From This Point We Drove Along An Excellent Road Toward The Mountains,
Over Whose Cool Summits Cloud Mists Now And
Then drifted; and near noon
entered this important Chinese town, with a street about a mile long,
with large bazaars
And shops making a fine appearance, being much
decorated in Chinese style; halls of meeting for the different tribes,
gambling houses, workshops, the Treasury (a substantial dark wood
building), large detached barracks for the Sikh police, a hospital, a
powder magazine, a parade ground, a Government store-house, a large,
new jail, neat bungalows for the minor English officials, and on the
top of a steep, isolated terraced hill, the British Residency. This
hill is really too steep for a vehicle to ascend, but the plucky pony
and the Kling driver together pulled the gharrie up the zigzags in a
series of spasms, and I was glad to get out of the sunshine into a
cool, airy house, where there was a hope of breakfast, or rather
tiffin.
The Residency is large and lofty, and thoroughly draughty, a high
commendation so near the equator. It consists of a room about thirty
feet wide by sixty long, and about twenty feet high at its highest
part, open at both ends, the front end a great bow window without glass
opening on an immense veranda. This room and its veranda are like the
fore cabin of a great Clyde steamer. It has a red screen standing
partly across it, the back part being used for eating, and the front
for sitting and occupation. My bedroom and sitting-room, and the room
in which Sultan Abdullah's boys sleep are on one side, and Mr.
Maxwell's room and office on the other. Underneath are bath-rooms, and
guard-rooms for the Sikh sentries. There are no ornaments or
superfluities. There are two simple meals daily, with tea and bananas
at 7 A.M., and afternoon tea at 5 P.M. Mr. Maxwell is most abstemious,
and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There
is a perpetual coming and going of Malays, and an air of business
without fuss. There is a Chinese "housemaid," who found a snake, four
feet long, coiled up under my down quilt yesterday, and a Malay butler,
but I have not seen any other domestic.
Those boys of Sultan Abdullah's are the most amusing children I ever
saw. They are nine and twelve years old, with monkey-like,
irrepressible faces. They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and
are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for
their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never
use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one
instant; they chatter, read snatches from books, ask questions about
everything, but are too volatile to care for the answers, turn
somersaults, lean over my shoulders as I write, bring me puzzles, and
shriek and turn head over heels when I can't find them out, and jump on
Mr. Maxwell's shoulders begging for dollars.
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