It Is Scarcely
Likely, However, That Sungei Ujong And The Other Feeble Protected
States Which Have Felt The Might Of
British arms, and are paying dearly
through long years for their feeble efforts at independence, will ever
seek to shake
Off the present system, which, on the whole, gives them
security and justice.
LETTER XI
A Mangrove Swamp - Jungle Dwellers - The Sempang Police Station - Shooting
Alligators - The River Linggi - A Somber-Faced Throng - Stuck Fast at
Permatang Pasir - Fair Impediments
SEMPANG POLICE STATION (At the junction of the Loboh-Chena, and Linggi
rivers), Territory of the Datu Klana of Sungei Ujong, Malay Peninsula.
January 24, 1 P.M. Mercury, 87 degrees.
We left Malacca at seven this morning in the small, unseaworthy,
untrustworthy, unrigged steam-launch Moosmee, and after crawling for
some hours at a speed of about five miles an hour along brown and
yellow shores with a broad, dark belt of palms above them, we left the
waveless, burning sea behind, and after a few miles of tortuous
steaming through the mangrove swamps of the Linggi river, landed here
to wait for sufficient water for the rest of our journey.
This is a promontory covered with cocoa-palms, bananas, and small
jungle growths. On either side are small rivers densely bordered by
mangrove swamps. The first sight of a real mangrove swamp is an event.
This mangi-mangi of the Malays (the Rhizophera mangil of botanists) has
no beauty. All along this coast within access of tidal waters there is
a belt of it many miles in breadth, dense, impenetrable, from forty to
fifty feet high, as nearly level as may be, and of a dark, dull green.
At low water the mangroves are seen standing close packed along the
shallow and muddy shores on cradles or erections of their own roots
five or six feet high, but when these are covered at high tide they
appear to be growing out of the water. They send down roots from their
branches, and all too quickly cover a large space. Crabs and other
shell-fish attach themselves to them, and aquatic birds haunt their
slimy shades. They form huge breeding grounds for alligators and
mosquitoes, and usually for malarial fevers, but from the latter the
Peninsula is very free. The seeds germinate while still attached to the
branch. A long root pierces the covering and grows rapidly downward
from the heavy end of the fruit, which arrangement secures that when
the fruit falls off the root shall at once become embedded in the mud.
Nature has taken abundant trouble to insure the propagation of this
tree, nearly worthless as timber. Strange to say, its fruit is sweet
and eatable, and from its fermented juice wine can be made. The
mangrove swamp is to me an evil mystery.
Behind, the jungle stretches out - who can say how far, for no European
has ever penetrated it? - and out of it rise, jungle-covered, the Rumbow
hills. The elephant, the rhinoceros, the royal tiger, the black
panther, the boar, the leopard, and many other beasts roam in its
tangled, twilight depths, but in this fierce heat they must be all
asleep in their lairs. The Argus-pheasant too, one of the loveliest
birds of a region whose islands are the home of the Bird of Paradise,
haunts the shade, and the shade alone. In the jungle too, is the
beautiful bantam fowl, the possible progenitor of all that useful race.
The cobra, the python (?), the boa-constrictor, the viper, and at least
fourteen other ophidians, are winding their loathsome and lissom forms
through slimy jungle recesses; and large and small apes and monkeys,
flying foxes, iguanas, lizards, peacocks, frogs, turtles, tortoises,
alligators, besides tapirs, rarely seen, and the palandok or chevrotin,
the hog deer, the spotted deer, and the sambre, may not be far off. I
think that this part of the country, intersected by small, shallow,
muddy rivers, running up through slimy mangrove swamps into a vast and
impenetrable jungle, must be like many parts of Western Africa.
One cannot walk three hundred yards from this station, for there are no
tracks. We are beyond the little territory of Malacca, but this bit of
land was ceded to England after the "Malay disturbances" in 1875, and
on it has been placed the Sempang police station, a four-roomed
shelter, roofed with attap, a thatch made of the fronds of the nipah
palm, supported on high posts - an idea perhaps borrowed from the
mangrove - and reached by a ladder. In this four Malay policemen and a
corporal have dwelt for three years to keep down piracy. "Piracy," by
which these rivers were said to be infested, is a very ugly word,
suggestive of ugly deeds, bloody attacks, black flags, and no quarter;
but here it meant, in our use of the word at least, a particular mode
of raising revenue, and no boat could go up or down the Linggi without
paying black-mail to one or more river rajahs.
Our wretched little launch, moored to a cocoa-palm, flies a blue
ensign, and the Malay policemen wear an imperial crown upon their caps,
both representing somewhat touchingly in this equatorial jungle the
might of the small island lying far off amidst the fogs of the northern
seas, and in this instance at least not her might only, but the
security and justice of her rule.
Two or three canoes hollowed out of tree trunks have gone up and down
the river since we landed, each of the inward bound being paddled by
four men, who ply their paddles facing forward, which always has an
aboriginal look, those going down being propelled by single, square
sails made of very coarse matting. It is very hot and silent. The only
sounds are the rustle of the palm fronds and the sharp din of the
cicada, abruptly ceasing at intervals. In this primitive police station
the notices are in both Tamil and Arabic, but the reports are written
in Arabic only.
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