Its
Sole Southern Boundary Is The State Of Selangor.
On the north it has
the British colony of Province Wellesley, and the native States of
Kedah and Patani, tributary to Siam.
Its eastern boundary is only an
approximate one, Kelantan joining it in the midst of a vast tract of
unexplored country inhabited solely by the Sakei and Semang aborigines.
The State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at
its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five
thousand square miles. The great artery of the country is the Perak
river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water
can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth,
and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther.
This river, even one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth at Kwala
Kangsa, is two hundred yards wide, and might easily be ascended by
"stern-wheel" boats drawing a foot of water, such as those which ply on
the upper Mississippi. Next in size to the Perak is the Kinta, which
falls into the Perak, besides which there are the Bernam and Batang
Padang rivers, both navigable for vessels of light draught. Along the
shores of these streams most of the Malay kampongs are built.
The interior of Perak is almost altogether covered with magnificent
forests, out of which rise isolated limestone hills, and mountain
ranges from five thousand to eight thousand feet in height. The scenery
is beautiful. The neighborhood of the mangrove swamps of the coast is
low and swampy, but as the ground rises, the earth which has been
washed down from the hills becomes fertile, and farther inland the
plains are so broken up by natural sand ridges which lighten the soil,
that it is very suitable for rice culture.
Tin is the most abundant of the mineral products of Perak, and, as in
the other States, the supply is apparently inexhaustible. So far it is
obtained in "stream works" only. The export of this metal has risen
from 144,000 pounds in 1876 to 436,000 pounds in 1881. Tin-mining
continues to attract a steady stream of Chinese immigration, and the
Resident believes that the number of Chinamen has increased from twenty
thousand in 1879 to forty thousand in 1881. Wealth is reckoned in slabs
of tin, and lately for an act of piracy a Rajah was fined so many slabs
of tin, instead of so many hogsheads of oil, as he would have been on
the West African coast.
Gold is found in tolerable quantities, even by the Malay easy-going
manner of searching for it, and diamonds and garnets are tolerably
abundant. Gold can be washed with little difficulty from most of the
river beds, and from various alluvial deposits. The metal thus found is
pure, but "rough and shotty." The nearer the mountains the larger the
find. It is of a rich, red color. Iron ore is abundant; but though coal
has been found, it is not of any commercial value.
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