Addresses And Odes Were Also Sung And Recited To Me From The Stage, And The Performers Representing The Great Personages Prostrated Themselves And Made Obeisances.

The dresses were all real hand-worked gold and silver embroidery on thick silks of the richest colors.

The princes were attended by their warriors, some of whose helmets and arms were magnificent, with banners and feather standards, and coats of arms, or their equivalents, borne aloft by heralds; ladies also appeared, one a prima-donna, other actresses rode hobby-horses, only the head of the woman and hobby-horse being visible in the clouds of silk and gold. Jesters jested; and tumblers, in blue, loose tunics and wide scarlet trousers, shot across the stage when there was any room in front of the crowd of actors with the rapidity of meteors. The pace was too great to be even sure that they were human beings. I have seen Kean's Shakespearian revival pageants formerly in London, but I never realized what a mediaeval court pageant might have been till in the heart of the Malay Peninsula I saw the most gorgeous combination of color and picturesque effect that I have ever set eyes upon."]

Klang does not improve on further acquaintance. It looks as if half the houses were empty, and certainly half the population is composed of Government employes, chiefly police constables. There is no air of business energy, and the queerly mixed population saunters with limp movements; even the few Chinese look depressed, as if life were too much for them. It looks too as if there were a need for holding down the population (which I am sure there isn't), for in addition to the fort and its barracks, military police stations are dotted about. A jail, with a very high wall, is in the middle of the village. The jungle comes so near to Klang that tigers and herds of elephants, sometimes forty strong, have been seen within half a mile of it. In Sungei Ujong there was some excitement about a "rogue elephant" (i.e., an elephant which for reasons which appear good to other elephants, has been expelled from the herd, and has been made mad and savage by solitude), which, after killing two men, has crossed the river into Selangor, and is man-killing here. A few days ago a man catching sight of him in the jungle took refuge in a tree, and the brute tore the tree down with its trunk, and trampled the poor fellow to death, his companion escaping during the process.

Yesterday evening we had service in the hall, the whole white population being "rounded up" for it; seven men and two women, three of whom are Roman Catholics. The congregation sat under one punkah and the Resident under another, both being worked by bigoted Mohammedans! Everything was "ship-shape," as becomes Mr. Douglas's antecedents; a union jack over the desk, from which the liturgy was read, and a tiger-skin over the tiles in front, the harmonium well played, the singing and chanting excellent.

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