The Methods Of
Mining Both For Tin And Gold Are Of The Most Elementary Kind, And It Is
Probable That Perak Has Still Vast Metallic Treasures To Yield Up To
Scientific Exploration And Anglo-Saxon Energy.
Rice is the staple food of the inhabitants.
Dry rice on the hillsides
was the kind which was formerly exclusively cultivated, but from some
Indians who came from Sumatra to Perak the Malays have learned the mode
of growing the wet variety, and it is now largely practiced. Partly in
consequence of a great lack of agricultural energy, and partly from the
immense quantity of rice required by the non-producing Chinese miners,
Perak imported in 1881 rice to the value of 70,000 pounds.
There is scarcely a tropical product which this magnificent region does
not or may not produce, gutta-percha, india-rubber, sago, tapioca,
palm-oil and fibre, yams, sweet potatoes, cloves, nutmegs, coffee,
tobacco, pepper, gambier, with splendid fruits in perfection - the
banana, bread-fruit, anona, cocoa-nut, mangosteen, durion, jak-fruit,
cashew-nut, guava, bullock's heart, pomegranate, shaddock,
custard-apple, papaya, pine-apple, with countless others. The
indigenous fruits alone are so innumerable, that a description of the
most valuable of them would fill a chapter.
Our homely vegetables do not flourish, but watermelons, cucumbers,
gourds, capsicums, chilies, cocoa-nut cabbage, edible arums, and, where
the Chinese have settled, coarse lettuces, radishes, and pulse, grow
abundantly, with various other not altogether to be despised vegetables
with Malay names.
The timber is magnificent, and under the unworthy name of "jungle
produce" a large trade is done in it.
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