PREFACE (continued 7)

Each house in the kampong seemed to have all its inmates at home doing nothing but chewing betel-nut. In their home deshabilles the men wear only the sarong, and a handkerchief knotted round their heads, and I think that the women also dispense with an upper garment, for I noticed at the approach of two strange men they invariably huddled another sarong over their shoulders, heads, and faces, holding it so as to conceal all but their eyes. The young children, as usual, were only clothed in silver ornaments. This neglige dress in the privacy of their homes is merely a matter of custom and climate, for these people are no more savages than we are. These glimpses of a native tropic life, entirely uninfluenced by European civilization, are most interesting.

In these kampongs the people have music, singing, story-telling, games, and religious ceremonies, perhaps the most important of all. I have not heard that the Perak Malays differ in their religious observances from the other Malays of the Peninsula. It seems that before "a parish" can be formed there must be forty-four houses. The kampong may then have a properly constituted mosque in which every Friday the religious officer recites an oration in praise of God, the Prophet, and his vicegerents, from the steps of a rostrum. The same person performs the marriage ceremony. Another official performs sacrificial duties, and recites the service for the dead after the corpse has been lowered into the grave. There is an inferior official of the mosque who keeps it clean, and reports to the Imaum absentees from public worship, goes round the villages to give notice of public prayer, assists at burials, and beats the great drum of the mosque. The Imaum appears to be the highest functionary, and performs what are regarded as the most sacred rites of Islamism. There are regular fees paid to these persons for their services, and at sacrifices they receive part of the victim. I was afraid of going into any of the mosques. They are all conical buildings of wood and attap raised on wooden pillars, and are usually on small knolls a little way from the kampongs. They have no minarets, but the larger ones have a separate shed in which the drum or gong used for the call to prayer is kept.

Buffaloes are sacrificed on religious occasions, and at the births, circumcisions, marriages, and shaving of the heads of the children of wealthy people. The buffalo sacrificed for religious purposes must be always without blemish. Its bones must not be broken after death, neither must its horns be used for common purposes. It is slain near the mosque with solemn sacrificial ceremonies, and one-half is usually cooked and eaten on the spot by the "parishioners."

While I am on the subject of religious observances, I must tell you that I saw a Moslem funeral to-day from a respectful distance. The graves are decently placed together usually, though some of the pious rich have large isolated burial places. The grave is dug by rule—i.e., the digger continues his work till his ear and the surface are on a level. It is shaped like ours, with one important exception, that a chamber two feet high for the reception of the body is dug in the side.

The corpse, that of a man I believe, covered with a cloth and dressed in cotton clothing, was carried on a bier formed of two planks, with the male relations following. On reaching the grave the Imaum read a service in a monotonous tone, and then the body was lowered till it reached the level of the side chamber, in which it was placed, and inclosed with the planks on which it had been carried. Some leaves and flowers were then thrown in, and the grave was filled up, after which some water was sprinkled upon it, and a man, not the Imaum, sitting upon it, recited what the Singhalese said was a sort of confession of faith, turning toward Mecca. The relatives bowed in the same direction and then left the place, but on stated days afterward offerings of spices and flowers are made. It was reverential and decorous, perhaps even more so than the Buddhist funerals which I saw in Japan, but the tombs are not so carefully tended, and look more melancholy. The same dumpy, pawn-shaped pillars are placed at the head and feet of the raised mounds of earth which cover the graves, as in Malacca. It is believed that when the mourners have retired seven paces from the grave two angels enter upon inquisitorial functions. When death is seen to be approaching, the dying person is directed to repeat a short form of confession of his faith in the unity of God; and if he is unable, it is recited for him. The offices of washing and shrouding the dead are religious ceremonies, and are performed by one of the officials of the mosque. The influence of the great Prophet of Arabia is wonderfully enduring.

This letter, which began among sun-birds and butterflies, has got into a dismal groove, out of which I must rescue it, but it is difficult to give any consecutive account of anything when the fascinating Eblis murmurs ouf! ouf! sits on my writing book, takes my pen out of my hand, makes these scrawls which I fear will make my writing illegible, and claims constant attention.

The Royal Elephant is a noble animal. His docility is perfect. He climbed up and down places so steep that a good horse would have bungled at them, pulled down trees when he was told to do it, held others which were slanting dangerously across the track high above our heads till we had safely passed under them, lifted fallen trees out of his way, or took huge steps over them, and slid down a steep bank into the Perak with great dexterity. He was told to take a banana tree for his dinner, and he broke off the tough thick stem just above the ground as if it had been a stick, then neatly stripped the eight-foot leaves, and holding the thick end of each stalk under his foot, stripped off the whole leaf on each side of the midrib, and then, with the dexterity of a monkey peeling a banana, he peeled off the thick rind from the stem, and revelled in the juices of the soft inside. I was sitting on the ground in a place where there was scarcely room for him to pass, and yet he was so noble and gentle that I never thought of getting up, even though his ponderous feet just touched me, and I ate my lunch within the swing of his huge proboscis, but he stood quite still, except that he flapped his "ears" and squirted water over himself. Each elephant has his own driver, and there is quite a large vocabulary of elephant language. The mahout carried an invaluable knife-weapon, called a parang, broadest and heaviest at the point, and as we passed through the jungle he slashed to right and left to clear the track, and quite thick twigs fell with hardly an effort on his part.

After traveling for several hours we came upon a kampong under palms and nutmeg trees, and then dismounted and took our lunch, looking out from deep shadow down upon the beautiful river lying in the glory of the noonday sun, its banks bright with birds and butterflies. The mahout was here among friends, and the salutations were numerous. If nose-rubbing as a form of greeting is practiced I have never seen it. What I have seen is that when one man approaches another, or is about to pay a visit, he joins his hands as if in supplication, and the other touches them on both sides, and afterward raises his hands to his lips and forehead. It is a courteous looking mode of salutation.

At this point the Singhalese said that the natives told him that it was possible to ford the Perak, but that the mahout said that the elephant was a "diver," and would probably dive, but that there was no danger to us except of getting very wet. I liked the prospect of a journey on the other side, so we went down a steep bank into the broad, bright, river, and putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the air, and so we went for some distance up the clear, shining river, with the tropic sun blazing down upon it, with everything that could rejoice the eye upon its shores, with little beaches of golden sands, and above the forest the mountains with varying shades of indigo coloring.

There would have been nothing left to wish for if you had been there to see, though you would have tried to look as if you saw an elephant moving submerged along a tropical river every day with people of three races on his back!!

The Singhalese said, "I'm going to take you to Koto-lamah; no European has been there since the war. I've never been there, nor the Resident either." I have pored over blue books long enough to know that this is a place which earned a most unenviable notoriety during the recent troubles, and is described as "a stronghold of piracy, lawlessness, and disaffection." As we were making a diagonal crossing of the Perak, the Singhalese said, "A few months ago they would have been firing at us from both sides of the river." It was a beautiful view at that point, with the lovely river in its windings, and on the top of the steep bank a kampong of largish houses under palms and durions. A good many people assembled on the cliff, some with muskets and some with spears, and the Singhalese said, "I wish we had not come;" but as the elephant scrambled up the bank the people seemed quite friendly, and I dismounted and climbed up to a large house with a very open floor, on which fine mats were laid in several places. There were many women and children in the room when I went in, and one of the former put a fine mat over a rice sack for me. Presently the room filled up with people, till there were fifty-nine seated in circles on the floor, but some of the men remained standing, one a thorough villain in looks, a Hadji, with a dirty green turban and a red sarong. The rest of the men wore handkerchiefs and sarongs only.

These people really did look much like savages. They all carried parangs, or the short kris called a golo, and haying been told that the Malays were disarmed, I was surprised to see several muskets, a rifle, and about thirty spears on the wall. So I found myself in the heart of what has been officially described as "a nest of robbers and murderers," "the centre of disturbance and disaffection," etc. To make it yet more interesting, on inquiring whose house it was, the name of a notorious "rebel" leader was mentioned, and one of the women, I was told, is the principal wife or rather widow of the Maharajah Lela, who was executed for complicity in the assassination of Mr. Birch. However, though as a Briton I could not have been a welcome visitor, they sent a monkey for two cocoa-nuts, and gave me their delicious milk; and when I came away they took the entrance ladder from one of the houses to help me to mount the elephant.

Mr. Low was at first displeased that I had been to Koto-lamah, and said that my escort was "ignorant and foolish" for taking me; but now he says that though he would not have taken the responsibility of sending me, he is glad that the thing was done, as it affords a proof such as he has not yet had of the complete pacification of the district; but, he added, it would appear somewhat odd that the first European to test the disposition of the Koto-lamah people should be a lady.

Leaving this large kampong we traveled by a much-grown-up elephant track, needing the constant use of the parang and the strength and wisdom of the elephant to make it passable, saw several lairs and some recent tiger tracks, crossed a very steep hill, and, after some hours of hard riding, came down upon the lovely Perak, which we crossed in a "dugout" so nearly level with the water that at every stroke of the paddle of the native who crouched in the bow the water ran in over the edge. We landed at the village of Kwala Kangsa

"In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening,"

in which the magnified purple mountains were piled like Alps against the flaming clouds. By the river bank lay the Dragon boat and the square bamboo floating bath, through the side of which Mr. Birch was mortally wounded.

On landing we met a very bright intelligent-looking young Malay with a train of followers, a dandy almost, in white trousers, short red sarong, black baju with gold buttons, gold watchguard, and red head dress. The expression of his face was keen and slightly scornful. This is Rajah Dris, a judge, and the probable successor to the Perak throne. The present Resident thinks highly both of his character and his abilities, and he is very popular among his countrymen. He walked with us as far as the mosque, and I heard him ask questions about me. The Mussulmen of the village, several of them being Hadjis, were assembling for worship, lounging outside the mosque till the call to prayer came. Ablutions before worshiping are performed in floating baths in the river. The trade of Kwala Kangsa seems in the hands of the Chinese, with a few Klings among them, and they have a row of shops.

LETTER XX (Continued)

A Joyous Welcome—A Severe Mortification—The British Resident—Daily Visitors—Rajah Dris—A Tipsy Ape—Marriage Ceremonies—Marriage Festivities—Malay Children—The Rajah Muda Yusuf—A Dreary Funeral—Fascinating Companionship—A Cocoa-Nut Gatherer—The Argus Pheasant—An Opium Wreck—Rhinoceros Horns—Elephant-Taming—Petrifying Influences of Islamism—A Dwindling Race

February 17.—I was very glad that yesterday was Sunday, so that I had a quiet day, for nearly twelve hours of jungle riding on an elephant makes one very stiff and sleepy. Three days of solitude, meals in the company of apes, elephant excursions, wandering about alone, and free, open air, tropical life in the midst of all luxuries and comforts, have been very enchanting. At night, when the servants had retired to their quarters and the apes to the roof, and I was absolutely alone in the bungalow, the silent Oriental sentries motionless below the veranda counting for nothing, and without a single door or window to give one the feeling of restraint, I had some of the "I'm monarch of all I survey" feeling; and when drum beat and bugle blast, and the turning out of the Sikh guard, indicated that the Resident was in sight, I felt a little reluctant to relinquish the society of animals, and my "solitary reign," which seemed almost "ancient" also.

When Mr. Low, unattended as he always is, reached the foot of the stairs the retriever leapt down with one bound, and through the air over his head fled Mahmoud and Eblis, uttering piercing cries, the siamang, though keeping at a distance, adding to the jubilations, and for several minutes I saw nothing of my host, for these creatures, making every intelligent demonstration of delight, were hanging round him with their long arms; the retriever nearly wild with joy, but frantically jealous; all the creatures welcoming him more warmly than most people would welcome their relations after a long absence. Can it be wondered at that people like the society of these simple, loving, unsophisticated beings?

Mr. Low's arrival has inflicted a severe mortification on me, for Eblis, who has been absolutely devoted to me since I rescued him from Mahmoud, has entirely deserted me, takes no notice of me, and seems anxious to disclaim our previous acquaintance! I have seen children do just the same thing, so it makes the kinship appear even closer. He shows the most exquisite devotion to his master, caresses him with his pretty baby hands, murmurs ouf in the tenderest of human tones, and sits on his shoulder or on his knee as he writes, looking up with a strange wistfulness in his eyes, as if he would like to express himself in something better than a monosyllable.

This is a curious life. Mr. Low sits at one end of the veranda at his business table with Eblis looking like his familiar spirit, beside him. I sit at a table at the other end, and during the long working hours we never exchange one word. Mahmoud sometimes executes wonderful capers, the strange, wild, half-human face of the siamang peers down from the roof with a half-trustful, half-suspicious expression; the retriever lies on the floor with his head on his paws, sleeping with one eye open, always on the watch for a coveted word of recognition from his master, or a yet more coveted opportunity of going out with him; tiffin and dinner are silently served in the veranda recess at long intervals; the sentries at the door are so silently changed that one fancies that the motionless blue turbans and scarlet coats contain always the same men; in the foreground the river flows silently, and the soft airs which alternate are too feeble to stir the over-shadowing palm-fronds or rustle the attap of the roof. It is hot, silent, tropical. The sound of Mr. Low's busy pen alone breaks the stillness during much of the day; so silent is it that the first heavy drops of the daily tropical shower on the roof have a startling effect.

Mr. Low is greatly esteemed, and is regarded in the official circles of the Settlements as a model administrator. He has had thirty years' experience in the East, mainly among Malays, and has brought not only a thoroughly idiomatic knowledge of the Malay language, but a sympathetic insight into Malay character to his present post. He understands the Malays and likes them, and has not a vestige of contempt for a dark skin, a prejudice which is apt to create an impassable gulf between the British official and the Asiatics under his sway. I am inclined to think that Mr. Low is happier among the Malays and among his apes and other pets than he would be among civilized Europeans!

He is working fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. I think that work is his passion, and a change of work his sole recreation. He devotes himself to the promotion of the interests of the State, and his evident desire is to train the native Rajahs to rule the people equitably. He seems to grudge every dollar spent superfluously on the English establishment, and contents himself with this small and old-fashioned bungalow. In this once disaffected region he goes about unarmed, and in the daytime the sentries only carry canes. His manner is as quiet and unpretending as can possibly be, and he speaks to Malays as respectfully as to Europeans, neither lowering thereby his own dignity nor theirs. Apparently they have free access to him during all hours of daylight, and as I sit writing to you or reading, a Malay shadow constantly falls across my paper, and a Malay, with silent, cat-like tread glides up the steps and appears unannounced in the veranda, on which Mr. Low at once lays aside whatever he is doing, and quietly gives himself to the business in hand. The reigning prince, the Rajah Muda Yusuf, and Rajah Dris, are daily visitors; the former brings a troop of followers with him, and they remain outside, their red sarongs and picturesque attitudes as they lounge in the shade, giving to the place that "native" air which everywhere I love, at least where "natives" are treated as I think that they ought to be, and my requirements are pretty severe!

I am painfully aware of the danger here, as everywhere, of forming hasty and inaccurate judgments, and of drawing general conclusions from partial premises, and on my present tour there is the added risk of seeing things through official spectacles; but still certain things lie on the surface, and a traveler must be very stupid indeed if he does not come to an approximately just conclusion concerning them. As, for instance, it is easy to see that far in the interior of the Malay Peninsula, in regions rarely visited by Europeans, themselves without advisers, and away from the influence of public opinion, dealing with weak rulers to whom they represent preponderating brute force in the last resort, the position of "Resident" is very much what the individual man chooses to make it. Nor is it difficult to perceive whether the relations between the English official and the natives are hearty and cordial, or sullen and distrustful, or whether the Resident makes use of his position for purposes of self-aggrandizement, and struts tempestuously and swaggeringly before the Malays, or whether he devotes his time and energies to the promotion of prosperity, good order, and progress, in a firm and friendly spirit.

After a very quiet day we went at sunset, to see Rajah Dris, not taking the dog. The trifling matter of the dog being regarded as an abomination is one of the innumerable instances of the ingrained divergence between Moslem and Christian feeling. Rajah Dris lives in a good house, but it is Europeanized, and consequently vulgarized. He received us very politely on the stairs, and took us into a sitting- room in which there were various ill-assorted European things. His senior wife was brought in, a dull, heavy-looking woman, a daughter of the Rajah Muda Yusuf, and after her a number of slave women and babies, till the small room was well filled. The Rajah hospitably entertained us with tea, milk, and preserved bananas; but I noticed with regret that the white table-cloth was much soiled, and that the china and glass were in very bad taste. The house and its equipments are a distressing contrast to those of the Datu Bandar in Sungei Ujong, who adheres closely to Malay habits. Rajah Dris sent a servant the whole way back with us, carrying a table lamp.

to-day the mercury was at 90 degrees for several hours. The nights, however, are cool enough for sleep. I have lately taken to the Malay custom of a sleeping mat, and find it cooler than even the hardest mattress. I did not sleep much, however, for so many rats and lizards ran about my room. These small, bright-eyed lizards go up the walls in search of flies. They dart upon the fly with very great speed, but just as you think that they are about to swallow him they pause for a second or two and then make the spring. I have never seen a fly escape during this pause, which looks as if the lizard charmed or petrified his victim. The Malays have a proverb based upon this fact: "Even the lizard gives the fly time to pray." There were other noises; for wild beasts, tigers probably, came so near as to scare the poultry and horses, and roared sullenly in the neighborhood for a long time, and the sentries challenged two people, after which I heard a messenger tell Mr. Low of a very distressing death.

February. 18.—Major Swinburne and Captain Walker arrived in the morning, and we had a grand tiffin at twelve, and Mahmoud was allowed to sit on the table, and he ate sausages, pommeloe, bananas, pine-apple, chicken and curry, and then seizing a long glass of champagne, drank a good deal before it was taken from him. If drunkenness were not a loathsome human vice, it would have been most amusing to see it burlesqued by this ape. He tried to seem sober and to sit up, but could not, then staggered to a chair, trying hard to walk steadily, and nodding his head with a would-be witty but really obfuscated look; then, finding that he could not sit up, he reached a cushion and lay down very neatly, resting his head on his elbow and trying to look quite reasonable, but not succeeding, and then he fell asleep.

After tiffin a Rajah came and asked me to go with him to his house, and we walked down with his train of followers and my Malay attendant. It was a very nice house, with harmonious coloring and much deep shadow. It soon filled with people. There were two women, but not having an interpreter, I could not tell whether they were the chief's wives or sisters. He showed me a number of valuable krises, spears and parangs, and the ladies brought sherbet and sweetmeats, and they were altogether very jolly, and made me pronounce the Malay names of things, and the women laughed heartily when I pronounced them badly. They showed me some fine diamonds, very beautifully set in that rich, red "gold of Ophir" which makes our yellow western gold look like a brazen imitation, as they evidently thought, for they took off my opal ring, and holding the gold against their own ornaments, made gestures of disapproval. I think that opals were new to them, and they were evidently delighted with their changing colors.

Mussulman law is very stringent as to some of the rights of wives. In Malay marriage contracts it is agreed that all savings and "effects" are to be the property of husband and wife equally, and are to be equally divided in case of divorce. A man who insists on divorcing his wife not only has to give her half his effects, but to repay the sum paid as the marriage portion. It appears that polygamy is rare, except among the chiefs.

Marriage is attended with elaborate arrangements among these people, and the female friends of both parties usually make the "engagement," after which the bridegroom's friends go to the bride's father, talk over the dowry, make presents, and pay the marriage expenses. Commonly, especially among the higher classes, the bridegroom does not see the lady's face until the marriage day. Marriage is legalized by a religious ceremony, and then if the wife be grown up her husband takes her to his own home. Girls are married at fourteen or fifteen, and although large families are rare, they look old women at forty.

On the day before the marriage expenses are paid by the bridegroom, the bride-elect has her teeth filed. It is this process which gives the Malay women, who are very pretty as children, their very repulsive look. It produces much the same appearance of wreck and ruin as blackening the teeth does in Japan, and makes a smile a thing to be dreaded. Young girls are not allowed to chew betel, which stains badly, and have white, pearly teeth, but these are considered like the teeth of animals. The teeth are filed down to a quarter of their natural length by means of a hard Sumatran stone, or fine steel file. The operation lasts about an hour, and the gums continue swelled and painful for some days. After they have recovered, the blackening of the teeth by means of betel chewing is accelerated by means of a black liquid obtained by burning cocoa-nut shells on iron, Three days before the marriage ceremony henna is applied to the nails of the hands and feet, and also to the palms of the hands, and the hair is cut short over the forehead, something in the style of a "Gainsborough fringe."

The wedding feast is a very grand affair. Goats and buffaloes are killed, and the friends and relatives of the bride send contributions of food. The wedding decorations are family property, and descend from mother to daughter, and both bride and bridegroom are covered with flowers, jewels, and gay embroidery. The bride sits in state and receives the congratulatory visits of her relatives and friends, and after the actual ceremony is over, the newly-married couple sit on a seat raised above the guests, and the sirih and betel-nut are largely chewed. There are "floral decorations," music, and feasting; all strangers are made welcome; the young men spend the afternoon in games, among which cock-fighting usually plays a prominent part, and the maidens amuse themselves in a part of the house screened off from the rest of the guests by curtains, and made very gay.

As religious ceremonies attend upon marriage and death, so on the birth of a child the father puts his mouth to the ear of the infant and solemnly pronounces what is called the Azan or "Allah Akbar," the name of the one God being the first sound which is allowed to fall upon his ears on entering the world, as it is the last sound which he hears on leaving it. There is a form of prayer which is used at births, and another on the seventh day afterward, when the child's head is shaved. The sage femme remains for forty days with the mother, who on the fortieth day makes the ceremonial purifications and prayers which are customary, and then returns to her ordinary duties. The child, as soon as it can speak, learns to recite prayers and passages from the Koran, and is very early grounded in the distinctive principles of Islam.

The children of both sexes are very pretty, but with strangers they are very shy and timid. They look very innocent, and are docile, gentle and obedient, spending much of their time in taming their pets and playing with them, and in playing games peculiar to their age. Except in one or two cases in Sungei Ujong, I have not seen a child with eye or skin disease, or any kind of deformity.

There have been Rajahs all day in the veranda, and their followers sitting on the steps, all received by Mr. Low with quiet courtesy, and regaled with tea or coffee and cigarettes. A short time ago the reigning prince, who does not appear to be a cypher, came with a great train of followers, some of them only wearing sarongs, a grandson, to whom he is much attached, and the deposed Sultan's two boys, of whom I told you before. They are in Malay clothing, and seem to have lost their vivacity, or at least it is in abeyance. Before I came here, I understood from many people that "His Highness" is very generally detested. So, also, says Sir Benson Maxwell in Our Malay Conquests. Major M'Nair in his amusing book on Perak says: "He is a man over middle age, and is described as being of considerable ability, feared and hated by many of the chiefs, and as being of a fierce and cruel disposition, but he was a proved man as to his loyalty" (to British interests), "and there being no desire on the part of the Government to annex the State of Perak, his appointment was the wisest course that, under the circumstances, could be pursued." This is all that the greatest apologist for British proceedings in Perak has to say.

I was not prepossessed in his favor before I came, for among other stories of his cruel disposition, I was told that it was "absolutely true" that three years ago he poured boiling water down the back of a runaway female slave who had been recaptured, and then put a red ant's nest upon it. If "piracy" is to be the term applied to levying blackmail, he was certainly a pirate, for he exacted a tenth of the cargo of every boat which passed up his river, a Rajah higher up doing the same thing. He is said to have a very strong character, to be grasping, and to be a "brute;" but Mr. Low gets on very well with him apparently. He is an elderly man, wearing a sort of fez on a shaven head. He has a gray mustache. His brow is a fine one, and his face has a look of force, but the lower part of it is coarse and heavy. He was fanning himself with his fez, and when I crossed the veranda and gave him a fan, he accepted it without the slightest gesture of thanks, as if I had been a slave. When Mr. Low told him that I had been at Koto-lamah, he said that the chief in whose house I had rested deserved to be shot, and ought to be shot. He and Mr. Low talked business for an hour; but all important matters are transacted in what is called a native council.

I wrote that I believed myself to be the only European in Kwala Kangsa, but I find that there was another at the time when I wrote thus—a young man of good family, who came out here seeking an appointment. He was sun-stricken three days ago, and violent fever and delirium set in, during the height of which he overpowered four Sikhs who were taking care of him, rushed out of doors, fell down exhausted, was carried home, and died at four in the morning, his last delirious dreams being of gambling and losing heavily.

The lamentable burial took place in the evening as the shadows fell. This sums up the story—a career of dissipation, death at twenty-one, a rough, oblong box, no one to be sorry. It made my heart ache for the mother, who would have given much to be where I was, and see "the dreary death train" move slowly to the dreary inclosure on a hill-top, where the grass grows rank and very green round a number of white wooden crosses, which mark the graves of the officers and soldiers who fell in 1876. The Union Jack was thrown over the coffin, which was carried by six Sikhs, and Mr. Low, Major Swinburne, Rajah Dris and some followers, and Sultan Abdullah's two boys, who had nothing better to do, followed it. By the time the grave was reached torches were required, and the burial service was read from my prayer-book. It was all sad and saddening.

The weather is still glorious, the winding Perak still mirrors in scarcely rippled blue the intensely blue sky, "never wind blows loudly," but soft airs rustle the trees. One could not lead a more tropical life than this, with apes and elephants about one under the cocoa-palms, and with the mercury ranging from 80 degrees to 90 degrees! Gorgeous, indeed, are the birds and butterflies and flowers; but often when the erythrina and the Poinciana regia are strewing the ground with their flaming blossoms, I think with a passionate longing of the fragile Trientalis Europae, of crimson-tipped lichens, of faint odors of half-hidden primroses, of whiffs of honey and heather from purple moorlands, and of all the homely, fragrant, unobtrusive flowers that are linked with you! I should like a chance of being "cold to the bone!"

I have wasted too much of my time to-day upon the apes. They fascinate me more daily. They look exactly like familiar demons, and certainly anyone having them about him two hundred years ago would have been burned as a wizard. When Mr. Low walks down the veranda, these two familiars walk behind him with a stealthy tread. He is having a business conversation just now with some Rajahs, whose numerous followers are standing and lying about, and Eblis is sitting on his shoulder with one arm round his neck, while Mahmoud sits on the table opening letters, and the siamang, sitting on the rafter, is looking down with an unpleasant look. Eblis condescends to notice me to-day, and occasionally sits on my shoulder murmuring "Ouf! ouf!" the sweet sound which means all varieties of affection and happiness. They say wah-wah distinctly, and scream with rage like children, but have none of the meaningless chatter of monkeys. It is partly their silence which makes them such very pleasant companions. At sunrise, however, like their forest brethren, they hail the sun for some minutes with a noise which I have never heard them make again during the day, loud and musical, as if uttered by human vocal organs, very clear and pleasant. Doubtless the Malays like Mr. Low all the better for his love of pets.

At lunch they were both, as usual, sitting at the table. I am still much afraid of Mahmoud, but Captain Walker is infatuated with him, and likes his rough, jolly manners, and his love of fun and rough play. As Assam was bringing me a cup of coffee this creature put out his long arm, and with his face brimming over with frolic, threw the coffee over the mat. Then he took up a long glass of beer and began to drink it eagerly, but as Mr. Low disapproved of his being allowed to get tipsy a second time, it was taken from him, upon which he took up the breast of a fricasseed chicken and threw it at the offender. The miscreant did every kind of ludicrous thing, finishing by pulling everyone to go out with him, as he always does at that hour; and when he had succeeded in getting us all out was in a moment at the top of a high tree, leaping from branch to branch, throwing himself on coffee shrubs below, swinging himself up again in a flash, leaping, bounding! a picture of agility, strength, and happiness. The usual morning gathering of Rajahs and their followers, with Klings and Sikhs, was there, and I suspect that they thought adult Europeans very foolish for being amused with these harum-scarum antics.

A follower had brought a "baboon," an ape or monkey trained to gather cocoa-nuts, a hideous beast on very long legs when on all fours, but capable of walking erect. They called him a "dog-faced baboon," but I think they were wrong. He has a short, curved tail, sable-colored fur darkening down his back, and a most repulsive, treacherous, and ferocious countenance. He is fierce, but likes or at all events obeys his owner, who held him with a rope fifty feet long. At present he is only half tame, and would go back to the jungle if he were liberated. He was sent up a cocoa-nut tree which was heavily loaded with nuts in various stages of ripeness and unripeness, going up in surly fashion, looking round at intervals and shaking his chain angrily. When he got to the top he shook the fronds and stalks, but no nuts fell, and he chose a ripe one, and twisted it round and round till its tenacious fibers gave way, and then threw it down and began to descend, thinking he had done enough, but on being spoken to he went to work again with great vigor, picked out all the ripe nuts on the tree, twisted them all off, and then came down in a thoroughly bad, sulky, temper. He was walking erect, and it seemed discourteous not to go and thank him for all his hard toil.

As I write I see a fascinating sight: three black apes sitting under the roof in such a position that I can only see their faces, and they are all leaning their chins on a beam, and with their wrinkled faces and gray beards are looking exactly like ——-. It is most interesting to be among wild beasts, which, though tame, or partly so, are not in captivity, and to see their great sagacity and their singular likeness and unlikeness to us. I could dispense with the reptiles, though. Last night there were seventeen lizards in my room and two in my slippers. During the profound stillness of about 3 A.M., a crowd, hooting, yelling, and beating clappers, passed not far off in the darkness, and there was a sound of ravaging and rending caused by a herd of elephants which had broken into the banana grounds.

Besides apes, elephants, dogs, and other pets, there are some fine jungle-fowls, a pheasant, a "fire-back," I think, and an argus pheasant of glorious beauty; but glorious is not quite the word either, for the hundred-eyed feathers of its tail are painted rather in browns than colors. These birds are under the charge of a poor Chinaman, who once had money, but has gone to complete ruin from opium-smoking. His frame is reduced to a skeleton covered with skin. I never saw such emaciation even in an advanced stage of illness.

Just now I saw Mahmoud and Eblis walk into my room, and shortly following them, I found that Mahmoud had drawn a pillow to the foot of the bed, and was lying comfortably with his head upon it, and that Eblis was lying at the other end. I do hope that you will not be tired of the apes. To me they are so intensely interesting that I cannot help writing about them. Eblis has been feverish for some days. I think he has never recovered from the thrashing he got the day I came. He is pining and growing very weak; he eats nothing but little bits of banana, and Mr. Low thinks he is sure to die. It is a curious fact that these apes, which are tamed by living with Europeans, acquire a great aversion to Malays.

February 19.—Eblis became much worse while I was out yesterday, and I fear will surely die. He can hardly hold anything in his cold, feeble hands, and eats nothing. He has a strangely human, faraway look, just what one sees in the eyes of children who have nearly done with this world.

The heat is much greater to-day, there is less breeze, and the mercury has reached 90 degrees, but in the absence of mosquitoes, and with pine-apples and bananas always at hand, one gets on very well. But mosquitoes do embitter existence and interfere with work. Apparently, people never become impervious to the poison, as I thought they did, and there is not a Malay in his mat hut, or a Chinese coolie in his crowded barrack, who has not his mosquito curtains; and I have already mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting of a hornet.

The jungle seems to be full of wild beasts, specially tigers, in this neighborhood, and the rhinoceros is not uncommon. Its horn is worth $15, but Rajah Muda Yusuf, who desires to have a monopoly of them, says that there are horns with certain peculiar markings which can be sold to the Chinese for $500* each to be powdered and used as medicine. Wild elephants are abundant, but, like the rhinoceros, they ravage the deep recesses of the jungle. All the tame elephants here, however, were once wild, including the fifty which, with swords, dragons, bells, krises with gold scabbards, and a few other gold articles, formed the Perak regalia. The herds are hunted with tame, steady elephants, and on a likely one being singled out, he is driven by slow degrees into a strong inclosure, and there attached by stout rattan ropes to an experienced old elephant, and fed on meager diet for some weeks, varied with such dainties as sugar-cane and sweet cakes. The captive is allowed to go and bathe, and plaster himself with mud, all the while secured to his tame companion, and though he makes the most desperate struggles for liberty, he always ends by giving in, and being led back to his fastenings in the corral. At times a man gets upon him, sits on his head, and walks upon his back. It is here generally about two years before an elephant is regarded as thoroughly broken in and to be trusted; and, as elsewhere, stories are told of elephant revenge and keepers being killed. A full-grown elephant requires about 200 lbs. of food a day. These animals are destructive to the cocoa-nut trees, and when they get an opportunity they put their heads against them, and then, with a queer swaying movement throw the weight of their bodies over and over again against the stem till the palm comes down with a crash, and the dainty monster regales himself with the blossoms and the nuts. The Malays pet and caress them, and talk to them as they do to their buffaloes. Half a ton is considered a sufficient load for a journey if it be metal or anything which goes into small compass, but if the burden be bulky, from four to six hundred weight is enough. Except where there are rivers or roads suitable for bullock-carts or pack bullocks, they do nearly all the carrying trade of Perak, carrying loads on "elephant tracks" through the jungle. An elephant always puts his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made, so that a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and water. Trying to get along one of these I was altogether baffled, for it had no verge. The jungle presented an impassable wall of dense vegetation on either side, the undergrowth and trees being matted together by the stout, interminable strands of the rattan and other tenacious creepers, including a thorn-bearing one, known among the Malays as "tigers' claws," from the curved hook of the thorn. I think I made my way for about seven feet. This was a favorable specimen of a jungle track, and I now understand how the Malays, by felling two or three trees, so that they lay across similar and worse roads, were able to delay the British troops at a given spot for a day at a time. [*It is possible that this was an exaggeration, and that the real price is $50.]

One might think that elephants roaming at large would render cultivation impossible, but they have the greatest horror of anything that looks like a fence, and though they are almost powerful enough to break down a strong stockade, a slight fence of reeds usually keeps them out of padi, cane, and maize plantations.

Malays are gradually coming into Perak. It is said that there has been recently a large immigration from Selangor. The Malay population is fifty-seven thousand nearly, with a large preponderance of males, but fifty-eight thousand have crowded into the little strip of land called Province Wellesley, which is altogether under British rule, and sixty-seven thousand into Malacca, which has the same advantage. I suppose that slavery and polygamy have had something to do with the diminution of the population, as well as small-pox. Formerly large armies of fighting men could be raised in these States. Islamism is always antagonistic to national progress. It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen of a country, or member of a nationality. In these States law, government and social customs have no existence apart from religion, and, indeed, they grow out of it.

It is strange that a people converted from Arabia, and partly, no doubt, civilized both from Arabia and Persia, should never have constructed anything permanent. If they were swept away to-morrow not a trace of them except their metal work would be to be found. Civilized as they are, they don't leave any more impress on the country than a Red Indian would. They have not been destroyed by great wars, or great pestilences, or the ravages of drink, nor can it be said that they perish mysteriously, as some peoples have done, by contact with Europeans; yet it is evident that the dwindling process has been going on for several generations.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXI

A Malay Interior—Malay Bird-Scaring—Rice Culture—Picturesque Dismalness—A Bad Spell—An Alarm—Possibilities of Peril—Patience and Kindness—Masculine Clatter

KWALA KANGSA, February 20.

Yesterday afternoon I had an expedition which I liked very much, though it ended a little awkwardly owing to a late start. Captain Walker was going on a shooting excursion to a lotus lake at some distance, and invited me to join him. So we started after tiffin with two Malays, crossed the Perak in a "dug-out," and walked for a mile over a sandy, grassy shore, which there lies between the bright water and the forest, then turned into the jungle, and waded through a stream which was up to my knees as we went, and up to my waist as we returned. Then a tremendous shower came on, and we were asked to climb into a large Malay house, of which the floor was a perilously open gridiron. At least three families were in it, and there were some very big men, but the women hid themselves behind a screen of matting. It looked forlorn. A young baboon was chained to the floor, and walked up and down restlessly like a wild beast in a menagerie; there were many birds in cages, and under the house was much rubbish, among which numerous fowls were picking. There was much fishing-tackle on the walls, both men and women being excessively fond of what I suppose may be called angling. They brought us young cocoa-nuts, and the milk, drank as it always ought to be, through one of the holes in the nut, was absolutely delicious.

Where the Malays are not sophisticated enough to have glass or china, they use dried gourds for drinking-vessels. The cocoa-nut is an invaluable product to them. Besides furnishing them with an incomparable drink, it is the basis of the curries on which they live so much, and its meat and milk enter into the composition of their sweet dishes. I went to see the women behind their screen, and found one of them engaged in making a dish which looked like something which we used to call syllabub. It was composed of remarkably unbleached sago, which they make from the sago-palm, boiled down with sugar to nearly a jelly. It was on an earthenware plate, and the woman who was preparing it mixed sugar with cocoa-nut milk, and whipping it with a bunch of twigs to a slight froth, poured it over the jelly.

When the rain ceased we got through the timber belt into a forlorn swamp of wet padi, where the water was a foot deep, and in some places so unintelligibly hot that it was unpleasant to put one's feet into it. It was truly a dismal swamp, and looked as if the padi were coming up by accident among the reeds and weeds. Indeed, I should have thought that it was a rice fallow, but for a number of grotesque scarecrows, some mere bundles of tatters, but others wearing the aspect of big birds, big dolls, or cats. I could not think how it was that these things made spasmodic jerking movement, as there was not a breath of air, and they were all soaked by the shower, till I saw that they were attached by long strings to a little grass hut raised on poles, in which a girl or boy sat "bird-scaring." The sparrows rob the rice-fields, and so do the beautiful padi-birds, of which we saw great numbers.

The Malays are certainly not industrious; they have no need to be so, and their cultivation is rude. They plow the rice-land with a plow consisting of a pole eight feet long, with a fork protruding from one end to act as a coulter, and a bar of wood inserted over this at an oblique angle forms a guiding handle. This plow is drawn by the great water buffalo. After plowing, the clods are broken by dragging a heavy beam over them, and are harrowed by means of a beam set with iron spikes The women do the sowing and planting. The harvest succeeds the planting in four months. The rice ears are cut short off, sometimes by a small sickle, and sometimes by an instrument which produces the effect of shears. Threshing consists in beating the ears with thick sticks to loosen the husks, after which the padi is carried in baskets to platforms ten feet above the ground, and is allowed to fall on mats, when the chaff is driven away by the wind. It is husked by a pestle, and it requires some skill to avoid crushing the grain. All these operations are performed by women.

The Perak Malays don't like working for other people, but some of them cultivate sugar-cane and maize for sale. Even for clearing jungle-land foreign labor has to be resorted to.

Ah, that swamp is a doleful region! One cannot tell where it ends and where the jungle begins, and dark, heavy, ominous-looking clouds generally concealed the forest-covered hills which are not far off. I almost felt the redundancy of vegetation to be oppressive, and the redundancy of insect and reptile life certainly was so; swarms of living creatures leaped in and out of the water, bigger ones hidden from view splashed heavily, and a few blackish, slug-like looking reptiles, which drew blood, and hung on for an hour or two, attached themselves to my ankles. I was amused when Captain Walker congratulated himself on the absence of leeches, for these blood-suckers were at least their next of kin. I fell down into the water twice from the submerged ridge that I tried to walk upon, but there is no risk of cold from a hot bath in a stove.

Then we came to a smothered, reedy, ditch-like stream, in which was an old "dug-out" half full of water, in which we managed to stow ourselves, and by careful balancing contrived to keep its edges just above the water. Our impeded progress down this ditch startled myriads of whirring, splashing creatures. The ditch opened into a reedy swamp where hideous pink water buffaloes were wallowing and enjoying themselves, but on the report of a gun they all plunged into deep water and swam away, except for their big horns, looking more like hippopotami than bovine quadrupeds. They are nearly as ugly as a rhinoceros; all albino animals are ugly, and when these are wet their hides are a bright salmon pink.

The swamp merged itself into a lotus lake, covered over much of its extent with thousands of noble leaves and rose-pink blossoms. It seemed almost sacrilege to tear and bruise and break them and push rudely through them in our canoe. A sadder and lonelier scene could not be. I have seldom been more powerfully affected by nature. The lake lying in hot mist under dark clouds, with the swamp and jungle on one side and an absolutely impenetrable wall of entangled trees and trailers on the other, so dense and matted that before putting one's feet on shore space would have to be cut for them with a parang, seemed as if it must be a hundred miles from the abodes of men, and as if nobody had ever been there before or ever would be there again. The heavy mist lifted, showing mountains, range beyond range, forest-covered, extending back into the heart of the peninsula; and though the highest may be under five thousand feet in height, yet from their shape, and from rising so near the sea-level, and from the woolly mists which hung round their bases, and from something in the gray, sad atmosphere, they looked fully ten thousand feet high.

Captain Walker climbed into a low tree which overhung the lake to look out for teal and widgeon, which were perfectly innumerable, while the Malays, never uttering a word, silently poled the boat over the dreary lake in the dreary evening to put up the birds. There they went high over our heads in long flights, and every time there was the report of a gun there were screams and shrieks and squawks, and myriads of birds rose out of their reedy covers, and fish splashed, and the smoke lay heavily on the water, and then all was silent again. Any place more solitary and apparently isolated could not be imagined—it was a most pathetic scene. Hazy visions of the mere near which King Arthur lay dying came before my eyes. If I had seen the solemn boat with "the three fair queens," in "robes of samite, mystic, wonderful," I should not have been surprised, nor would it have been odd if the lake had changed into the Styx, across which I was being ferried, a cold, colorless shade. To and fro, up and down, we poled over the tragic waters till I actually felt a terror far beyond eeriness taking possession of me.

It grew grayer and darker, and we went back for Captain Walker, who, with the absorption of a true sportsman, had hardly noticed the falling shadows. It was a relief to hear the human voice once more. It broke the worst spell I was ever bound by. As he came out on the branch to get into the canoe it gave way, and he fell into the water up to his chin. Then the boat pole broke, so that when we got back to the padi it was obvious that "the dark" was coming "at one stride," and I suggested that, as we had two miles to walk and a river to cross at night, and we should certainly be very late for dinner; Mr. Low might become uneasy about us, as we were both strangers and unable to speak the language; but Captain Walker thought differently.

There had been so much rain that it was heavy wading through the padi, and it was quite dark when we reached the jungle, in which the rain had made the footing very precarious, and in darkness we forded the swollen stream, and stumbled along the shore of the Perak, where fireflies in thousands were flashing among the bushes—a beautiful sight. When we reached the bank of the river where we had left the canoe we found several Malays, who laughed and seemed singularly pleased to see us, and talked vociferously to our men, i.e., vociferously for Malays, who are in the habit of speaking quietly. It was very difficult to get down the steep, slippery bank, into a precarious canoe which I could not see, and so thick was the darkness that I sat down in the water between the two gridirons, and had to remain there during the crossing, which took a long time, being against the stream.

When we landed, a Sikh sergeant met us, very much excited. He spoke Malayan, and I guessed from a few words that I knew that there was a hue and cry at the Residency. You know how all pleasure is at once spoiled when, after you have been enjoying yourself very much, you find that people at home have been restless and uneasy about you; and as it is one of my traveling principles to avoid being a bother to people, I was very sorry. We found a general state of perturbation. Major Swinburne, who was leaning over the veranda, received us with some very pungent objurgations, and told us that Mr. Low was out and very anxious. I was covered with mire, and wet from head to foot, and disappeared, but when we sat down to the long-delayed dinner I saw from Mr. Low's silence and gloomy manner that he had been really much annoyed; however, he recovered himself, and we had a very lively evening of conversation and discussion, though I had a good deal of pain from the inflamed bites of the bloodsuckers in the swamp. Malay scouting parties had been sent in various directions. Rajah Dris was away with one, and the Sikh police were all ready to do nobody knows what, as there were no dogs. Major Swinburne said that his fears did not travel farther than the river, which he thinks is dangerous to cross at night in a "dug-out;" but Mr. Low had before him the possibility of our having been assailed by bad characters, or of our having encountered a tiger in the jungle, and of my having been carried off from my inability to climb a tree!

Eblis is surely dying. He went to the roof, where the half-tamed siamang was supporting him hour after hour as gently as a mother would support a sick child. This wild ape has been very gentle and good to Eblis ever since he became ill. I went out for a short time with Mr. Low, and on returning he called Eblis, but the little thing was too weak to come, and began to cry feebly, on which the wild ape took him by one of his hands, put an arm round him, gently led him to a place from which he could drop upon Mr. Low's chair, and then darted away, but while daylight lasted was looking anxiously at Eblis, and at 6 A.M. had so far conquered his timidity that he sat on the window-sill behind Mr. Low, that he might watch his sick friend. The little bewitching thing, which is much emaciated, clings to its master now the whole time, unlike other animals, which hide themselves when they are ill, puts out its feeble little arms to him with a look of unspeakable affection on its poor, pinched face, and murmurs in a feeble voice ouf! ouf! Mr. Low pours a few drops of milk down its throat every half hour, and if he puts it down for a moment, it screams like a baby and stretches out its thin hands.

It is very interesting and pleasant to see the relations which exist between Mr. Low and the Malays. At this moment three Rajahs are lying about on the veranda, and their numerous followers are clustered on and about the stairs. He never raises his voice to a native, and they look as if they like him, and from their laughter and cheeriness they must be perfectly at ease with him. He is altogether devoted to the interests of Perak, and fully carries out his instructions,* which were, "to look upon Perak as a native State ultimately to be governed by native Rajahs," whom he is to endeavor to educate and advise "without interfering with the religion or custom of the country." He obviously attempts to train and educate these men in the principles and practice of good government, so that they shall be able to rule firmly and justly. Perak is likely to become the most important State of the Peninsula, and I earnestly hope that Mr. Low's wise and patient efforts will bring forth good fruit, at all events in Rajah Dris. [*See Appendix A.]

Mr. Low is only a little over fifty now, and when he first came the Rajahs told him that they were "glad that the Queen had sent them an old gentleman!" He is excessively cautious, and, like most people who have had dealings with Orientals, is possibly somewhat suspicious, but his caution is combined with singular kindness of heart, and an almost faulty generosity regarding his own concerns, as, for instance, he refuses to send his servants to prison when they rob him, saying: "Poor fellows! they know no better." He is just as patiently forbearing to the apes. Mr. ——- told me that he had made a very clean and careful copy of a dispatch to Lord Carnarvon, when Mahmoud dipped his fingers in the ink and drew them over a whole page, and he only took him in his arms and said: "Poor creature, you've given me a great deal of trouble, but you know no better."

This is my last evening here, and I am so sorry. It is truly "the wilds." There is rest. Then the apes are delightful companions, and there are all sorts of beasts, and birds, and creeping things, from elephants downward. The scenery and vegetation of the neighborhood are beautiful, the quiet Malay life which passes before one in a series of pictures is very interesting, and the sight of wise and righteous rule carried on before one's eyes, with a total absence of humbug and red-tapeism, and which never leaves out of sight the training of the Malays to rule themselves, is always pleasing. I like Kwala Kangsa better than any place that I have been at in Asia, and am proportionately sorrier to leave it. Mr. Low would have sent me up the Perak in the Dragon boat, and over the mountains into Kinta on elephants, if I could have stayed; but I cannot live longer without your letters, and they, alas! are at Colombo. Mr. Low kindly expresses regret at my going, and says he has got quite used to my being here, and added: "You never speak at the wrong time. When men are visiting me they never know when to be quiet, but bother one in the middle of business." This is most amusing, for it would be usually said: "Women never know when to be quiet." Mr. Maxwell one day said, that when men were with him he could "get nothing done for their clatter." I wished to start at 4 A.M. to-morrow, to get the coolness before sunrise, but there are so many tigers about just now in the jungle through which the road passes, that it is not considered prudent for me to leave before six, when they will have retired to their lairs.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXII

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."