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

influencing Oriental modes of thinking better than his detractors when he added et Imperatrix to the much loved V. R.

This is truly a brilliant place under a brilliant sky, but Oh I weary for the wilds! There is one street, Chulia Street, entirely composed of Chulia and Kling bazaars. Each sidewalk is a rude arcade, entered by passing through heavy curtains, when you find yourself in a narrow, crowded passage, with deep or shallow recesses on one side, in which the handsome, brightly-dressed Klings sit on the floor, surrounded by their bright-hued goods; and over one's head and all down the narrow, thronged passage, noisy with business, are hung Malay bandannas, red turban cloths, red sarongs in silk and cotton, and white and gold sprinkled muslins, the whole length of the very long bazaar, blazing with color, and picturesque beyond description with beautiful costume. The Klings are much pleasanter to buy from than the Chinese. In addition to all the brilliant things which are sold for native wear, they keep large stocks of English and German prints, which they sell for rather less than the price asked for them at home, and for less than half what the same goods are sold for at the English shops.

I am writing as if the Klings were predominant, but they are so only in good looks and bright colors. Here again the Chinese, who number forty-five thousand souls, are becoming commercially the most important of the immigrant races, as they have long been numerically and industrially. In Georgetown, besides selling their own and all sorts of foreign goods at reasonable rates in small shops, they have large mercantile houses, and, as elsewhere, are gradually gaining a considerable control over the trade of the place. They also occupy positions of trust in foreign houses, and if there were a strike among them all business, not excepting that of the Post Office, would come to a standstill. I went into the Mercantile Bank and found only Chinese clerks, in the Post Office and only saw the same, and when I went to the "P. and O." office to take my berth for Ceylon, it was still a Chinaman, imperturbable, taciturn, independent, and irreproachably clean, with whom I had to deal in "pidjun English." They are everywhere the same, keen, quick-witted for chances, markedly self-interested, purpose-like, thrifty, frugal, on the whole regarding honesty as the best policy, independent in manner as in character, and without a trace of "Oriental servility."

Georgetown, February 11th.--I have not seen very much in my two days; indeed, I doubt whether there is much to see, in my line at least; nor has the island any interesting associations as Malacca has, or any mystery of unexplored jungle as in Sungei Ujong and Selangor. Pinang came into our possession in 1786, through the enterprise of Mr. Light, a merchant captain, who had acquired much useful local knowledge by trading to Kedah and other Malay States. The Indian Government desired a commercial "emporium" and a naval station in the far east, and Mr. Light recommended this island, then completely covered with forest, and only inhabited by two migratory families of Malay fishermen, whose huts were on the beach where this town now stands. In spite of romantic stories of another kind, to which even a recent encyclopedia gives currency, it seems that the Rajah of Kedah, to whom the island belonged, did not bestow it on Mr. Light, but sold it to the British Government for a stipulated payment of 2,000 pounds a year, which his successor receives at this day.

It is little over thirteen miles long; and from five to ten broad. It is a little smaller than the Isle of Wight, its area being one hundred and seven square miles.

The roads are excellent. After one has got inside of the broad belt of cocoa and areca palms which runs along the coast, one comes upon beautiful and fertile country, partly level, and partly rolling, with rocks of granite and mica-schist, and soil of a shallow but rich vegetable mould, with abundance of streams and little cascades, dotted all over with villas (very many of them Chinese) and gardens, and planted with rice, pepper and fruits, while cloves and nutmegs, which last have been long a failure, grow on the higher lands. The centre of Pinang is wooded and not much cultivated, but on the south and south-west coasts there are fine sugar, coffee and pepper plantations. The coffee looks very healthy. From the ridges in the centre of the island the ground rises toward the north, till, at the Peak, it reaches the height of two thousand nine hundred and twenty-two feet. There is a sanitarium there with a glorious view, and a delicious temperature ranging from 60 degrees to 75 degrees, while in the town and on the low lands it ranges from 80 degrees to 90 degrees. A sea breeze blows every day, and rain falls throughout the year, except in January and February. The vegetation is profuse, but less beautiful and tropical than on the mainland, and I have seen very few flowers except in gardens.

The products are manifold--guavas, mangoes, lemons, oranges, bananas, plantains, shaddocks, bread-fruit, etc.; and sugar, rice, sweet potatoes, ginger, areca, and cocoa-nuts, coffee, cloves, some nutmegs, and black and white pepper. My gharrie driver took me to see a Chinese pepper plantation--to me the most interesting thing that I saw on a very long and hot drive. Pepper is a very profitable crop. The vine begins to bear in three or four years after the cuttings have been planted, and yields two crops annually for about thirteen years. It is an East Indian plant, rather pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth, a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough, broadly ovate leaves. It is supported much as hops are. When the berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them from the spike, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. Black pepper consists of such berries wrinkled and blackened in the process of drying, and white pepper of similar berries freed from the skin and the fleshy part of the fruit by being soaked in water and then rubbed. Some planters bleach with chlorine to improve the appearance; but this process, as may be supposed, does not improve the flavor.

In these climates the natives use enormous quantities of pepper, as they do of all hot condiments, and the Europeans imitate them.

Although there are so many plantations, a great part of Pinang is uncleared, and from the peak most of it looks like a forest. It contains ninety thousand inhabitants, the Chinese more than equaling all the other nationalities put together. Its trade, which in 1860 was valued at 3,500,000 pounds, is now (1880) close upon 8,000,000 pounds, Pinang being, like Singapore, a great entrepot and "distributing point."

Now for the wilds once more!

I. L. B.



A CHAPTER ON PERAK

The Boundaries and Rivers of Perak--Tin Mining--Fruits and Vegetables--The Gomuti Palm--The Trade of Perak--A Future of Coffee--A Hopeful Lookout--Chinese Difficulties--Chinese Disturbances in Larut--The "Pangkor Treaty"--A "Little War"--The Settlement of Perak--The Resident and Assistant-Resident

The "protected" State of Perak (pronounced Payrah) is the richest and most important of the States of the Peninsula, as well as one of the largest. Its coast-line, broken into, however, by a bit of British territory, is about one hundred and twenty-five miles in length. Its sole southern boundary is the State of Selangor. On the north it has the British colony of Province Wellesley, and the native States of Kedah and Patani, tributary to Siam. Its eastern boundary is only an approximate one, Kelantan joining it in the midst of a vast tract of unexplored country inhabited solely by the Sakei and Semang aborigines. The State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five thousand square miles. The great artery of the country is the Perak river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth, and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther. This river, even one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth at Kwala Kangsa, is two hundred yards wide, and might easily be ascended by "stern-wheel" boats drawing a foot of water, such as those which ply on the upper Mississippi. Next in size to the Perak is the Kinta, which falls into the Perak, besides which there are the Bernam and Batang Padang rivers, both navigable for vessels of light draught. Along the shores of these streams most of the Malay kampongs are built.

The interior of Perak is almost altogether covered with magnificent forests, out of which rise isolated limestone hills, and mountain ranges from five thousand to eight thousand feet in height. The scenery is beautiful. The neighborhood of the mangrove swamps of the coast is low and swampy, but as the ground rises, the earth which has been washed down from the hills becomes fertile, and farther inland the plains are so broken up by natural sand ridges which lighten the soil, that it is very suitable for rice culture.

Tin is the most abundant of the mineral products of Perak, and, as in the other States, the supply is apparently inexhaustible. So far it is obtained in "stream works" only. The export of this metal has risen from 144,000 pounds in 1876 to 436,000 pounds in 1881. Tin-mining continues to attract a steady stream of Chinese immigration, and the Resident believes that the number of Chinamen has increased from twenty thousand in 1879 to forty thousand in 1881. Wealth is reckoned in slabs of tin, and lately for an act of piracy a Rajah was fined so many slabs of tin, instead of so many hogsheads of oil, as he would have been on the West African coast.

Gold is found in tolerable quantities, even by the Malay easy-going manner of searching for it, and diamonds and garnets are tolerably abundant. Gold can be washed with little difficulty from most of the river beds, and from various alluvial deposits. The metal thus found is pure, but "rough and shotty." The nearer the mountains the larger the find. It is of a rich, red color. Iron ore is abundant; but though coal has been found, it is not of any commercial value. The methods of mining both for tin and gold are of the most elementary kind, and it is probable that Perak has still vast metallic treasures to yield up to scientific exploration and Anglo-Saxon energy.

Rice is the staple food of the inhabitants. Dry rice on the hillsides was the kind which was formerly exclusively cultivated, but from some Indians who came from Sumatra to Perak the Malays have learned the mode of growing the wet variety, and it is now largely practiced. Partly in consequence of a great lack of agricultural energy, and partly from the immense quantity of rice required by the non-producing Chinese miners, Perak imported in 1881 rice to the value of 70,000 pounds.

There is scarcely a tropical product which this magnificent region does not or may not produce, gutta-percha, india-rubber, sago, tapioca, palm-oil and fibre, yams, sweet potatoes, cloves, nutmegs, coffee, tobacco, pepper, gambier, with splendid fruits in perfection--the banana, bread-fruit, anona, cocoa-nut, mangosteen, durion, jak-fruit, cashew-nut, guava, bullock's heart, pomegranate, shaddock, custard-apple, papaya, pine-apple, with countless others. The indigenous fruits alone are so innumerable, that a description of