grabs the rag.
He cannot pull his hand out while it is doubled up with the rag in
it, and he hasn't sense enough to let go. There he sticks, fighting
with the bottle, until the hunter comes along and, by pressing the
nerves in his elbow, forces him to open his hand and leave the rag
for the next monkey.
We snared and trapped many small animals and occasionally built
pit-traps for tapirs. The natives sometimes used pits for marsh
elephants, but I have never seen elephants captured in them without
being injured. They are so heavy that they hurt themselves in
falling.
The marsh elephants in Sumatra are not worth the trouble of
capturing, since they are weaker, shorter lived and less intelligent
than the other breeds. They bring a low price, and consequently only
the babies, which can be handled and transported easily, ever reach
the market. The usual procedure among the natives is to shoot the
mother and take the baby. It is little like the real game of
elephant hunting as I found it later in Trengganu and Siam.
Dynamiting for fish is a great sport among the Malays. It is done,
of course, with the maximum chatter and excitement. The natives line
the banks of the stream while the dynamite is dropped; then they rush
off, some in boats and some of them swimming, to collect the fish
that come to the surface.
Drugging fish is another method of capturing them wholesale without
much trouble or work. For this purpose the natives use a mixture of
lime and the sap from the roots of a tuba tree. They first warn the
villages down-stream so that the people will not drink any of the
water; then they pour out the white liquid. It spreads over the
stream, making the fish _mâbok_ (drunk), as the Malays say. They
rise to the surface and are gathered into boats.
[Illustration: "Since the monkey cannot pull his hand out of the
bottle while it is doubled up and he hasn't sense enough to let go,
he sticks there until the hunter comes along."]
Except for such annoyances as insects and leeches, which fastened on
my skin as I walked through the jungle, those days in Sumatra were
delightful. We hunted, fished and played games; there was nothing to
worry about and little work to do. I was accepted by the natives as
one of them. I wore a _sârong_ over my trousers, and I shouldn't
have worn the trousers if my skin had not been so sensitive to the
insects. And, of course, I had shoes--the great barrier between
castes. The Malays of the coast towns sometimes, but not often, wear
shoes, and even then it is more a matter of showing-off than of being
comfortable. I did everything possible to minimize the differences
between us because I wanted to know them as they were, not as they
thought I wanted them to be. They rapidly lost their
self-consciousness and treated me simply as a companion who knew more
than they knew--and who had a wonderful gun and a kit of medicine.
In jungle countries white men are always supposed to possess great
knowledge of medicines and curing, and I was often called upon to act
as doctor. At first the Malays showed some hesitancy at accepting
the _ôrang pûteh ûbat_ (the white man's medicine), but gradually they
became less shy. During my circus days I had acquired a knowledge of
first-aid work, and in the jungle I became quite proficient in
patching people up. They believed that most ailments could be cured
by their own doctors, who heal by magic, but they were glad to have
me prescribe for them when magic failed to work.
The Malay doctor is supposed to be favored by a spirit, and a _bâtu
bintang_ (star stone) is given to him while he sleeps. In other
words, he is made and not born a doctor. His bâtu bintang is just
one of the charms with which he effects cures. He has a bâtu that is
a petrified part of a Sembilan fish. Water in which this has been
soaked is given to the patient to drink or is rubbed on the part
affected. Other charms are the _bâtu lintar_ (thunderbolt), which is
rubbed wherever pain is felt; another bâtu, also a thunderbolt, which
is a piece of crystal; a bâtu that is part of the backbone of some
animal; one that is another piece of crystal; and, finally, the
pelican stone. This last is the most highly prized of all. It
secures the magic presence and coöperation of a spirit that dwells in
the pelican. When the doctor is seeking to enter the spirit world in
search of the soul of the sick person, this spirit ensures to him a
swift passage there and back. The crystal stone is indispensable in
discovering where the wandering soul of the sick person is in hiding
and for detecting the spirit who is causing the sickness. And the
backbone bâtu cures dysentery, indigestion and consumption.
In practicing medicine for the benefit of the natives, I worked out
one theory in regard to leprosy, which is a fairly common ailment in
the Archipelago. I asked myself why, since a snake sheds its skin, a
man who is afflicted with disease should not be able to do the same
thing.
In Singapore there was a rich Chinese leper, known as Ong Si Chou,
who asked me repeatedly why I did not bring him some new remedy for
his disease. Since he had a large household of servants who took
care of him, and his own carriages and rickshaws when he traveled, he
was allowed to live untroubled by the authorities; but he was very
unhappy, because he had tried all the remedies of the native doctors
and was steadily growing worse. At last I told him that I had
something that might help. He asked me what it was but I would not
tell him. When he insisted, I answered, "Snakes."
"Uh-la!" he exclaimed, waving his arms in the air. Then I explained
my theory. The ability of a snake to shed his skin might be
transferred to a human being if he ate snakes; and if so, the person
would be able to shed his leprosy. Ong Si Chou did not care for the
idea at all, but I told him it was worth trying and I argued that a
snake is much cleaner than an eel. At last he consented, and I
furnished him with a number of small pythons, with the instructions
that they were to be killed and cleaned immediately before they were
eaten. He was to eat them raw with his rice.
I left Singapore soon after that, and, when I returned, I found that
Ong Si Chou had died. People thought it was a great joke on me
because my patient had not survived the treatment, but I am far from
being convinced that the cure will not work--or, at least, help to
throw off leprosy. Ong Si Chou was in the last stages of the
disease, and his case was not a fair test.
After living eighteen months with the Malays in Sumatra, I decided
that I was well enough equipped to leave and begin the work of
collecting wherever I could find the animals I wanted, I went to
Singapore and found that Ariff had been maligning me to his heart's
content I called upon him to see what he had to say for himself and
he prophesied dismal failure for all my plans. However, I engaged
passage on a coast steamer going northward, and stopped off at
Kelantan, Patani and Singgora, in Lower Siam. At those places I
gathered all the information I could about animals and made myself
known to dealers. I wanted to make trips to the interior, but to do
so I needed a special permit from Bangkok. Instead, I made
agreements with all the dealers that they were to send their animals
to me, and arranged with the captains and chinchus of the coast-boats
for the transportation of the crates. By offering to pay the freight
and give them a fair share of the profit, I cut off a large part of
Ariff's business.
On my return to Singapore, I found a letter from the director of the
Melbourne Zoölogical Society, suggesting that I come to Australia
with a consignment of animals. A few weeks later I arrived at
Melbourne with a black leopard, twenty-five small monkeys, two small
orang-outangs, a pair of civet cats and numerous other animals. Mr.
La Souef, the director, and his son, who had just been appointed
director of the zoölogical gardens at Perth, met me at the dock. His
son bought the entire consignment. The result of this visit was my
appointment as agent of the Australian zoölogical gardens. In return
for giving them first call on any animals that came into my hands, I
was given a retaining fee. The most important part of the agreement
was that the animals were to be shipped f.o.b. Singapore and that I
was thus released from all the risks of transportation.
It happened too often that animals died aboard ship, after weeks had
been spent in capturing them and bringing them to port, and this loss
was invariably borne by the dealer. Since the agreement with the
Australian zoölogical gardens was exactly what I wanted, I returned
to Singapore elated. Ariff was crestfallen when he heard the news,
and he became more crestfallen when I called on him and told him
about the commission I had received from various societies in
Australia. I did not want to have him as an enemy, and I foresaw
that there would be war between us unless we came to some sort of
terms. Consequently, I told him that I wanted to work with him, and
that we could do a great deal of business together if he would treat
me fairly. He considered the matter for a time, and then, when he
saw that I was getting much higher prices for animals than he, he
decided that I was right.
One of my Australian commissions was to secure for the New Gardens,
at Perth, a pair of tigers--male and female and unrelated. I sent
the word out among animal dealers, and, shortly after, I received a
cable from a Calcutta dealer named Rutledge, asking me to come at
once. I took the next boat to Calcutta and found that there were two
tigers up-country near Hazaribagh, a mica mining district about three
hundred miles northwest of Calcutta, off the line of the railroad.
I was warned that it was a dangerous country to go through and that
the people were thieves. It was suggested to me that I hire a native
of the locality to protect me. He would do all the stealing; he
could, they told me, but he would prevent the others from stealing.
The trip was made with a retinue of servants, cooks, bearers and
runners, each with his own little task. It was my first experience
with the caste system, and I was amazed at the number of people I had
to take with me. We traveled by the main road for two hundred miles;
then by a branch road to a place called Pachamba. The remainder of
the trip was made by ox-teams and bearers, along the line of the
government rest-houses erected for the use of officials visiting the
country.
We stopped at a rest-house about three miles from the village, and I
sent the boy on ahead to buy food for us and to get information about
the tigers. Then we engaged one of the local natives to act as guide
and guard. I was exhausted by the trip and soon after supper I went
to sleep.
A few hours after dark, I was awakened by the most unearthly yell I
have ever heard. I jumped up and called the boy I had brought from
Calcutta. He was trembling with fright and he said that he didn't
know what the noise meant. Remembering all the tales I had heard
about the people of this district, I ordered the boy to bar the doors
and windows and to lay out my guns. I was well armed with automatics
and revolvers and I prepared for a battle. Presently there came
another yell, answered on all sides of us. With my guns loaded and
ready, I sat there waiting. Every few minutes the yell was repeated,
and it seemed to be getting closer and closer. At last, however, in
spite of it, I fell asleep, exhausted.
I was awakened in the morning by the cook bringing my breakfast and
the jingling of the ankle bells of a mail-runner, who was passing the
house on his fifteen-mile run. After I had finished eating, the cook
returned with the native who had been hired to guard us. The native
salaamed and spoke to the boy, who acted as interpreter.
"What is he saying?" I asked the boy.
"He says that he is the head watchman and he wants to know if you
slept well with him watching over you." The yells that had kept me
up most of the night were the "All's well" of the watchmen. Much to
the amazement of the cook and the guard who had come to inquire after
my night's rest, I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard that I sat
down on the floor and put my head against my knees--I howled.
The guard was given a few rupees and told to keep his watchmen
farther away from the house the next night. To this day, when I
think of myself sitting up all night, dead tired and fighting off
mosquitoes, while my guards became imaginary thieves about to attack
me, I laugh.
The headman of the village arrived with several natives and I went
with them to inspect the tigers--two beautifully marked animals. I
closed the bargain immediately and made arrangements to recage the
tigers and haul them by ox-teams to Calcutta.
At Perth the directors of the New Gardens were so pleased with the
tigers that they sent me a good bonus for my trouble in securing
them. And my story about the thieves of Hazaribagh was the joke of
the year.