So Our
Dreams Of Breakfast Ended In Cups Of Stewed Tea, Given To Us By A
Half-Naked Chinaman, And,
To our chagrin, we had to go back to the boat
and be poled up the shallowing and narrowing river
For four hours more,
getting on with difficulty, the boat-men constantly jumping into the
water to heave the boat off mud banks.
When we eventually landed at Nioto, a small village, Captain Murray
again met us, and we found a road; and two antiquated buggies, sent by
a Chinaman, with their component parts much lashed together with rope.
I charioteered one of these, with reins so short that I could only
reach them by sitting on the edge of the seat, and a whip so short that
I could not reach the pony with it. At a Chinese village some policemen
brought us cocoa-nut milk. After that, the pony could not, or would
not, go; and the Malay syce with difficulty got it along by dragging
it, and we had to walk up every hill in the fierce heat of a tropic
noon. At the large Chinese village of Rassa, a clever little Sumatra
pony met us; and after passing through some roughish clearings, on
which tapioca is being planted, we arrived here at 4 P.M., having
traveled sixty miles in thirty-three hours.
The Residency is on a steepish hill in the middle of an open valley,
partially cleared and much defaced by tin diggings. The Chinese town of
Serambang lies at the foot of the hill.
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