- Eblis became much worse while I was out yesterday, and I
fear will surely die.
He can hardly hold anything in his cold, feeble
hands, and eats nothing. He has a strangely human, faraway look, just
what one sees in the eyes of children who have nearly done with this
world.
The heat is much greater to-day, there is less breeze, and the mercury
has reached 90 degrees, but in the absence of mosquitoes, and with
pine-apples and bananas always at hand, one gets on very well. But
mosquitoes do embitter existence and interfere with work. Apparently,
people never become impervious to the poison, as I thought they did,
and there is not a Malay in his mat hut, or a Chinese coolie in his
crowded barrack, who has not his mosquito curtains; and I have already
mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them
away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of
the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting
of a hornet.
The jungle seems to be full of wild beasts, specially tigers, in this
neighborhood, and the rhinoceros is not uncommon. Its horn is worth
$15, but Rajah Muda Yusuf, who desires to have a monopoly of them, says
that there are horns with certain peculiar markings which can be sold
to the Chinese for $500* each to be powdered and used as medicine. Wild
elephants are abundant, but, like the rhinoceros, they ravage the deep
recesses of the jungle. All the tame elephants here, however, were
once wild, including the fifty which, with swords, dragons, bells,
krises with gold scabbards, and a few other gold articles, formed the
Perak regalia. The herds are hunted with tame, steady elephants, and on
a likely one being singled out, he is driven by slow degrees into a
strong inclosure, and there attached by stout rattan ropes to an
experienced old elephant, and fed on meager diet for some weeks, varied
with such dainties as sugar-cane and sweet cakes. The captive is
allowed to go and bathe, and plaster himself with mud, all the while
secured to his tame companion, and though he makes the most desperate
struggles for liberty, he always ends by giving in, and being led back
to his fastenings in the corral. At times a man gets upon him, sits on
his head, and walks upon his back. It is here generally about two years
before an elephant is regarded as thoroughly broken in and to be
trusted; and, as elsewhere, stories are told of elephant revenge and
keepers being killed. A full-grown elephant requires about 200 lbs. of
food a day. These animals are destructive to the cocoa-nut trees, and
when they get an opportunity they put their heads against them, and
then, with a queer swaying movement throw the weight of their bodies
over and over again against the stem till the palm comes down with a
crash, and the dainty monster regales himself with the blossoms and the
nuts. The Malays pet and caress them, and talk to them as they do to
their buffaloes. Half a ton is considered a sufficient load for a
journey if it be metal or anything which goes into small compass, but
if the burden be bulky, from four to six hundred weight is enough.
Except where there are rivers or roads suitable for bullock-carts or
pack bullocks, they do nearly all the carrying trade of Perak, carrying
loads on "elephant tracks" through the jungle. An elephant always puts
his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made, so that
a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and
water. Trying to get along one of these I was altogether baffled, for
it had no verge. The jungle presented an impassable wall of dense
vegetation on either side, the undergrowth and trees being matted
together by the stout, interminable strands of the rattan and other
tenacious creepers, including a thorn-bearing one, known among the
Malays as "tigers' claws," from the curved hook of the thorn. I think I
made my way for about seven feet. This was a favorable specimen of a
jungle track, and I now understand how the Malays, by felling two or
three trees, so that they lay across similar and worse roads, were able
to delay the British troops at a given spot for a day at a time.
[*It is possible that this was an exaggeration, and that the real price
is $50.]
One might think that elephants roaming at large would render
cultivation impossible, but they have the greatest horror of anything
that looks like a fence, and though they are almost powerful enough to
break down a strong stockade, a slight fence of reeds usually keeps
them out of padi, cane, and maize plantations.
Malays are gradually coming into Perak. It is said that there has been
recently a large immigration from Selangor. The Malay population is
fifty-seven thousand nearly, with a large preponderance of males, but
fifty-eight thousand have crowded into the little strip of land called
Province Wellesley, which is altogether under British rule, and
sixty-seven thousand into Malacca, which has the same advantage. I
suppose that slavery and polygamy have had something to do with the
diminution of the population, as well as small-pox. Formerly large
armies of fighting men could be raised in these States. Islamism is
always antagonistic to national progress. It seems to petrify or
congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a
member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen
of a country, or member of a nationality. In these States law,
government and social customs have no existence apart from religion,
and, indeed, they grow out of it.
It is strange that a people converted from Arabia, and partly, no
doubt, civilized both from Arabia and Persia, should never have
constructed anything permanent.
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