A Pleasant Canter - A Morning Hymn - The Pass of Bukit Berapit - The
"Wearing World" Again! - A Bad Spirit - Malay Demonology - "Running
Amuck" - An Amok-Runner's Career - The Supposed Origin of Amok - Jungle
Openings in Perak - Debt-Slavery - The Fate of Three Runaway
Slaves - Moslem Prayers - "Living Like Leeches" - Malay Proverbs - A
"Ten-Thousand-Man Umbrella"
BRITISH RESIDENCY, TAIPENG, February 21.
I am once again on this breezy hill, watching the purple cloud-shadows
sail over the level expanse of tree-tops and mangroves, having
accomplished in about four hours the journey, which took nearly twelve
in going up. The sun was not up when I left the bungalow at Kwala
Kangsa this morning. I rode a capital pony, on Mr. Low's English
saddle, a Malay orderly on horseback escorting me, and the royal
elephant carried my luggage. It was absurd to see this huge beast lie
down merely to receive my little valise and canvas roll, with a small
accumulation of Malacca canes, mats, krises, tigers' teeth and claws,
and an elephant's tusk, the whole not weighing 100 lbs.
Mr. Low was already at his work, writing and nursing Eblis at the same
time, the wild ape sitting on a beam looking on. I left, wishing I were
coming instead of going, and had a delightful ride of eighteen miles.
The little horse walked very fast and cantered easily. How peaceful
Perak is now, to allow of a lady riding so far through the jungle with
only an unarmed Malay attendant! Major M'Nair writes: "The ordinary
native is a simple, courteous being, who joins with an intense love of
liberty a great affection for his simple home and its belongings," and
I quite believe him. Stories of amok running, "piracies," treachery,
revenge, poisoned krises, and assassinations, have been made very much
of, and any crime or slight disturbance in the native States throws the
Settlements into a panic. It must have been under the influence of one
of these that such a large sea and land force was sent to Perak three
years ago. Crime in the Malay districts in these States is so rare,
that were it not for the Chinese, a few policemen would be all the
force that would be needed. The "village system," the old Malay system
with its head man and village officials, though formerly abused, seems
under the new regime to work well, and by it the Malays have been long
accustomed to a species of self-government, and to the maintenance of
law and order. I notice that all the European officials who speak their
language and act righteously toward them like them very much, and this
says much in their favor.
I met with no adventures on the journey. I had a delightful canter of
several miles before the sun was above the tree-tops, the morning
mists, rose-flushed, rolled grandly away, and just as I reached the
beautiful pass of Bukit Berapit, the apes were hooting their morning
hymn, and the forests rang with the joyous trills and songs of birds.
"All Thy works praise Thee, O Lord!"
There were gorgeous butterflies. Among them I noticed one with the
upper part of its body and the upper side of its wings of jet black
velvet, and the lower half of its body and the under side of its wings
of peacock-blue velvet, spotted; another of the same "make," but with
gold instead of blue, and a third with the upper part of the body and
wings of black velvet with cerise spots, the lower part of the body
cerise, and the under side of the wings white with cerise spots. All
these measured fully five inches across their expanded wings. In one
opening only I counted thirty-seven varieties of these brilliant
creatures, not in hundreds but in thousands, mixed up with blue and
crimson dragon-flies and iridescent flies, all joyous in the sunshine.
The loud-tongued stream of crystal water was very full, and through the
deep greenery, and among the great, gray, granite boulders, it flung
its broad drifts of foam, rejoicing in its strength; and every green
thing leaned lovingly toward it or stooped to touch it, and all
exquisite things which love damp, all tender mosses and selaginellas,
all shade-loving ferns and aroids, flourish round it in perennial
beauty; while high above, in the sunshine, amid birds and butterflies,
the graceful areca palm struggles with the feathery bamboo for
precarious root-hold on rocky ledges, and spikes of rose-crimson
blossoms, and dark green fronds of bananas, and all the leafy wealth
born of moisture and sunshine, cling about it tenderly. And lower down
the great forest trees arch over it, and the sunbeams trickle through
them, and dance in many a quiet pool, turning the far-down sands to
gold, brightening majestic tree-ferns, and shining on the fragile
polypodium tamariscinum which clings tremblingly to the branches of the
graceful waringhan, on a beautiful lygodium which adorns the uncouth
trunk of an artocarpus, on glossy ginger-worts and trailing yams, on
climbers and epiphytes, and on gigantic lianas which, climbing to the
tops of the tallest trees, descend in vast festoons, many of them with
orange and scarlet flowers and fruitage, passing from tree to tree, and
interlacing the forest with a living network, while selaginellas and
lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in
feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns.
Little rivulets flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and mingle
their musical warble with the deep bass of the torrent, and there are
twilight depths of leafy shade into which the sunshine never
penetrates, damp and cool, in which the music of the water is all too
sweet, and the loveliness too entrancing, creating that sadness hardly
"akin to pain" which is latent in all intense enjoyment.
Gunong Pondok, the limestone butte, twelve hundred feet in nearly
perpendicular height, showed all its brilliancy of color, and Gunong
Bubu, one of the highest mountains in Perak, reared his granite crest
above the forest.
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