According To Mr. Newbold, Two Birds Of Paradise (Paradisea Regia And
Paradisea Gularis) Are Natives Of The Peninsula,* And Among
Other
bright-winged creatures are the glorious crimson-feathered pergam, the
penciled pheasant, the peacock pheasant, the blue pheasant partridge,
The mina, and the dial bird, with an endless variety of parrots,
lories, green-feathered pigeons of various sizes, and wood-peckers.
Besides these there are falcons, owls, or "spectre birds," sweet-voiced
butcher birds, storks, fly-catchers, and doves, and the swallow which
builds the gelatinous edible nest, which is the foundation of the
expensive luxury "Bird's Nest Soup," frequents the verdant islands on
the coast.
[*Mr. Newbold is ordinarily so careful and accurate that it is almost
presumptuous to hint that in this particular case he may not have been
able to verify the statements of the natives by actual observation.]
Nor are our own water birds wanting. There are bitterns, rails,
wild-duck, teal, snipes; the common, gray, and whistling plover; green,
black, and red quails; and the sport on the plains and reedy marshes,
and along the banks of rivers, is most excellent.
Turtles abound off the coast, and tortoises, one variety with a hard
shell, and the other with a soft one and a rapid movement, are found in
swampy places. The river fish are neither abundant nor much esteemed;
but the sea furnishes much of the food of both Malays and Chinese, and
the dried and salted fish prepared on the coast is considered very
good.
At European tables in the settlements the red mullet, a highly prized
fish, the pomfret, considered more delicious than the turbot, and the
tungeree, with cray-fish, crabs, prawns, and shrimps, are usually seen.
The tongue-fish, something like a sole, the gray mullet, the
hammer-headed shark, and various fish, with vivid scarlet and yellow
stripes alternating with black, are eaten, along with cockles, "razor
shells," and king-crabs. The lover of fishy beauty is abundantly
gratified by the multitudes of fish of brilliant colors, together with
large medusae, which dart or glide through the sunlit waters among the
coral-groves, where every coral spray is gemmed with zoophytes, whose
rainbow-tinted arms sway with the undulations of the water, and where
sea-snakes writhe themselves away into the recesses of coral caves.
Nature is so imposing, so magnificent, and so prolific on the Malay
Peninsula, that one naturally gives man the secondary place which I
have assigned to him in this chapter. The whole population of the
Golden Chersonese, a region as large as Great Britain, is not more than
three-quarters of a million, and less than a half of this is Malay.
Neither great wars, nor an ancient history, nor a valuable literature,
nor stately ruins, nor barbaric splendors, attract scholars or
sight-seers to the Peninsula.
The Malays are not the Aborigines of this singular spit of land, and,
they are its colonists rather than its conquerors. Their histories,
which are chiefly traditional, state that the extremity of the
Peninsula was peopled by a Malay emigration from Sumatra about the
middle of the twelfth century, and that the descendants of these
colonists settled Malacca and other places on the coast about a century
later. Tradition refers the peopling of the interior States to another
and later migration from Sumatra, with a chief at its head, who, with
all his followers, married Aboriginal wives; the Aboriginal tribes
retreating into the jungles and mountains as the Malays spread
themselves over the region now known as the States of the Negri
Sembilan. The conquest or colonization of the Malay Peninsula by the
Malays is not, however, properly speaking, matter of history, and the
origin of the Malay race and its early history are only matters of more
or less reasonable hypothesis. It is fair, however, to presume that
Sumatra was the ancient seat of the race, and the wonderful valley of
Menangkabau, surrounded by mountains ten thousand feet in height, that
of its earliest civilization. The only Malay "colonial" kingdoms on the
Peninsula which ever attained any importance were those of Malacca and
Johore, and even their reliable history begins with the arrival of the
Portuguese. The conversion of the Sumatra Malays to Mohammedanism arose
mainly out of their commercial intercourse with Arabia; it was slow,
not violent, and is supposed to have begun in the thirteenth century.
A population of "Wild Tribes," variously estimated at from eight
thousand to eleven thousand souls, is still found in the Peninsula, and
even if research should eventually prove them not to be its Aborigines,
they are, without doubt, the same races which were found inhabiting it
by the earliest Malay colonists.
These are frequently called by the Malays "Orang Benua," or "men of the
country," but they are likewise called "Orang-outang," the name which
we apply to the big ape of Borneo. The accompanying engraving
represents very faithfully the "Orang-outang" of the interior. The few
accounts given of the wild tribes vary considerably, but apparently
they may be divided into two classes, the Samangs, or Oriental Negroes
or Negritos and the Orang Benua, frequently called Jakuns, and in Perak
Sakei. By the Malays they are called indiscriminately Kafirs or
infidels, and are interesting to them only in so far as they can use
them for bearing burdens, clearing jungle, procuring gutta, and in
child-stealing, an abominable Malay custom, which, it is hoped, has
received its death-blow in Perak at least.
The Samangs are about the same height as the Malays, but their hair,
instead of being lank and straight like theirs, is short and curly,
though not woolly like that of the African negro, and their
complexions, or rather skins, are of a dark brown, nearly black. Their
noses, it is said, incline to be flat, their foreheads recede, and
their lips are thick. They live in rude and easily removable huts made
of leaves and branches, subsist on jungle birds, beasts, roots, and
fruits, and wear a scanty covering made from the inner bark of a
species of Artocarpus.
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