The Chersonese with the Gilding Off

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Chapter I. Langat

T was in May, 1876, that Sir William Jervois, then Governor of the Straits Settlements, offered the post of collector and magistrate at Langat, in the Malay native States, to Mr. James Innes, ex-treasurer of Sarawak. In so doing he particularly called attention to the fact — to which I beg likewise to call the reader's attention — that the coUectorate he offered was the first in rank in the State VOL. I. 1

LANG AT.

of Selangor, and as superior in position to the two others in the same State as it was in pay.

The two other coUectorates were then held by half-castes, the pay of one being $960 per annum, and that of the other $1,800, while Mr. Innes was to receive $2,400, The distinction between him and the inferior collectors was further marked by his being appointed a member of the Mixed State Council, an honour conferred on neither of them. He was next in rank to the Resident, and was to fill the latter's place should he be ill or absent.

. The reason of this exaltation of Langat above the other coUectorates was that the Sultan of Selangor lived there. The Sultan was the nominal ruler of the country, it being not yet annexed, but only * protected ' by England. He was the original cause of the British having entered it, for it was he

LAN GAT.

who had called in their assistance to keep him on his throne during some inter-tribal wars. It was Mr. Innes's duty to see that this old man did not get into mischief, and to warn him that Queen Victoria did not approve of piracy, slavery, pawnbroking, and other little failings to which he was addicted.

Immediately after the appointment had been accepted, our pleasure at entering what we fondly believed to be a branch of the English Government Service was dashed by a description of the place at which we should have to live, given us by an official in the Colonial Office, Singapore.

' It is perfectly impossible,' said this adviser to my husband, ' that Mrs. Innes can live at Langatj it is nothing but a mudswamp, with one mud-path a quarter of a mile long between two padi-fields; the house is an attap (palm-leaf) one, with no

1—2

LANG AT.

bath-room attached to it, the bathing-place being at some distance ; there is no garden^ not a tree, no flowers, scarcely even any grass ; nothing to eat but " scavenger ^^ fowls* and ducks ; and no society. The mere landing is an acrobatic feat, and the isolation is such that it would be sheer imprisonment to any Englishwoman. As for you, you will have your work to amuse you, and you will be often away up thecountry; but what is to become of Mrs. Innes during your absence? You cannot leave her at Langat, it is not safe ; remem - ber, there is no European within a day's journey, man nor woman. No, you must leave her at Malacca.'

T have quoted this description at full length because we found it to be literally true, except, perhaps, that to talk of the

* Fowls tbat gained their living by acting as scavengers in the streets.

LANG AT.

landing as an acrobatic feat was a slight exaggeration. One merely had to jump in a crouching posture from under the awning of one's boat and alight on a slippery rung of a sort of hurdle, which hung loosely

over the mudbank into the river, and swayed to and fro with the tide. The slipperiness was due to the iridescent slime so graphi- <;ally described by Miss Bird in her account of these parts ; but with decently good luck -and a boatman's shoulder to steady one's self by, the jump was a mere trifle to anyone accustomed to Dyak batang-walking. This last exercise, perhaps I should explain, is iike rope-dancing, a batang being the stem -of a tree which is simply felled and thrown across a ravine or torrent by way of bridge. It was, perhaps, also an exaggeration to say that I could not be safely left alone at Langat, for I afterwards often tried the experiment rather than go on long expeditions

LANG AT.

in native boats, and I never found the natives otherwise than civil and obliging. Ii^ fact, they were always particularly kind and attentive to me during Mr. Tnnes's absence, from the Sultan downwards, and seemed to consider themselves responsible for my safety and comfort. But until the experiment of an Englishwoman's living alone at Langat had actually been tried, it was thought impossible by everyone, in the then state of the country.

The salary per annum attached to this Paradise being only $2,400, then equal to about £500 sterling, Mr. Innes began to feel alarmed at the prospect of having to keep up two establishments — one at Malacca and one at Langat ; but he determined not to decide where I was to live till he had himself seen Langat, as he hoped a very short stay there might lead to something better.

LANG AT.

Mr. Innes's report of Langat was that though it was a wretched place he thought I could live in it — for a time ; at any rate, he begged me to come and try. So I went by steamer from Singapore to Klang, then the capital of the State of Selangor. The Kesident received me, it must be admitted, quite amiably. He was living en garqmi in some shabby rooms over a godown (ware-

house), for he had only been appointed about six months before, and his wife had not yet come out from England, there being no house fit to receive a lady. He placed a room at my disposal, which, though a bare wooden garret, was the best that Klang had to offer, and, after bestowing my luggage in it, I went out to look at the village.

Here I was amused to find all the population — Chinese, Indians, and Malays — running together to look at me, as if I were a wild animal. Fortunately some Malay police of the Resident's bodyguard had followed me unbidden, and they kept back the unsavoury crowd when it pressed too close. On my going into a shop these policemen stood at the door and would allow no one else to enter; but the Chinaman inside was so dazed at the apparition of his unusual customer that he could do nothing but grin insanely : he reminded me of a spider that, instead of the hoped-for fly, finds a strange insect in its web, and does not know what to do with it.

The Malay policemen explained to me that I was the first English ' mem ' (lady) ever seen in the country, and that the people were very glad, considering my advent a certain sign that the war was over, and that a new era of peace and prosperity was about to begin. It was no . doubt flattering to find one's sdf looked on

LANG AT.

tis the dove and olive-branch were on theh' return to the ark — a token that the troubled ^vaters were abated ; but I think if the oriofinal dove had been mobbed at the ark window by as motley and unpleasant a crowd of animals as the population of Klang, she would have flown away again very fast. Even when I returned to my room at the godown I was not left in peace. Low-class women of three nations crowded into my bedroom to stare at me, and after I thought I had turned them all out at the front door, I would find a fresh relay of them who had come silently with their bare feet up the bath-room staircase. I only got rid of them by pretending to think they had come to see fhe Resident, 4ind assuring them so often that they would find him in the office, that at last even they, dense and irrepressible, though they were, were forced to take the hint and go.

Arrangements having been made for sending me on, I started in a native boat on the Langat river for Langat. This was my first experience of a long voyage in a native boat ; it was so uncomfortable that I resolved it should be my last, and during my six years' stay in the Straits I kept to my resolution, thus losing many an expedition which might have varied the monotony of my life.

The discomfort was not the fault of the Resident, who had done what he could for me, but that of the boat, which reminded me of the oubliettes that I had seen in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome : it was impossible to sit or stand in it at all, on account* of the very low palm-leaf awning ; one could only lie down in it, and that in a very uncomfortable position. The Resident had provided a boat-mattress of the usual sort, about an inch thick and

LANG AT. II very hard, plenty of food, and an old woman.

The use of the old woman, he explained, was to give me importance in the eyes of the natives, who would think it very infi^a dig. were I to travel without any female attendant. Barring the honour, I would gladly have dispensed with this old creature's presence: she was frowzy in her garments and very dirty in her habits ; she chewed betel constantly, and her talk required Bowdlerizing so much that I soon pretended to know no Malay, and thus tried to silence her.

The awning of the boat was so low at the sides that it was impossible even to see the banks of the river. In front it was a little higher, but the prospect thus afforded was not exhilarating, as it consisted only of eight brown flat noses, eight enormous mouths, and eight pairs of greasy brown shoulders, the property of the boatmen, each of whom was more hideously ape-like than his neighbour. They had very little <3lothing on, but quite enough to taint the 4iir with the indescribable native bouquet, in which cocoanut-oil is the chief ingredient. ^ Books I had none; of mosquitoes there were thousands, and of ants many hundreds, which swarmed over the food and my clothing and completed my disgust.

The voyage ought properly to have only lasted eight hours, in which case it would have been endurable, but Malays never hurry themselves when there is no white man present, and these boatmen consequently took it very coolly. Whenever they passed a hut on the bank — which, fortunately, was not often, for the country was very thinly populated — ^they stopped ^nd went on shore, returning with hands full of bananas and sugar-cane, begged, borrowed, or stolen from the owners. In this way they contrived to lose the tide ; this exactly suited their views, as they now had an excuse for sleeping several hour» until it turned. The result was that the voyage took four-and-twenty hours instead of eight. I was in perfect misery the whole^ time, for, besides the ants, smells, mosqui* toes, dirty old woman and uncomfortable position before mentioned, it was a great trial to be deprived of the three daily baths^ necessary to keep one cool in this climate.

For an English mauj a long boat- voyage is not nearly so bad, as he can bathe when^ ever he likes. He has only to slip on a Malay sarong and bathe in public, as tlie natives do. My old duenna did so, standing in her sarong, while a friendly boatman poured buckets of water over her head, and the whole population of the boat and wig-^ wam looked on with interest. She pressed me to imitate her example ; but such is the force of early prejudice, that, finding privacy was out of the question, I preferred to endure my sufferings like a martyr. A sarong, perhaps I should explain, is a piece of drapery like a 'round towel' in form, which, after the first bucket of water, clings to the figure like the drapery of a Greek statue. My elderly companion did not resemble any Greek statue I had ever seen, being extremely stout and repulsive-looking.

A weary afternoon, evening, and night, succeeded each other, and were succeeded

in their turn by a still wearier morning

.

and afternoon. I constantly asked the boatmen how much farther it was to Langat, but they did not appear to know exactly. Sometimes they told me it was so many tanjongs (bends of the river) off ; but when I had counted that number go by, they said they had been mistaken, and it was more tanjongs still. If I asked how many more ? I received the unfailing Malay answer. * Tidak ttintu ' — * It is not certain.' At last, when in despair I had given up asking them, I was informed Langat was in sight. Soon we arrived at the landingplace before mentioned, and having reached terra firma as well as limbs stiflfened by twenty-four hours of oubliette would allow, I walked towards the house. Mr. Innes had had no notice of my coming, as postal arrangements there were none in the country, but a boatman ran on ahead to tell him, and he came out to meet us.

The house was worse than I had expected. It was an ordinary Malay wigwam, made partly of dried palm-leaves, and partly of wooden boards, and raised about four feet from the ground on wooden piles. It had no verandas, but consisted merely of a biggish loft — called the Court-room, where Mr. Imies was to hear cases brought before him by the natives — and of two or three little compartments at the back. We turned the latter into bedrooms and a store-room, while the passage between them served as a dining-room. The palm-leaf roof was tolerably watertight ; but owing to there being no verandas, the only way of keeping out the rain was by shutting the small wooden shutters, which shut out the light as w^ell, so that w^hen there was a storm we had to choose between sitting in darkness till it was over, and abandoning our belongings to the mercy of the elements. Mr. Innes generally preferred the latter course, but the consequence was that during a storm the Court-room was often swept completely bare of furniture by the wind, and we had to go out afterwards

JJ

LANG AT, T7 and pick up everything it had contained, for it had no walls on two sides. Papers, ledgers, pens, inkstands, rulers, and even the cane chairs and tables were blown out on to the mud below ; fortunately the mud was so sticky, and the rain so heavy, that the papers never flew far, though sometimes they were reduced to a pulp by the shower.

As soon as the sun had gone down, wo went out to look at the village, I being anxious to know the worst at once and get it over. The first bit of the mud-path took us between Malay wigwams, called by courtesy the bazaar, where squalid wares were displayed hanging from strings, or shut up in glass bottles on account of the ants. The population turned out to look at us ; some glowered sulkily, others called out ' Tabek, Tuan !' (* Salaam, sir !') in shrill cracked voices. They were all

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Malays of the poorest class, except a few Chinese shopkeepers and carpenters.

Having passed the bazaar and the Sultan's palace — a dilapidated wooden building — we continued our walk. Here the path became narrower, and it was necessary to walk in single file, as the surrounding ground consisted of seething black mud. Land-crabs darted into their holes as we appeared, and the ikan biludu (velvet fish), an amphibious creature, hopped on and off the slimy logs that lay rotting in the sun. The only vegetation was a kind of bog-myrtle, and the only rising - ground to be seen in the country was a hill about four miles off, called Jugra*

At about two himdred yards from the last wigwam the path came to an abrupt end, and lost itself in the swamp. Wo stopped a minute or two to look at the hill of JuOTa, and ao^reed aloud that if we had to remain six months in this fearful place we must either leave the service or commit suicide. That settled, we turned round to go home, but here a difficulty occurred. We had been followed, according to a regulation issued in consequence of the murder of Mr. Birch, by a little Malay ^ orderly ' with a loaded gun. The path was so narrow and the youth was so fat that it seemed impossible to pass him without tumbling him down into the mud. He stood edgeways in an attitude of ^attention;' but his figure being of the sort that has no real edge, this only made matters worse than before. We had serious thoughts of telling him to go on in fi^ont till the path grew wider ; but to do so would have been in the eyes of a Malay much as if in England one were to mount the box of one's own carriage, bidding the

2—2 coachman seat himself inside; the invariable rule among Malays being that the person of highest rank walks in front. At length we took heart of grace and passed him, when to our relief we found that his bare feet were prehensile, and took such firm hold of the roots of bog-myrtle that it would have been difficult to dislodge him.

CHAPTER 11.

MY OCCUPATIONS.

E soon settled down in Langat to our every -day life. Indeed, there was not much to settle down to, which made the operation the quicker. I passed my days in my bare wooden bedroom, sometimes trying to teach myself to read or write Malay, anon mending clothes and house-linen, generally to the accompaniment of a murmur of voices from the Court -room. Mending the clothes is a task thrown upon the *mem' (mistress) by Eastern servants when there is no ayah^ although before the Tuan's

(master's) marriage, all his mending is cheerfully done for him by his ^ boy/

The * boy's ' tactics to avoid betraying to the men that he knows how to sew are amusing. If engaging himself to a new mem who knows nothing about him, he will roundly swear that he never had a needle in his hand in his life ; while if he has been the Tuan's servant in his bachelor days and therefore cannot deny his sewing powers, he will keep any garment entrusted to him many weeks, and finally return it so badly mended that the last state of that garment is worse than the first. As a matter of fact, I believe all Malay men of the lower class can sew neatly. The women sometimes weave the material for their own sarongs, but having done that, hand them to the men to be sewn. The women, in fact, when they do any work at all, which was not often the case at Langat, seem to do all the hardest part, and may be seen digging in their gardens or pounding rice, >vhile the men sleep in the shade.

Mending the clothes gave me plenty to do, for we never wore anything that would not wash, and they came back from the tender mercies of the Klang dhoby once a I'urtnight in a sad state, however new or good they might have been when they reached him. The mending, if done properly, would have taken three of me to execute ; as it was, I did what I could, and let the rest go. I preferred this state of things, strange as it may appear, very much to the trouble of having an ayah. My English relations were always urging upon me that it would be a great comfort to me to have an ayah ; but I knew better. They fancied it must be a safeguard and an •addition to one's respectability ; but in reality the reverse is the case.

The women who go out as ayahs in Malaya are the most degraded in the land. They are ready to steal, lie, drink, poison their master and mistress, or join in a plot for murdering them at any moment. They have much greater opportunities of doing harm, and of knowing where everything is kept, than the menservants, for they . are necessarily allowed to go freely about the bedrooms at all hours, whereas the men only enter them for a few minutes in the morning to sweep and put fresh water. In the case of the murder at Pangkor, where I was afterwards present, it was undoubtedly the Chinese ayah who made everything ready for the murderers, and stole the revolver of the master of the house, thus rendering him perfectly helpless ; and in the jewel-robberies and burglaries which occur so frequently in Singapore and Penang, the ayah generally plays a conspicuous part. Singapore ladies used often to say to me, ' If I had no children, nothing should induce me to let an ayah into the house;' and the wife of the Resident at Klang, after trying two or three ayahs, gave them up in despair and reverted to men-servants, though she had a helpless child, incapable of walking alone. The ayahs, besides their talents for theft and intrigue, spend a great part of their time in making love to the men-servants, so that they by no means add to the respectability of the menage; in fact, it is not at all unusual for the Tuan magistrate's ayah in the country to be ^ run in ' by the police, and brought up before her master for disorderly conduct. This does not happen in Singapore, where the class of ayahs is a shade more respectable; but in Malaya, as in England, the best servants cannot be induced, for love or money, to bury

2(i MY OCCUPATIONS.

themselves in desolate wilds such aft Langat.

Often my peaceful occupations were disturbed by natives prowling round the house, who descried me in my room and shouted ' Tabek, mem !' at me. I used to dislike this a good deal, but could not conceal, the top of my head from them unless by shutting the shutters; and as long as they saw the top of my head and thus knew I was in the room, they would continue to shout. Sometimes, wishing to put an end to the annoyance, I went to the window, and said in a snubbing manner : ' Tabek, what is it you want ? 1 am very busy.' Then those outside looked most hurt, and shocked at what they evidently considered my bad manners, while on turn* ing away from the window I found the room full of others, squatting on the floor as if they had taken root, and filling the air with a detestable smell of cocoanut-oil and ' moist unpleasant bodies.'

It was of no use to give these women the broadest hints that one preferred their room to their company at first. I sometimes said to them, * Now, good-morning ; I have to bathe and change my dress.' They replied, * Good-morning,' but, instead of going, they settled themselves down more comfortably than ever, while their brightening eyes and smiling faces showed th>t they thought they were in great luck at having come just when so delightful an entertainment was about to begin.

It was the same with the men in our sitting-room. They would call and sit squatting on the floor for hours, saying nothing, and seeming quite contented to stare at us. On one occasion I remember it was particularly awkward ; the Resident was with us, and we had fresh pork for dinner.

a most unusual treat. Two strange rajas had come to see the Resident, and would not go away. I told the Resident dinner was quite ready, but as it consisted of pork, we were afraid of hurting the rajas' feelings by having it put on the table. ' I will soon settle that,' said the Resident, and turned to the rajas, saying, with a bow of dismissal, ' Pray excuse us ; we are going to dinner.' But the rajas were not to be so beaten ; they merely said, ' Tuan,' and sat on placidly. Presently somebody apologized to them for not inviting them to join our meal, as the habits of Malays and English in the matter of feeding were very different. To this they replied politely that they believed the habits of the English were in every respect superior to tho^^e of the Malays ( ! ), and that with our permission, although their religion forbade them to join us, they would have much pleasure in looking on. In short, it was impossible to make them stir, and there they sat, all through dinner, while pork was eaten and alcoholic liquors were circulated round the table, that would have made the Prophet's hair stand on end.

I gave orders to the Malay policeman on guard that he was not to allow strangers to come round to the back of the house, but it was of no avail. He thought it his duty to walk to and fro in front of the house, while my persecutors came from everywhere but the front. One only of these visits proved rather amusing. Three Chinawomen, wives of shopkeepers, came one day and asked an audience of me. They explained that they were going to be had up by the police for gambling without a license, and they wished me to beg tlje Tuan to let them off from their punishment (a fine). They assured me that they had not really gambled, but were only playing *a little child's game' at cards, merely for amusement; and one of them let me see clearly in her hand a dollar, which I am quite sure from her manner she would with the slightest encouragement have put into mine. Somehow, instead of rousing my indignation, the idea of a low Chinawoman's thinking she could bribe me with dollars to pervert justice in Langat amused me excessively, and for a moment I was tempted to lead her on till she had committed herself; but recollecting that it would be more easy to excite her suspicions than to allay them, I forbore, and treated her and her companions instead to an harangue on the subject of English justice and English law, the effect of which was, I felt, considerably marred by the broken Malay in which it was uttered. Sometimes I had to jump up suddenly from my work when a comparatively cool breeze swept through the room. This in the tropics is a warning that a shower is impending. Looking out of the window over the plain, we became aware of a thick wall of white mist, like cotton-wool, advancing towards us, blotting out the landscap2 as it came. It was then about a couple of miles off. We heard a noise like a distant waterfall, and we saw the cotton-wool gaining first one clump of shrubs and then another, with incredible swiftness. Then it reached the herd of buffaloes in the middle distance, and enveloped them ; the breeze freshened; everything in the room, unless we had occupied the previous minutes in making all secure, flew up into the air or out at the doorway, and there was barely time to rush to the window, unhook the shutters and shut and bolt them with frantic haste, before the storm burst on the house with a roar like that of Niagara, and a violence that seemed likely to batter down the frail roof.

If I wished to go from one room to another during a storm, I had to put on galoshes, hat, and ulster, tuck up my skirts and make a rush for it. The open doorways in all directions left even the middle of the house liable to incursions of rain. And such rain ! However, we soon grew accustomed to it ; so much so that when I returned to England, after four years of tropical climates, the silence — the quiet, modest demeanour — of the English rain was one of the things that struck me most. It seemed strange to me that one should have to look out of the window in order to know whether it was raining or not. In Langat when it rained no one in the house could possibly have remained unconscious of the fact. We could often not hear each other's loudest shouts a few yards off.

The thunder in those parts is also worth hearing ; it is sublime — ^magnificent ! and makes one for ever after laugh involuntarily at the puny little noises which in England go by that name, and which seem in comparison like the growl of a kitten.

Another cause of disturbance was the ever-present mosquito. He literally made my life a burden to me. The Langat mosquitoes I afterwards found were quite renowned as being of a specially thirsty and venomous nature. On one occasion an official fi'om another jungle station came to visit us on business ; he had been in Australia, and all over Malaya, and laughed at us for our terror of mosquitoes, saying he was mosquito-proof, at any rate in the daytime, though at night he did like a curtain; but luncheon was not half over before we were avenged. Our 'mosquito-proof friend jumped up from his chair in