Even
Here, Where No Such Symbolism Attaches To It, It Looks A Sacred Thing.
It Was Delightful To See Such A Sociable Flower Rejoicing In A Crowd.
Beyond is the picturesque kampong of Matang, with many good houses and
a mosque.
Passing through a gateway with brick posts, we entered a
large walled inclosure containing a cocoa-grove, some fine trees, and
the beautiful dwellings of the Malay whom we have deported to the
Seychelles. This is one of the largest Malay houses on the peninsula.
It is built of wood painted green and white, with bold floral designs
on a white ground round some of the circular windows, and a very large
porch for followers to wait in, up a ladder of course. In a shed there
were three gharries, and behind the house several small houses for
slaves and others. A number of girls and children, probably mostly
slaves, mirthfully peeped at us from under the tasteful mat blinds.
Really the upper class of Malay houses show some very good work. The
thatch of the steep roof is beautifully put on, and between the sides
of finely woven checked matting interspersed with lattice work and
bamboo work, the shady inner rooms with their carved doorways and
portieres of red silk, the pillows and cushions of gold embroidery laid
over the exquisitely fine matting on the floors, the light from the
half-shaded windows glancing here and there as the breeze sways the
screens, there is an indescribable appropriateness to the region.
I waited for the elephant in a rambling empty house, and Malays brought
pierced cocoa-nuts, buffalo milk, and a great bouquet of lotus blossoms
and seed-vessels, out of which they took the seeds, and presented them
on the grand lotus leaf itself. Each seed is in appearance and taste
like a hazel-nut, but in the centre, in an oval slit, the future lotus
plant is folded up, the one vivid green seed leaf being folded over a
shoot, and this is intensely bitter.
The elephant at last came up and was brought below the porch. They are
truly hideous beasts, with their gray, wrinkled, hairless hides, the
huge ragged "flappers" which cover their ears, and with which they fan
themselves ceaselessly, the small, mean eyes, the hideous proboscis
which coils itself snakishly round everything; the formless legs, so
like trunks of trees; the piggish back, with the steep slope down to
the mean, bare tail, and the general unlikeness to all familiar and
friendly beasts. I can hardly write, for a little wah-wah, the most
delightful of apes, is hanging with one long, lean arm round my throat,
while with its disengaged hand it keeps taking my pen, dipping it in
the ink, and scrawling over my letter. It is the most winsome of
creatures, but if I were to oppose it there is no knowing what it might
do, so I will take another pen. The same is true of an elephant.
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