About Ceylon and Borneo ... With ... illustrations and ... maps

Front matter

CEYLON AND BORNEO THREE IN NORWAY. By Two of Them. With a Map aud 59 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. boards ; 2s. 6d. cloth. B.C. 1887 : A RAMBLE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. By J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck, Authors of ' Three in Norway.' With Map and 75 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6s. THE SKIPPER IN ARCTIC SEAS. By W. J. Clutteeeuck, one of the Authors of ' Three in Norway.' With 39 Illustrations. Crown 8ro. 10s. 6d. London : LONGMANS, GEEEN, & CO. Di TOW ' COMING FEOM MUABA TO LABUAN ABOUT CEYLON AND BOBNEO BEING AN ACCOUNT OF TWO VISITS TO CEYLON, ONE TO BORNEO, AND BOW WE FELL OCT ON OUR HOMEWARD JOURNEY BY WALTER J. CLUTTERBUCK, F.R.G.S. AUTHOR OP 'THE SKIPPER IN ARCTIC SEAS' AND JOINT AUTHOR OF 'THREE IN NORWAY' AND 'B.C. 1887' WITH FORTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO MAPS LONDON LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST 16lh STREET 1891 All rights reserved PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE ASD CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON

Preface

This book is about Ceylon as it was fourteen years ago ; about Ceylon as it is now ; also about Brunei, which is a very, very ancient part of Borneo ; and it treats in a few chapters of North Borneo, which is to all appearances ' a bran new place.' Everyone sees things from a different point of view. My view may be hopelessly uninteresting to the world in general, but if you have undertaken to scan this book you must put up with it. Yes ! read on ; feeling sure that something better is coming. Will it come ? CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Arrival in Colombo 1 II. Travelling Up Country 11 III. The same Journey in 1890 .... 15 IV. On Tea 26 V. .Coolies 34 VI. Way Down Upon the Kehelgama Eiver . 46 VII. The Planter's Life 54 VIII. Down the Dickoya Valley 63 IX. The 'Bopats' 71 X. In the Lower Country . ■ . . . 82 XL Mount Lavinia 88 XII.

Something about the Natives at Mount Lavinia 101 XIII. Travelling in Ceylon 118 XIV. At Manly's 124 XV. Departure from Ceylon 131 XVI. A Shipload of Emigrants for North Borneo 132 XVII. Arrival at Sandakan 139 XVIII. We Start for the Wilds ABOUT CEYLON AND BORNEO CHAPTER PAGE XIX. In the Low-lying Tobacco Country . . 155 XX. Bos Banteng 159 XXI. Some Bornean Natives 164 XXII. Our Beturn 176 XXIII. Natives of North Borneo .... 186 XXIV. Elephants 192 XXV. Labuan 200 XXVI. Brunei 207 XXVII. Brunei (continued) 215 XXVIII. Singapore 224 XXIX. We set out on our Beturn . . . 234 XXX. Aboard a M. M. Steamer . . . . 241 XXXI. We Arrive at Marseilles .... 250 Appendix LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS In Tow ' Coming from Muara to Labuan . . Frontispiece In Peradeniya Gardens To face page 28 Kondesalle Ferry „ 84 Bullocks at Kondesalle ,, 89 The Bamboos.

From Warleigh Ford, Dickoya . „ 120 Van's Native Servants from Java .... „ 193 Native Women at Brunei ,, 217 A Native Fisherman's Dwelling near Muara . . „ 225 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT PAGE A Group of Singhalese Lads beneath the Cocoa-nut Trees 9 Washing Cows in the Lake at Colombo 19 Douglas's Old Bungalow 23 A Tamil Coolie Woman picking Tea 27 Large Tea Leaf. Tea Flower and Seed. The ' Pluck ' . 31 Tamil Woman's Earring 40 An Old Tamil Woman covered with Jewellery ... 42 Edward and Douglas inspecting Cattle 55 The Mortared, Whitewashed Lump of Clay .... 69 The Old Malay Conductor 72 Singhalese Men Washing for Gems 77 The Ants on my Shirt-sleeve . . . . . . . X PAGE The Stick Insect 8" The Trotting Bullock 86 The Sea Coast 90 March, 1876 91 March, 1877 , . . 91 Crows at Mount Lavinia 94 About Thirty-six Feet from the Ground .... 97 Katamarangs Ashore 101 'Elp !! 'Elp 1! .105 Hair-cutting 108 Near Mount Lavinia "* A Bullock Hackery 129 A Chinaman 13-5 The Pier at Kudat 141 Our Bungalow in Borneo 167 The ' Tongered ' 169 The Back of a Dutchman's Bungalow in the Low Country about Thirty Miles Inland 179 Angseuna Trees, Labuan 202 Town of Brunei on Piles 209 A House in Brunei 211 All that is to be seen of a Brunei Boat retiring . . 219 The Brunei Street Lamp 220 Boys Bathing beneath my Bunk aboard the Borneo Boat . 228 A Chinaman's Razor 231 A Chinaman's Boat at Singapore 232 A Katamarang at Mount Lavinia 244 MAPS Sandakan Harbour to face page 150 British North Borneo and Brunei .... at end

Chapter I Aeeival In Colombo

It was on December 20, 1889, that I arrived at Colombo in Ceylon. I am going to tell you just what I saw in the island on that occasion, and I also wish to give some of my experiences during a short resi dence there thirteen years previously. There is no use in apology, so let me begin at once. I stayed with a planter called Douglas two long dry months, and at the end of that time I should not have gone if I had not been turned out. He found that I was not only planted at his up-country bun galow, but that I had become rooted in his house. At length, with one final fell swoop, he dragged me out and I wandered on. I left, however, behind me some frail tendrils, some fragments of myself, such as a couple of tins of bad tobacco ; but as Douglas was not a smoker, he could not be tempted even in a moment of despondency to light a pipe with this.

I also left behind me a collarless flannel shirt, and a photograph of Mrs. B Cameron's, representing a young lady in a gauze turban, apparently suffering from sea-sickness, having evidently just remarked that she wished she were dead. There was much pathos in this picture. I also left behind me in my room a smell of smoke, and this was nearly all, if I do not mention Douglas's regrets that I had ever taken it into my head to come out there. Eh ! I certainly left all this behind when I quitted Ceylon ; was it not enough ? After three weeks of rolling about at sea it seemed strange on arriving at Colombo to find everything still around one, a quiet room on awaking in the morning, instead of the ever-pulsating throb of that never-tiring screw propelling you forward through an apparently ceaseless ocean.

It was strange to lie awake and listen to the shrill crowing of the domestic cock, and Tamil jinrickshaw coolies hallooing to each other from where they stood in the street below in this sort of way — Whrvwwwvwv,^ ah Whrf\A/wvw%/ww<„„. ah Whr(v\nAArvv\AA^yvvvvv~v~v~v~a.->.aw~. dh \Vhrsvwuvw.a u W Jir/v\AAAAnA/www\/www*~wvwvvw. till ah . Then the other fellow — I mean the man who was hallooed to — answered ' Hm,' and presently he would say ' Hm ' again. At least this is what their intellectual conversation sounded like to a stranger. Doubtless those who speak the Tamil language fluently would be as much engrossed with the spokesman's tail, as the auditor was outside my bedroom window. Perhaps they would feel inclined to say at the end of each sentence, ' Hm,' just as the Tamil man did who was being talked to in the street.

Then there was the distant hoarse croaking of a hundred crows, with many other sounds which were not the least European, and anything but ship-like. Very soon you began to realise that you were not at sea any longer, and instead of the quiet uneventful life that you had been leading for the last three weeks, you awoke once more to that struggle for existence, that bullying and being bullied, which goes on in our everyday life. Some men are struggling for money, others for health, whilst some are wading on through their span of existence seeking amusement only, and scarcely ever finding it. Of this latter class there were shoals in the hotel at Colombo, as it is the great junction for all travellers who come out eastwards from home. How delightfully ridiculous some of the fellows in the hotel looked, got up for dinner in the evening with white Eton jackets, white trousers, and gaudy ' cummerbunds ' instead of waistcoats.

Certainly they had the advantage of looking cool in this costume compared with the Australians who were hurrying through Ceylon, and who appeared warm, decidedly warm, in their European costumes. The thermometer registered 86° in the shade, and there was enough moisture in the air to stifle one. Colombo is not a place that inspires Europeans with energy. I agree with the Yankee who said, ' It just slew me to see them sellars sitting there with their stomachs decked out in ribands, and them funny little coats on. Of all the blarmed foolishness that these British colonists are capable of, well, I guess this is the worst.' I am not sure this Yankee was not right in his way of looking at it. It is not as b though in Colombo you were in the best hotel in the world, where out of deference to the good feeding you wished to show some respect to the host ; but although the dining-room is magnificent and the ' boys ' very clean looking, as their appearance and combs were all that one could wish in the way of respectability, still when the hotel was full it was as much as you could do to get anything to eat for dinner.

In my opinion the managers might get some tips from the Messageries Maritimes steamers, as without doubt there is some mode by which perfectly tender and well-cooked meat can be provided when alongside the equator, which is at present either unknown or unpractised on shore in equatorial regions. Talking of dinner reminds me that it is not always beneficial to dine too freely in Ceylon. I was awakened one night in the hotel by hearing a young man in the next balcony to mine soliloquising to the moon ; he was saying in a loud and rather husky voice, ' Night, most glorious night, surely thou wert not made for slumber.' Then he began clearing his throat as if he were either going to sing or to cry ; I was not sure which. I thought it would be better to stop him, and recommended him to go straight to bed, in a rather dictatorial voice, which eventually reduced him to submission.

P.eally it is extraordinary what an effect these Ceylon curries will have upon some folks — whether it is the ' sambal,' or the cocoa-nut, or the onions, I do not know. The rooms at the hotel are all open at the top to let in air. I do not mean that they are open to the sky, but there is a great space between the rooms and the roof, as the walls only reach part of the way up, and sounds in one room can be heard in another in the most appallingly distinct way. There was a fellow in the next room to mine who appeared to be suffering from sea-sickness in its most aggravated form. Often he would wake up at mid night, uttering sounds which made one's blood curdle with their hollow gruesomeness. This unfortunate man, I ascertained, had been struck by the sun, and this is the usual way that sunstroke attacks you, besides making you as sick as a dog for some weeks.

Amid such horrors of midnight agony, when in the lonesome stillness of tropical darkness the air was suddenly rent by these most sickening sounds, I realised that it is not earth's clear sunshine that always makes folks happy ; and, even at the end of a day of most genial brightness, there comes a night which with its long black loneliness seems even darker than our home darkness. Talking of these low-walled rooms reminds me of a story of two little boys whom I knew. They were staying at the Galle-Face Hotel at Colombo, and a gentleman called Mr. B. and S. was sleeping in the next room. One morning they locked their bedroom door so that no one might come in to disturb them, and getting up on the top of the ' almirah,' or wardrobe, they peered over the ridge of the intercepting wall, and saw Mr. B. and S. trying to shave himself in bed.

The situation seemed so comic that they could not help laughing. Mr. B. and S. looked up, and seeing them there said, 'Get away, you naughty boys.' The bigger boy replied, ' Oh, no ; please we have come to see you have your bath.' And so they had, poor little dears ! and it was a shame to oust them from their seat of vantage. The hotel at Colombo is a remarkably comfortable house, quite close to the harbour, which it overlooks. It had beautifully clean, well-kept rooms, a mighty ver andah ; and with its punkahs seemed quite perfection in comparison with the old Galle-Face Hotel which I knew fourteen years ago. The Galle-Face Hotel was formerly managed by a Parsi,1 and although it was in those days the best in Colombo, it was nevertheless one of the worst hotels in the great universe. The beds were very hard, the mosquito curtains were holey, and the mosquitoes ravenous.

The servants were un civil, all Christians, and therefore all thieves. I would have recommended visitors to commit some act of violence on their arrival in Colombo — if they had the courage to do it in such an enervating climate — for in the Government prisons food was not so rare, and one's property was protected. As, however, we had arrived unwarned, we had to put up with the mosquitoes in a fleay shake-down. I remember one day I was staying in that hotel with Douglas — who has always been my bosom friend — and we asked three men to come and lunch with us. We apprised the Parsi hotel-keeper of this fact early in the morning, in order that he might get a good feed ready for five hungry young men by tiffin time. When the hour of lunch had arrived we started with inferior soup, and then came some unedibly tough beef-steak.

They changed our plates for another course, and we waited awhile full of hope. The champagne was bad and almost undrinkable ; however, 1 This hotel is now under European management, and is exceedingly comfortable and clean. everyone sipped the nasty wine, and we all became impatient. We waited longer. Then we shouted for the servant and told him to make haste with the next course. He left the room and did not return. We called the barkeeper and besought him for more food. He looked confused and said there was no more. We were horrified and hungry, while our guests were hungry and amused. We begged that Parsi on our bended knees to bring us something edible. He replied, ' All right ! ' as niggers generally do, and in a quarter of an hour six hard poached eggs were placed before us. It seemed im possible to get anything else, and we had to apologise to our guests, who said, 'Oh, don't mention it,' though they must have felt very hungry.

We therefore asked them all to dinner at another place. And they remained our friends. The temperature in Colombo does not vary more than twenty degrees all the year round, and there is a wonderful evenness about the length of the day, only about a quarter of an hour's difference being apparent in the sunrise during summer and winter. You can easily guess what a trying influence this must have upon Europeans, how pale and how washed out-looking the ladies who reside there become ; so that a change home, or at any rate to the hill stations, is necessary every two years. The folks who live in Colombo, and I believe all dwellers in the East, rise about 5.30 in the morning and have a meal called ' tea,' which is a cup of tea with a slice of toast and jam ; then they go straight out for their exercise — either riding or walking — till nine, when they have a bath and sit down to breakfast, which is rather a heavy meal eaten beneath a swinging punkah.

They begin with fish and go on to beef-steak, with a course of curry to follow. The curry in Ceylon is a very different dish to one of the same name in England. Curry here means a course, and a very big course, to itself. You are handed first rice, which is small and exceedingly dry compared with what you generally get at home ; then follow three sorts of curry — vegetable, fish, and meat. After this a man comes round with a nasty sort of dried-up fish, called ' Bombay duck,' and a round thin wafer biscuit, which you are intended to pound up in your rice. Lastly, there are two kinds of ' sambal,' which is the heating part of the curry, and which you add to your liking, as the curries are not hot in themselves. Point de Galle used to be celebrated for its prawn and oyster curries which were certainly very good; but now the mail steamers come to Colombo, I doubt if Point de Galle is celebrated for anything except its unvarying dulness.

In the hills of Ceylon they make a curry called ' Drum-stick.' This is a vegetable curry composed of the pods of a long thin sort of bean, the shell of which is much too stringy to eat, but the beans and flesh in side the pods are really first-rate. The meat in Cey lon is generally too tough to be good, but you can with safety make your meal off curry and fish, as the fish, although not equal to what you get in Europe, is ex cellent if well cooked. The residents of Colombo are engaged in business all through the middle of the day, and they only make a slight lunch or tiffin, saving their appetites for a great dinner at six o'clock. By four business is over for the day, and they enjoy the ocean breezes, either walking or driving along that spray-bedrenched desert, the Galle-Face; a spot which is one's ideal of tropical cheerlessness.

With an appetite encouraged by the sea air they return to dinner, which is con structed on exactly the same principles as breakfast. A GROUP OF SINGHALESE LADS BENEATH THE COCOA-NUT TREES Then they smoke in a reclining position till bedtime at nine. The Europeans dress chiefly in white duck. Their costume is complete with a coat, a pair of trousers and a vest. Therefore, dress should not be an expensive item in a man's economy, if it were not for the Sing hale dhobi, or washerman, but of him I will say some thing presently. White duck clothes can be washed continually, but at each washing they shrink a little. Even when a gentleman of Colombo has been fortunate enough to secure a dhobi who will not tear his ducks to pieces in two washings, he finds that when they have been washed several times his costume appears ridiculous to the European eye, for his sleeves retire up his arms and his coat only comes down to bis hips.

A few years ago a man was fortunately not judged by his dress in the colonies, as he would be in merry England. A fellow wearing trousers only reaching to his ankles, and a hat that looked as if it might have belonged to his great-great-grandfather, was merely respected as an old colonist, and not regarded as a pawnbroker's assistant, as he might be at home.

Chapter II Travelling Up Country

How different railway travelling is in Ceylon now to what it was thirteen short years ago ! I left Colombo station at 7.30 one morning in December 1889, and arrived at Hatton Station in Dickoya (4,168 feet above sea level) at three o'clock in the afternoon ; from thence I had to travel a distance of only five miles along a wonderfully good road before getting to Douglas's bungalow. Formerly the railway only went to Navalapitiya, which was twenty-nine miles by road from his estate, and we had to get up before cock-crow to catch a train which left Colombo Station at 6 a.m. I will give my experience of such a journey copied from my journal of March 1877. It was necessary to take food with you in the train, also to have a meal before starting. We got up at 5 a.m. and sent off our luggage in a bullock cart, a mile and a half to the station.

Then we tried to get a little breakfast which had been ordered over-night, but only managed to stow away some tea without milk, and two scraps of toast, for which we were charged two shillings a-head. After this meal we got into a dirty-looking bandy (cab) with a lame horse, and were driven to the station where the train was waiting, as Colombo was the terminus. The railway line was then badly laid, and you went jolting along at the rate of about twenty miles an hour, in the most distressing fashion. In fact, railway travelling in Ceylon was not then made very fascinat ing. The luncheon which we brought from the hotel proved a failure, as there were not enough sandwiches, and the claret was very muddy and horribly sour. The train went slower and slower as we left the low country behind, and the last fifteen miles took an hour and a half to travel over.

Navalapitiya was then the terminus, and here every one descended. The plat form in those days presented such a picture of jabber ing niggers, all anxious to seize and be off with your luggage, that it was necessary to swear and hit at them with your umbrella before you could get them to do as you wished. Being hot, tired and hungry, we went to the rest house, or inn. The food was very inferior, and we came to the conclusion that you had to be an experi enced colonist in order to relish it. There was only one conveyance to be obtained in the place, and with this we had to content ourselves. The horse was very lame, having something wrong with his four legs. He was also exceedingly thin, and looked as though he would not be able to stand up without the carriage to support him. We had a distance of twenty-seven miles to accom plish before night ; in this conveyance we proposed to perform twenty-five miles of it.

The owner, who was a Mahommedan Moorman, told us before starting that he had sent on a fresh horse for us ten miles in ad- TRAVELLING UP COUNTRY 13 vance, with which to frisk along the second half of the journey. We therefore started filled up with hope. First of all a thunderstorm broke over us, with wind and raindrops that seemed as big as shillings ; these descended for about an hour, wetting us to the skin, and against which my old mackintosh offered but a pitiful resistance. Then it cleared off for a space, and we walked for a mile or two to help the miserable limping animal. We caught up our second horse being led by the horsekeeper soon after leaving the rest-house, and it was slowly trotted alongside us until we changed quadrupeds, if you can call them quadrupeds, as they had not four feet to go on.

We now sent the first one homewards. I say home(c«»YZs, because it is doubtful whether he was ever able — without the carriage to support him — to stand up during his return journey. I hoped, for the poor horse's sake, that he might fall down dead, and thus get out of this wicked, hard-faring world. We then advanced at about four miles an hour, as our fresh horse had a very sore shoulder and was appallingly lame. The driver whipped away most mercilessly, making it quite painful to sit behind him. However, the journey had to be accomplished, so we did not remonstrate, but prayed meekly for the end. This wretched horse fell down soon after starting and recut an old broken knee. When we reached Watte Wella rest-house, and sixteen miles of our journey had been completed, he was bleeding both at his knee and at his shoulder.

Here we abandoned our carriage, as we had only eleven more miles to travel that night. The horse was evidently too feeble to proceed further, without our walking on either side of the shafts and holding him up. We therefore engaged some coolies to carry our lighter luggage, and set out to walk the remainder of our journey to Dickoya. We arrived at our destination about nine o'clock, wet through and rather dispirited. The latter part of our road had been through an ele vated district, and Watte Wella rest-house, which was almost our highest point, is 3,628 feet above sea-level. About thirty years ago all the lower part of Ambegamoua was covered with primeval jungle — and leeches. After that it became very popular with pioneers of coffee-planting, and nearly the whole of the timber was felled and coffee planted in its place.

It was found, however, that owing to the great rainfall and the comparative absence of top soil, coffee could not be lucratively cultivated. Many of the estates were therefore abandoned, while others through good management were just kept floating till the time for tea-planting arrived, and then they were once more worked at a profit. Now some of them pay hand somely, others only moderately. Through this district our road had gradually ascended, winding most picturesquely round the mountain sides and along the valley, in which the scenery was quite beautiful, especially here and there, where one had an extensive view of the lower country, or where one passed through tracts of the original jungle which were then left standing.

Chapter III The Same Journey In

1890 Since my former journey, only thirteen short years ago, the whole of Ceylon had advanced a great many stages in civilisation. The scenery through which the train took us on the occasion of my second visit was very varied. First of all, on quitting the town of Colombo we came to a country which was very wet under foot. This wetness did not come down from above, at least nothing but the sunshine came down on this day, although in the afternoon the distant horizon looked gloomily black. When I say a ' country wet under foot ' I mean a district abounding in paddy-fields, and vegetation all green with tropical luxuriance. Here and there a Singhalese village peeped out full of one storeyed, partially open-aired, shops called ' caddies.' These had any quantity of plantains hanging from their verandahed tops in clusters, some green and others ripe.

Then we saw the schools with their brown cocoa-nut leaved roofs, their wooden pillars, and white mud walls not more than two feet high. Little Singhalese boys looked out from between the posts at the train passing, and stared with their great brown eyes as though they had never seen such a thing before. We passed Singhalese men and women hacking up the few dried rice-fields with 'mometies.' In Ceylon the spade is unknown ; indeed, it would be useless, for the natives never wear boots, and therefore could not tread on the spade as our English labourers do. A mornety is a sort of large-bladed hoe, with which all the digging is done. They momety up their paddy fields instead of ploughing them, because the rice-fields of the valleys are as a rule too small to plough. We saw clusters of Singhalese dressed in their best white 'comboys' and pink jackets, carrying umbrellas, evidently going to or returning from the nearest town.

They looked very pleasing in the distance, as they trooped on beneath beautiful flamboyant trees which overshadowed their pathway, while others walked in gaily coloured troops in the bright sunshine. Then there were old men with perfectly bare shaven faces and heads, dressed in yellow robes, who, I believe, were Buddhist priests, and whom I respected in a mild way. In the scorched-up rice-fields were numbers of tamed wild buffaloes with ever flopping ears. The buffalo is unlike the ordinary cow — indeed, rather more unlike than the dog is unlike the cat. The head of the buffalo is more pointed than that of the cow, and it is built on utterly different principles. Its long, thin, ribbed horns slope back on its head, and when the head is lifted into the air the horns come beneath the crest on its neck.

It has no hump on its back, as all the cows and oxen out here have. But it has about one hundred and sixteen thick, up standing, black hairs on its neck, just where a horse's mane would come, and not another hair on its dark coloured body. It even appeared to eat in a different way to the ordinary cow of commerce. You hear none of that chumping sound which makes your heart glad and brings a feeling of content over your spirit in the meadows of England, but there is a sort of wild dash about these brutes which the lover of cows can not admire. The buffalo is an essentially water-loving animal. It likes to stand for hours together in the water, with nothing but its head in the air. I saw one which had scraped a sort of nest for itself in the mud of a shallow stream. It was apparently quite contented and happy, sitting and chewing the solacing cud of contentment, with nothing above the brook's surface but its nose, eyes, mouth and horns.