But I Must Give These Coolies Their Due, For In Some Ways They Show
More Self-Respect Than The Ordinary
English laborer, inasmuch as in bad
times they don't become chargeable to anyone, and when the price of the
commodity
Which they produce falls, as that of tin has done, instead of
"striking" and abusing everybody all round, they accept the situation,
keep quiet, live more frugally, and work for lower wages till things
mend. But I don't intend to hold up the Taipeng Chinese as patterns of
the virtues in other respects, for they are not. They are turbulent;
and crime, growing chiefly out of their passion for gain, is very rife
among them. The first thing I heard on arriving here was that a Chinese
gang had waylaid a revenue officer in one of the narrow creeks, and
that his hacked and mutilated body had drifted down to Permatang this
morning.
Mr. Maxwell tells me that, as he returned from escorting me to Bukit
Gantang, he overtook a gharrie with a Malay woman in it, and
dismounting joined her husband who was walking, but did not speak to
the woman. to-day the man told him that his wife woke the following
night with a scream which was succeeded by a trance; and that, knowing
that a devil had entered into her, he sent for a pawan (a wise man or
sorcerer), who on arriving asked questions of the bad spirit, who
answered with the woman's tongue. "How did you come?" "With the tuan,"
i.e., Mr. Maxwell.
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