The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither Part 13

[*A Colonial friend tells me that he asked an English magistrate in one of the native States, by what law--English, Colonial, or Malay--he had sentenced some culprits to three years' imprisonment, and that the reply was a shrug, and "The rascals were served right."]

The oaths are equally inscrutable, and probably no oath, however terrible in formula, would restrain a Chinese coolie witness from telling a lie, if he thought it would be to his advantage.*

[*Sir Benson Maxwell, late Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements, to whose kindness I am much indebted, wrote to me lately thus: "In China I believe an oath is rarely taken; when it is, it is in the form of an imprecation. The witness cuts off a c.o.c.k's head, and prays that he may be so treated if he speaks falsely." "Would you cut off a c.o.c.k's head to that?" I once asked a Chinese witness who had made a statement which I did not believe. "I would cut off an elephant's head to it," he replied.

In the Colonial courts, Chinamen are sworn by burning a piece of paper on which is written some imprecation on themselves if they do not speak the truth.]

I went to see the jail, a tolerable building--a barred cage below, and a long room above--standing in a graveled courtyard, surrounded by a high wall. Formerly there were no prisons, and criminals were punished on the spot, either by being krissed, shot, or flogged. Here they have a liberal diet of rice and salt fish, and "hard labor" is only mild work on the roads. The prisoners, forty-two adult men, were drawn up in a row, and Mr. Syers called the roll, telling the crime of each man, and his conduct in prison; and most of those who had conducted themselves well were to be recommended to the Sultan for remission of part of their sentences. "Flog them if they are lazy," the Resident often said; but Mr. Syers says that he never punishes them except under aggravated circ.u.mstances. The prisoners are nearly all Chinamen, and their crimes are mostly murder, gang-robbery, a.s.sault, and theft.

About half of them were in chains. There is an unusual mortality in the prison, attributed, though possibly not _attributable_, to the enforced disuse of opium. We went also to the hospital, mainly used by the police, a long airy shed, with a broad shelf on each side. Mr. Klyne, the apothecary, a half-caste, has a good many Malay dispensary patients.

On our return, four Malay women, including the Imaum's wife, came to see me. Each one would have made a picturesque picture, but they had no manners, and seized on my hands, which are coa.r.s.ened, reddened, and swelled from heat and mosquito bites, all exclaiming, "chanti!

chanti!"--pretty! pretty! I wondered at their bad taste, specially as they had very small and pretty hands themselves, with almond-shaped nails.

In the evening the "establishment" dined at the Residency. After dinner, as we sat in the darkness in the veranda, maddened by mosquito bites, about 9:30, the bugle at the fort sounded the "alarm," which was followed in a few seconds by the drum beating "to quarters," and in less than five minutes every approach to the Residency was held by men with fixed bayonets, and fourteen rounds of ball-cartridges each in their belts, and every road round Klang was being patrolled by pickets.

I knew instinctively that it was "humbug," arranged to show the celerity with which the little army could be turned out; and shortly an orderly arrived with a note--"False alarm;" but Klang never subsided all night, and the Klings beat their tom-toms till daylight. I am writing at dawn now, in order that my letter may "catch the mail."

I. L. B.

LETTER XVI

A Yachting Voyage--The Destruction of Selangor--Varieties of Slime--Swamp Fever--An Unprosperous Region--A "Deadly-Lively"

Morning--A Waif and Stray--The Superintendent of Police

STEAM-LAUNCH "ABDULSAMAT" February 7.

You will certainly think, from the dates of my letters, that I am usually at sea. The Resident, his daughter, Mrs. Daly, Mr. Hawley, a revenue officer, and I, left Klang this morning at eight for a two days' voyage in this bit of a thing. Blessed be "the belt of calms!"

There was the usual pomp of a body-guard, some of whom are in attendance, and a military display on the pier, well drilled, and well officered in quiet, capable, admirable, un.o.btrusive Mr. Syers; but gentle Mrs. Douglas, devoted to her helpless daughter, standing above the jetty, a lone woman in forlorn, decayed Klang, haunts me as a vision of sadness, as I think of her sorrow and her dignified hospitality in the midst of it.

Now, at half-past eleven, we are aground with an ebb-tide on the bar of the Selangor river; so I may write a little, though I should like to be asleep.

Bernam River, Selangor, February 8th.--"Chi-laka!" (worthless good-for-nothing wretch), "Bodo!" (fool). I hear these words repeated incessantly in tones of thunder and fury, with accompaniments which need not be dwelt upon. The Malays are a revengeful people. If any official in British service were to knock them about and insult them, one can only say what has been said to me since I came to the native States: "Well, some day--all I can say is, G.o.d help him!" But then if an official were to be krissed, no matter how deservedly in Malay estimation, a gunboat would be sent up the river to "punish," and would kill, burn, and destroy; there would be a "little war," and a heavy war indemnity, and the true bearings of the case would be lost forever.

Yesterday, after a detention on the bar, we steamed up the broad, muddy Selangor river, margined by bubbling slime, on which alligators were basking in the torrid sun, to Selangor. Here the Dutch had a fort on the top of the hill. We destroyed it in August, 1871. Some Chinese whose connection with Selangor is not traceable, after murdering nearly everybody on board a Pinang-owned junk, took the vessel to Selangor. We demanded that the native chiefs should give up the pirates, and they gave up nine readily, but refused the tenth, against whom "it does not appear that there was any proof," and drew their krises on our police when they tried to arrest the man in defiance of them. The (acting) Governor of the Straits Settlements, instead of representing to the Sultan the misconduct, actual or supposed, of his officers, sent a war-ship to seize and punish them. This attempt was resented by the Selangor chiefs, and they fired on those who made it. The Rinaldo destroyed the town in consequence, and killed many of its inhabitants.

When the Viceroy, a brother of the Sultan of Kedah, retook Selangor two years afterward, he found that what had been a populous and thriving place was almost deserted, the few hovels which remained were in ruins, the plantations were overgrown with rank jungle growths, and their owners had fled; the mines in the interior were deserted, and the roads and jungle paths were infested by bands of half-starved robbers.*

[*This account of Selangor does not rest on local hearsay, but on the authority of two of the leading officials of the Colonial Government.]

Selangor is a most wretched place--worse than Klang. On one side of the river there is a fishing village of mat and attap hovels on stilts raised a few feet above the slime of a mangrove swamp; and on the other an expanse of slime, with larger houses on stilts, and an attempt at a street of Chinese shops, and a gambling-den, which I entered, and found full of gamblers at noonday. The same place serves for a spirit and champagne shop. Slime was everywhere oozing, bubbling, smelling putrid in the sun, all glimmering, shining, and iridescent, breeding fever and horrible life; while land-crabs boring holes, crabs of a brilliant turquoise-blue color, which fades at death, and reptiles like fish, with great bags below their mouths, and innumerable armor-plated insects, were rioting in it under the broiling sun.

We landed by a steep ladder upon a jetty with a gridiron top, only safe for shoeless feet, and Mr. Hawley and I went up to the fort by steps cut in the earth. There are fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round it, in which, near the entrance, some of the Dutch brickwork is still visible. The trees round it are much tattered and torn by English sh.e.l.l. In front of the entrance there is a large flat stone on a rude support. On this a young girl was sacrificed some years ago, and the Malay guns were smeared with her blood, in the idea that it would make them successful. I was told this story, but have no means of testing its accuracy.

Within the fort the collector and magistrate--a very inert-looking Dutch half-caste--has a wretched habitation, mostly made of attap. We sat there for some time. It looked most miserable, the few things about being empty bottles and meat-tins. A man would need many resources, great energy, and an earnest desire to do his duty, in order to save him from complete degeneracy. He has no better prospect from his elevation, than a nearly level plateau of mangrove swamps and jungle, with low hills in the distance, in which the rivers rise. It was hot--rather.

In the meantime the Resident was trying a case, and when it was concluded we steamed out to sea and hugged all day the most monotonous coast I ever saw, only just, if just, above high-water mark, with a great level of mangrove swamps and dense jungle behind, with high, jungle-covered hills in the very far distance, a vast area of beast-haunted country, of which nothing is known by Europeans, and almost nothing by the Malays themselves. So very small a vessel tumbles about a good deal even with a very light breeze, and instead of going to dinner I lay on the roof of the cabin studying blue-books. At nightfall we anch.o.r.ed at the mouth of the Bernam river, to avoid the inland mosquitoes, but we must have brought some with us, for I was malignantly bitten. Mrs. Daly and I shared the lack of privacy and comfort of the cabin. Perfect though the Abdulsamat is, there is very little rest to be got in a small and overcrowded vessel, and besides, the heat was awful. I think we were not far enough from the swampy sh.o.r.e, for Mrs. Daly was seized with fever during the night, and a Malay servant also. In the morning Mrs. Daly. who is comely and has a very nice complexion, looked haggard, yellow, and much shaken.

At daylight we weighed anchor and steamed for many miles up the muddy, mangrove-fringed river Bernam, the mangroves occasionally varied by the nipah palm. We met several palm-trees floating with their roots and some of their fruits above the water, like those we saw yesterday evening out on the Malacca Straits, looking like crowded Malay prahus with tattered mat-sails.

Before nine we anch.o.r.ed at this place, whose wretchedness makes a great impression on me, because we are to deposit Mr. Hawley here as revenue collector. I have seen him every day for a week; he is amiable and courteous, as well as intelligent and energetic, and it is shocking to leave him alone in a malarious swamp. This dismal revenue station consists of a few exceptionally poor-looking Malay houses on the river bank, a few equally unprosperous-looking Chinese dwellings, a police station of dilapidated thatch among the trees, close to it a cage in which there is a half-human looking criminal lying on a mat, a new house or big room, raised for Mr. Hawley, with the swamp all round it and underneath it, and close to it some pestiferous ditches which have been cut to drain it, but in which a putrid-looking brown ooze has stagnated. There is a causeway about two hundred yards long on the river bank, but no road anywhere. The river is broad, deep, swift and muddy; on its opposite side is Perak, the finest State in the peninsula, and the cl.u.s.ter of mat houses on the farther sh.o.r.e is under the Perak Government.* Sampans are lying on the heated slime. Cocoa-nut trees fringe the river bank for some distance, and there are some large, spreading trees loaded with the largest and showiest crimson blossoms I ever saw, throwing even the gaudy Poinciana regia into the shade; but nothing can look very attractive here, with the swamp in front and the jungle behind, where the rhinoceros is said to roam undisturbed.

[*The Bernam district has recently been handed over to Perak, and is now under Mr. Low's very capable administration.]

We landed in the police boat at a stilted jetty approached by a ladder with few and slippery rungs. At the top there was a primitive gridiron of loose nibong bars, and the river swirled so rapidly and dizzily below that I was obliged ignominiously to hold on to a Chinaman in order to reach the causeway safely. To add to the natural insecurity of the foothold, some men were killing a goat at the top of the ladder, and its blood made the whole gridiron slippery. The banks of the river are shining slime giving off fetid exhalations under the burning sun; there is a general smell of vegetable decomposition, and miasma fever (one would suppose) is exhaling from every bubble of the teeming slime and swamp.

In the veranda of Mr. Hawley's house a number of forlorn-looking Rajahs are sitting, each with his forlorn-looking train of followers, and in front of the police station a number of forlorn-looking Malays are sitting motionless hour after hour. The Chinese have a row of shops above the river bank, and even on this deadly-looking sh.o.r.e they display some purpose and energy. Mrs. Daly and I are sitting in Mr.

Hawley's side veranda with the bubbling swamp below us. She reads a dull novel, I watch the dead life, pen in hand, and think how I can convey any impression of it to you. The Resident has gone snipe- shooting to replenish our larder. A boat now and then crosses from the Perak side, a sauntering Malay occasionally joins the squatting group, a fishing hawk now and then swoops down upon a fish, a policeman occasionally rouses up the wretch in the cage, and so the torrid hours pa.s.s.

I take this up again as the dew falls, and the sea takes on the coloring of a dying dolphin. The Resident returned with a good bag of snipe, and with Rajah Odoot, a gentle, timid-looking man, and another Rajah with an uncomfortable, puzzled face, took his place at a table, a policeman with a brace of loaded revolvers standing behind him.

Policemen filed in; one or two cases were tried and dismissed, the Malay witnesses trembling from head to foot, and then the wretch from the cage was brought in looking hardly human, as, from under his s.h.a.ggy, unshaven hair and unplaited pigtail which hung over his chest, he cast furtive, frightened glances at the array before him. He was charged with being a waif. A Malay had picked him up at sea in a boat, of which he could give no account, neither of himself. So he is supposed to have been implicated in the murder of Mr. Lloyd, and we are bringing him, heavily ironed, and his boat up to Pinang. I wonder how many of the feelings which we call human exist in the lowest order of Orientals! It is certain that many of them only regard kindness as a confession of weakness. The Chinese seem specially inscrutable; no one seems really to understand them. Even the Canton missionaries said that they knew nearly nothing of them and their feelings. This wretched criminal, with his possible a.s.sociation with a brutal murder, is a most piteous object on deck, and comes between me and the enjoyment of this entrancing evening.

We reembarked late in the afternoon, and with the flood-tide in our favor have left Selangor behind. It has impressed me unfavorably as compared with Sungei Ujong. Of Kwalor Lumpor I cannot give any opinion, but I have seen no signs of progress or life anywhere else. The people of the State are hara.s.sed by vexatious imposts which yield very little, cost a great deal to collect, repress industry, and drive away population. Among such are taxes on individuals moving about the country up or down the rivers, cutting wood or in boats, oppressively heavy export duties on certain kinds of produce, and ad valorem duties on all articles of import and export not otherwise specially taxed. The costs of litigation are enormous, and the legal expenses to litigants are as great as in settlements where with the same money every advantage can be obtained. The stamps on all legal doc.u.ments are also oppressive. The various departments are said to be in a state of "hugger-mugger."

With all this there is a good deal of display of military power on a small scale, and of such over-aweing implements as bayonets and revolvers, together with marching and counter-marching, body-guards and guards of honor. There must surely be a want of the right kind of vigor in the administration, and a "laisser aller" on the part of some of the minor officials, the result of which is that the great capabilities of the State are not developed, and its resources seem very little known.

There has not been any disturbance in Selangor since 1874; and as neither the Sultan, the Malays, nor the Chinese have ever raised objections of any serious kind to the proposals of the British advisers, the "far back" state of things is very singular.

Mr. Syers, the superintendent of military police, appears a thoroughly efficient man, as sensible in his views of what would conduce to the advancement of the State as he is conscientious and careful in all matters of detail which concern his rather complicated position. He is a student of the people and of the country, speaks Malay fluently, and for a European seems to have a sympathetic understanding of the Malays, is studying the Chinese and their language, as well as the flora, fauna, and geology of the country, and is altogether unpretending. I have formed a very high opinion of him and should rely implicitly on anything which he told me as a fact. This is a great blessing, for conflicting statements on every subject, and the difficulty of estimating which one comes probably nearest the truth, are among the great woes of traveling!

I. L. B.

LETTER XVII

The Dindings--The Tragedy on Pulu Pangkor--A Tropic Sunrise--Sir W.

Robinson's Departure--"A Touch of the Sun"--Kling Beauty--A Question and Answer--The Bazaars of Georgetown--The Chinaman Goes Ahead--The Products of Pinang--Pepper-Planting

HOTEL DE L'EUROPE, PINANG, February 9.

In the evening we reached the Dindings, a lovely group of small islands ceded to England by the Pangkor Treaty, and just now in the height of an unenviable notoriety. The sun was low and the great heat past, the breeze had died away, and in the dewy stillness the largest of the islands looked unspeakably lovely as it lay in the golden light between us and the sun, forest-covered to its steep summit, its rocky promontories running out into calm, deep, green water, and forming almost land-locked bays, margined by sh.o.r.es of white coral sand backed by dense groves of cocoa-palms whose curving shadows lay dark upon the gla.s.sy sea. Here and there a Malay house in the shade indicated man and his doings, but it was all silent.

On a high, steep point there is a small clearing on which stands a mat bungalow with an attap roof, and below this there is a mat police station, but it was all desolate, nothing stirred, and though we had intended to spend the early hours of the night at the Dindings, we only lay a short time in the deep shadow upon the clear green water, watching scarlet fish playing in the coral forests, and the exquisite beauty of the island with its dense foliage in dark relief against the cool lemon sky. Peace brooded over the quiet sh.o.r.es, heavy aromatic odors of night-blooming plants wrapped us round, the sun sank suddenly, the air became cool, it was a dream of tropic beauty.

"Chalakar! Bondo!" Those jarring sounds seemed to have something linking them with the tragedy of which the peaceful-looking bungalow was lately the scene, and of which you have doubtless read. A Chinese gang swooped down upon the house from behind, beating gongs and shouting. Captain Lloyd got up to see what was the matter, and was felled by a hatchet, calling out to his wife for his revolver. This had been abstracted, and the locks had been taken off his fowling-pieces.

The ayah fled to the jungle in the confusion, taking with her the three children, the youngest only four weeks old. The wretches then fractured, Mrs. Lloyd's skull with the hatchet, and having stunned Mrs.

Innes, who was visiting her, they pushed the senseless bodies under the bed, and were preparing to set fire to it when something made them depart.

No more is likely to be known. The police must either have been cowardly or treacherous. The Pyah Pekket called the next day and brought the frightfully mangled corpse, Mrs. Lloyd, whose reason was overturned, and Mrs. Innes, on here. It is supposed that the Chinese secret societies have frustrated justice. A wretch is to be hanged here for the crime this morning on his own confession, but it is believed that he was doomed to sacrifice himself by one of these societies, in order to screen the real murderers. The contrast was awful between the island looking so lovely in the evening light, and this horrid deed which has desolated it.

The mainland approaches close to the Dindings, but the mangrove swamps of Selangor had given place to lofty ranges, forest covered, and a white coral strand fringed with palms. It was a lovely night. The north-east monsoon was fresh and steady, and the stars were glorious.

It was very hot below, but when I went up on deck it was cool, and in the colored dawn we were just running up to the island-group of which Pinang is the chief, and reached the channel which divides it from Leper Island just at sunrise. All these islands are densely wooded, and have rocky sh.o.r.es. The high mountains of the native State of Kedah close the view to the north, and on the other side of a very narrow channel are the palm groves and sugar plantations of Province Wellesley. The Leper Island looked beautiful in the dewy morning with its stilted houses under the cocoa-palms; and the island of Pinang, with its lofty peak, dense woods, and sh.o.r.es fringed with palms sheltering Malay kampongs, each with its prahus drawn up on the beach, looked impressive enough.

The fierce glory of a tropic sunrise is ever a new delight. It is always the sun of the Nineteenth Psalm, with the prevailing yellow color of the eastern sky intensifying in one spot, a cool, lingering freshness, a deepening of the yellow east into a brilliant rose color, till suddenly, "like a glory, the broad sun" wheels above the horizon, the dew-bathed earth rejoices, the air is flooded with vitality, all things which rejoice in light and heat come forth, night birds and night prowlers retire, and we pale people hastily put up our umbrellas to avoid being shriveled in less than ten minutes from the first appearance of the sun.

"Pinang," from the Pinang or areca-palm, is the proper name of the island, but out of compliment to George IV, it was called Prince of Wales Island. Georgetown is the name of the capital, but by an odd freak we call the town Penang, and spell it with an e instead of an i.

There were a great many ships and junks at anchor, and the huge "P. and O." steamer Peking, and there was a state of universal hurry and excitement, for a large number of the officials of the Colonial Government and of the "protected" States are here to meet Sir W.

Robinson, the Governor, who is on his way home on leave. There are little studies of human nature going on all round. Most people have "axes to grind." There are people pushing rival claims, some wanting promotion, others leave; some frank and above-board in their ways, others descending to mean acts to gain favor, or undermining the good reputation of their neighbors; everybody wanting something, and usually, as it seems, at the expense of somebody else!