There Are Bitterns, Rails,
Wild-Duck, Teal, Snipes; The Common, Gray, And Whistling Plover; Green,
Black, And Red Quails; And The Sport On The Plains And Reedy Marshes,
And Along The Banks Of Rivers, Is Most Excellent.
Turtles abound off the coast, and tortoises, one variety with a hard
shell, and the other with a soft one and a rapid movement, are found in
swampy places.
The river fish are neither abundant nor much esteemed;
but the sea furnishes much of the food of both Malays and Chinese, and
the dried and salted fish prepared on the coast is considered very
good.
At European tables in the settlements the red mullet, a highly prized
fish, the pomfret, considered more delicious than the turbot, and the
tungeree, with cray-fish, crabs, prawns, and shrimps, are usually seen.
The tongue-fish, something like a sole, the gray mullet, the
hammer-headed shark, and various fish, with vivid scarlet and yellow
stripes alternating with black, are eaten, along with cockles, "razor
shells," and king-crabs. The lover of fishy beauty is abundantly
gratified by the multitudes of fish of brilliant colors, together with
large medusae, which dart or glide through the sunlit waters among the
coral-groves, where every coral spray is gemmed with zoophytes, whose
rainbow-tinted arms sway with the undulations of the water, and where
sea-snakes writhe themselves away into the recesses of coral caves.
Nature is so imposing, so magnificent, and so prolific on the Malay
Peninsula, that one naturally gives man the secondary place which I
have assigned to him in this chapter.
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