He Obtained
Twenty Chinese Coolies, Opened A Mine Which Turned Out Lucrative, And
The Chinese At Home Hearing That Money
Was to be made, flocked into
Larut, but after some years took to quarreling about the ownership of
mines, and
Eventually to a war between the two leading clans, which
threatened to be a war of extermination, and resulted in British
interference, and the appointment of a Resident; and then Chinese
merchants in Pinang made advances of money and provisions to such of
their countrymen as were willing to work the abandoned mines. Very soon
the population increased to such an extent that it became necessary to
choose sites for mining towns, granting one to each faction; the Go
Kwan town being called Taipeng, and the Si Kwan town Kamunting.
American mining enterprise could hardly go ahead faster. At the end of
1873 the population of Larut was four thousand, the men of the fighting
factions only. Eleven months later these two mining towns contained
nine thousand inhabitants, a tenth of whom were shopkeepers, and the
district thirty-three thousand. Larut is level from the sea-shore to
the mountain range, twenty miles inland, and is very uninteresting.
We have been in a gharrie to Kamunting, a Chinese mining town of four
thousand people, three miles from here, approached through a pretty
valley full of pitcher plants with purple cups and lids. You can
imagine the joy of getting into my hands these wonderful nepenthes or
"monkey cups" for the first time.
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