" Tells that the
Malays have an inkling that "There is a tide in the affairs of men,"
etc.
I have found it very interesting to be the guest of a man who studies
the Malays as sympathetically as Mr. Maxwell does. I hope he will not
get promotion too soon!*
[*As I copy this letter I hear that Mr. Maxwell has been removed to a
higher and more highly paid post, but that he leaves the Malays with
very sincere regret, and that they deeply deplore his loss, because they
not only liked but trusted him. During the time in which he was
Assistant Resident, and living in the midst of a large Chinese
population, it was necessary to be very firm, and at times almost
severely firm, but the Chinese have shown their appreciation of official
rectitude by presenting him with a gorgeous umbrella of red silk,
embroidered with gold, which they call "A ten-thousand-man umbrella,"
i.e., an offering from a community which is not only unanimous in making
it, but counts at least that number of persons.]
I. L. B.
LETTER XXIII
"Gang Murders" - Malay Nicknames - A Persecuted Infant - The Last of the
Golden Chersonese
MR. JUSTICE WOOD'S, THE PEAK, PINANG, February 24.
However kind and hospitable people are, the process of "breaking in" to
conventionalities again is always a severe one, and I never feel well
except in the quiet and freedom of the wilds, though in the abstract
nothing can be more healthy than the climate of this lofty Peak. The
mercury has been down at 68 degrees for two nights, and blankets have
been a comfort!
Shortly after finishing my last letter I left Taipeng with Mr. Maxwell,
calling on our way to the coast at Permatang, to inquire if there were
any scent of the murderers of the revenue officer, but there was none.
The inspector said that he had seen many murdered bodies, but never one
so frightfully mutilated. These Chinese "gang-murders" are nearly
always committed for gain, and the Chinese delight in cruel hackings
and purposeless mutilations. The Malay assassinations are nearly all
affairs of jealousy - a single stab and no more.
The last part of the drive on a road causewayed through the endless
mangrove swamp impresses the imagination strongly by its dolefulness.
Here are hundreds of square miles all along the coast nothing but swamp
and slime, loaded with rank and useless vegetation, which has not even
beauty to justify its existence, teeming with alligators, serpents, and
other vengeful creatures. There is a mournfulness in seeing the pointed
fruit of the mangrove drop down through the still air into the slime
beneath, with the rootlet already formed of that which never fails to
become a tree.
