The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither - Isabella Lucy Bird (open ebook .txt) 📗

eight, sometimes up rivers, but mostly on lovely tropic seas among islands. This is one of the usual business tours of the Resident, with the additional object of presenting a uniform to the Sultan. Besides Mr. Douglas there are his son-in-law, Mr. Daly; Mr. Hawley, who has lately been appointed to a collectorship, and who goes up to be presented to the Sultan; Mr. Syers, formerly a private in the 10th Regiment, now superintendent of the Selangor police force; and thirty policemen, who go up to form the Sultan's escort to-morrow. Precautions, for some occult reason, seem to be considered indispensable here, and have been increased since the murder of Mr. Lloyd at the Dindings. The yacht has a complete permanent roof of painted canvas, and under this is an armament of boarding pikes. Round the little foremast four cutlasses and a quantity of ball cartridges are displayed. Six rifles are in a rack below, and the policemen and body-guard are armed with rifles and bayonets.

The yacht is perfection. The cabin, in which ten can dine, is high and airy, and, being forward, there is no vibration. Space is exquisitely utilized by all manner of contrivances. She is only 50 tons, and very low in the water, but we are going all the way to Prince of Wales island in her--200 miles. Everything is perfect on board, even to the cuisine, and I appreciate the low rattan chairs at the bow, in which one can sit in the shade and enjoy the zephyrs.

This day has been a tropic dream. I have enjoyed it and am enjoying it intensely. We steamed down the Klang river, and then down a narrow river-like channel among small palm-fringed islands which suddenly opened upon the sea, which was slightly green toward the coral-sanded, densely wooded, unpeopled shores, but westward the green tint merged into a blue tint, which ever deepened till a line of pure, deep, indescribable blue cut the blue sky on the far-off clear horizon. But, ah! that "many twinkling smile of ocean!" Words cannot convey an idea of what it is under this tropic sun and sky, with the silver-flashing wavelets rippling the surface of the sapphire sea, beneath whose clear warm waters brilliant fishes are darting through the coral groves. These are enchanted seas--


"Where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly."


It is unseemly that the Abdulsamat should smoke and puff and leave a foamy wake behind her. "Sails of silk and ropes of sendal," and poetic noiseless movements only would suit these lovely Malacca Straits. This is one of the very few days in my life in which I have felt mere living to be a luxury, and what it is to be akin to seas and breezes, and birds and insects, and to know why nature sings and smiles.

We had been towing a revenue cutter with stores for a new lighthouse, and cast her adrift at the point where we anchored, and the Resident and Mr. Daly went ashore with thirteen policemen, and I had a most interesting and instructive conversation with Mr. Syers. Afterward we steamed along the low wooded coast, and then up the Langat river till we came to Bukit Jugra, an isolated hill covered with jungle. The landing is up a great face of smooth rock, near the top of which is a pretty police station, and higher still, nearly concealed by bananas and cocoa-palms, is the large bungalow of the revenue officer and police magistrate of Langat. We saw Mr. Ferney, the magistrate, landed the police guard, and then steamed up here for a council.

Mr. Syers went ashore, and returned with the Sultan's heir, the Rajah Moussa, a very peculiar-looking Malay, a rigid Mohammedan, who is known, the Resident says, to have said that when he becomes Sultan he "will drive the white men into the sea." He works hard, as an example to his people, and when working dresses like a coolie. He sets his face against cock-fighting and other Malay sports, is a reformer, and a _dour_, strong-willed man, and his accession seems to be rather dreaded by the Resident, as it is supposed that he will be something more than a mere figure-head prince. He is a Hadji, and was dressed in a turban made of many yards of priceless silk muslin, embroidered in silk, a white baju, and a long white sarong, and full white trousers--a beautiful dress for an Oriental. He shook hands with me. I wish that these people would not adopt our salutations, their own are so much more appropriate to their character.

The yacht is now lying at anchor in a deep coffee-colored stream, near a picturesque Malay village on stilts, surrounded by very extensive groves of palms. Several rivers intersect each other in this neighborhood, flowing through dense jungles and mangrove swamps. The sun is still high. The four white men and the Rajah Moussa have gone ashore snipe shooting, the Malays on board are sleeping, and I am enjoying a delicious solitude.

February 4, 4 P.M.--We are steaming over the incandescent sapphire sea, among the mangrove-bordered islands which fringe the Selangor coast, under a blazing sun, with the mercury 88 degrees in the shade, but the heat, though fierce, is not oppressive, and I have had a delightful day. The men returned when they could no longer see to shoot snipes, with a well filled bag, and after sunset we dropped down to Bukit Jugra or Langat. Most of the river was as black as night with the heavy shadows of the forest, but along the middle there was a lane of lemon-colored water, the exquisite reflection of a lemon-colored sky. The Resident and Mr. Daly went down to the coast in the yacht to avoid the mosquitoes of the interior, but I with Omar, one of the "body guard," half Malay half Kling, as my attendant, and Mr. Syers, landed, to remain at the magistrate's bungalow. It was a lovely walk up the hill through the palms and bananas, and the bayonets of our escort gleamed in the intense moonlight, not with anything alarming about them either, for an escort is only necessary because the place is so infested by tigers. The bungalow is large but rambling, and my room was one built out at the end, with six windows with solid shutters, of which Mr. Ferney closed all but two, and half closed those, because of a tiger which is infesting the immediate neighborhood of the house, and whose growling, they say, is most annoying. He killed a heifer belonging to the Sultan two nights ago, and last night the sentry got a shot at him from the veranda outside my room as he was engaged in most undignified depredations upon the hen house.

There was a grand excitement yesterday morning. A tigress was snared in a pitfall and was shot. Her corpse was brought to the bungalow warm and limp. She measured eight feet two inches from her nose to her tail, and her tail was two feet six inches long. She had whelps, and they must be starving in the jungle tonight. Her beautiful skin is hanging up. All the neighborhood, Chinese and Malay, turned out. Some danced; and the Sultan beat gongs. Everybody seized upon a bit of the beast. The Sultan claimed the liver, which, when dried and powdered, is worth twice its weight in gold, as a medicine. The blood was taken, and I saw the Chinamen drying it in the sun on small slabs; it is an invaluable tonic! The eyes, which were of immense size, were eagerly scrambled for, that the hard parts in the centre, which are valuable charms, might be set in gold as rings. It was sad to see the terrible "glaring eyeballs" of the jungle so dim and stiff. The bones were taken to be boiled down to a jelly, which, when some mysterious drug has been added, is a grand tonic. The gall is most precious, and the flesh was all taken, but for what purpose I don't know. A steak of it was stewed, and I tasted it, and found it in flavor much like the meat of an ancient and overworked draught ox, but Mr. Ferney thought it like good veal. At dinner the whole talk was of the wild beasts of the jungle; and, as we were all but among them, it was very fascinating. I wanted to go out by moonlight, but Mr. Ferney said that it was not safe, because of tigers, and even the Malays there don't go out after nightfall.

Mr. Ferney has given me a stick with a snake-mark on it, which was given to him as a thing of great value. The Malay donor said that anyone carrying it would become invulnerable and invisible, and that if you were to beat anyone with it, the beaten man would manifest all the symptoms of snake poisoning! Mr. Ferney has also given me a kris. When I showed it to Omar this morning, he passed it across his face and smelt it, and then said, "This kris good--has ate a man."

I could not sleep much, there were such strange noises, and the sentry made the veranda creak all night outside my room; but this is a splendid climate, and one is refreshed and ready to rise with the sun after very little sleep. The tropic mornings are glorious. There is such an abrupt and vociferous awakening of nature, all dew-bathed and vigorous. The rose-flushed sky looks cool, the air feels cool, one longs to protract the delicious time. Then with a suddenness akin to that of his setting, the sun wheels above the horizon, and is high in the heavens in no time, truly "coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a giant to run his course," and as truly "There is nothing hid from the heat thereof," for hardly is he visible than the heat becomes tremendous. But tropical trees and flowers, instead of drooping and withering under the solar fury, rejoice in it.

This morning was splendid. The great banana fronds under the still, blue sky looked truly tropical The mercury was 82 degrees at 7 A.M. The "tiger mosquitoes," day torments, large mosquitoes with striped legs, a loud metallic hum, and a plethora of venom, were in full fury from daylight. Ammonia does not relieve their bites as it does those of the night mosquitoes, and I am covered with inflamed and confluent lumps as large as the half of a bantam's egg. But these and other drawbacks, I know from experience, will soon be forgotten, and I shall remember only the beauty, the glory, and the intense enjoyment of this day.

Quite early the Rajah Moussa arrived in a baju of rich, gold-colored silk, which suited his swarthy complexion. He sat in the room pretending to look over the Graphic, but in reality watching me, as I wrote to you, just as I should watch an ouf. At last he asked how many Japanese I had killed!!!!

The succession is here hereditary in the male line, and this Rajah Moussa is the Sultan's eldest son. The Sultan receives 2,000 pounds a year out of the revenue, and this Rajah 960 pounds.

The Resident arrived at nine, wearing a very fine dress sword, and gold epaulettes on his linen coat; and under a broiling sun we all walked through a cleared part of the jungle, through palms and bananas, to the reception at the Sultan's, which was the "motive" of our visit. The Sultan, Abdulsamat, has three houses in a beautiful situation, at the end of a beautiful valley. They are in the