The S.S. Rainbow - Sunset at Malacca - A Night at Sea - The Residency at
Klang - Our "Next-of-Kin" - The Decay of Klang - A Remarkable
Chinaman - Theatrical Magnificence - Misdeed of a "Rogue Elephant" - "A
Cobra!
A Cobra!"
S.S. "RAINBOW," MALACCA ROADS, February 1, 5 P.M.
I am once again on board this quaint little Chinese steamer, which is
rolling on a lazy ground-swell on the heated, shallow sea. We were to
have sailed at four P.M., but mat-sailed boats, with cargoes of
Chinese, Malays, fowls, pine-apples, and sugar-cane, kept coming off
and delaying us. The little steamer has long ago submerged her
load-line, and is only about ten inches above the water, and still they
load, and still the mat-sailed boats and eight-paddled boats, with two
red-clothed men facing forward on each thwart, are disgorging men and
goods into the overladen craft. A hundred and thirty men, mostly
Chinese, with a sprinkling of Javanese and Malays, are huddled on the
little deck, with goats and buffaloes, and forty coops of fowls and
ducks; the fowls and ducks cackling and quacking, and the Chinese
clattering at the top of their voices - such a Babel!
An hour later, "Easy ahead," shouts the Portuguese-Malay captain, for
the Rainbow is only licensed for one hundred passengers, and the water
runs in at the scuppers as she rolls, but five of the mat-sailed boats
have hooked on. "Run ahead! full speed!" the captain shouts in
English; he dances with excitement, and screams in Malay; the Chinamen
are climbing up the stern, over the bulwarks, everywhere, fairly
boarding us; and with about a hundred and fifty souls on board, and not
a white man or a Christian among them, we steam away over the gaudy
water into the gaudy sunset, and beautiful, dreamy, tropical Malacca,
with its palm-fringed shores, and its colored streets, and Mount Ophir
with its golden history, and the stately Stadthaus, whose ancient rooms
have come to seem almost like my property, are passing into memories. A
gory ball drops suddenly from a gory sky into a flaming sea, and
"With one stride comes the dark."
There is no place for me except on this little bridge, on which the
captain and I have just had an excellent dinner, with hen-coops for
seats. These noisy fowls are now quiet in the darkness, but the noisier
Chinese are still bawling at the top of their voices. It is too dark
for another line.
British Residency, Klang Selangor. - You will not know where Klang is,
and I think you won't find it in any atlas or encyclopedia. Indeed, I
almost doubt whether you will find Selangor, the Malay State of which
Klang is, after a fashion, the capital. At present I can tell you very
little.
Selangor is bounded on the north by the "protected" State of Perak,
which became notorious in England a few years ago for a "little war,"
in which we inflicted a very heavy chastisement on the Malays for the
assassination of Mr. Birch, the British Resident. It has on its south
and southeast Sungei Ujong, Jelabu, and Pahang; but its boundaries in
these directions are ill-defined. The Strait of Malacca bounds it on
the west, and its coast-line is about a hundred and twenty miles long.
From its slightly vague interior boundary to the coast, it is supposed
to preserve a tolerably uniform depth of from fifty to sixty miles.
Klang is on the Klang river, in lat. 3 degrees 3' N., and long. 101
degrees 29' 30" E. I call it "the Capital after a fashion," because the
Resident and his myrmidons live here, and because vessels which draw
thirteen feet of water can go no higher; but the true capital, created
by the enterprise of Chinamen, is thirty-six miles farther inland, the
tin-mining settlement of Kwala Lumpor. Selangor thrives, if it does
thrive, which I greatly doubt, on tin and gutta; but Klang is a most
misthriven, decayed, dejected, miserable-looking place.* The nominal
ruler of Selangor is Sultan Abdul Samat, but he hybernates on a pension
at Langat, a long way off, and must be nearly obliterated, I think.
[*Kwala Lumpor is now the most important mining entrepot in Selangor,
and in 1880 the British Resident and his staff were removed thither.]
It is a great change from Malacca in every respect. I left it with
intense regret. Hospitality, kindness, most genial intercourse, and its
own semi-mediaeval and tropical fascinations, made it one of the
brightest among the many bright spots of my wanderings. Mr. Hayward
took me to the Rainbow in a six-oared boat, manned by six policemen,
completing the list of "Government facilities" as far as Malacca is
concerned. The mercury was 90 degrees in my little cabin or den, and it
swarmed not only with mosquitoes, but with cockroaches, which, in the
dim light, looked as large as mice. Of course, no one sleeps below in
the tropics who can avoid it; so as the deck was thick with Chinamen, I
had my mattress laid on a bench on the bridge, which was only occupied
by two Malay look-out men. There is not very much comfort when one
leaves the beaten tracks of travel, but any loss is far more than made
up for by the intense enjoyment.
It was a delightful night. The moon was only a hemisphere, yet I think
she gave more light than ours at the full. The night was so exquisite
that I was content to rest without sleeping; the Babel noises of fowls
and men had ceased, and there were only quiet sounds of rippling water,
and the occasional cry of a sea-bird as we slipped through the waveless
sea. When the moon set, the sky was wonderful with its tropic purple
and its pavement and dust of stars. I have become quite fond of the
Southern Cross, and don't wonder that the early navigators prostrated
themselves on deck when they first saw it.
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