He Is
Pining And Growing Very Weak; He Eats Nothing But Little Bits Of
Banana, And Mr. Low Thinks He Is Sure To Die.
It is a curious fact that
these apes, which are tamed by living with Europeans, acquire a great
aversion to Malays.
February 19. - Eblis became much worse while I was out yesterday, and I
fear will surely die. He can hardly hold anything in his cold, feeble
hands, and eats nothing. He has a strangely human, faraway look, just
what one sees in the eyes of children who have nearly done with this
world.
The heat is much greater to-day, there is less breeze, and the mercury
has reached 90 degrees, but in the absence of mosquitoes, and with
pine-apples and bananas always at hand, one gets on very well. But
mosquitoes do embitter existence and interfere with work. Apparently,
people never become impervious to the poison, as I thought they did,
and there is not a Malay in his mat hut, or a Chinese coolie in his
crowded barrack, who has not his mosquito curtains; and I have already
mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them
away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of
the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting
of a hornet.
The jungle seems to be full of wild beasts, specially tigers, in this
neighborhood, and the rhinoceros is not uncommon. Its horn is worth
$15, but Rajah Muda Yusuf, who desires to have a monopoly of them, says
that there are horns with certain peculiar markings which can be sold
to the Chinese for $500* each to be powdered and used as medicine.
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