"Well, Some Day - All I Can Say Is, God Help Him!" But Then If
An Official Were To Be Krissed,
No matter how deservedly in Malay
estimation, a gunboat would be sent up the river to "punish," and would
kill,
Burn, and destroy; there would be a "little war," and a heavy war
indemnity, and the true bearings of the case would be lost forever.
Yesterday, after a detention on the bar, we steamed up the broad, muddy
Selangor river, margined by bubbling slime, on which alligators were
basking in the torrid sun, to Selangor. Here the Dutch had a fort on
the top of the hill. We destroyed it in August, 1871. Some Chinese
whose connection with Selangor is not traceable, after murdering nearly
everybody on board a Pinang-owned junk, took the vessel to Selangor. We
demanded that the native chiefs should give up the pirates, and they
gave up nine readily, but refused the tenth, against whom "it does not
appear that there was any proof," and drew their krises on our police
when they tried to arrest the man in defiance of them. The (acting)
Governor of the Straits Settlements, instead of representing to the
Sultan the misconduct, actual or supposed, of his officers, sent a
war-ship to seize and punish them. This attempt was resented by the
Selangor chiefs, and they fired on those who made it. The Rinaldo
destroyed the town in consequence, and killed many of its inhabitants.
When the Viceroy, a brother of the Sultan of Kedah, retook Selangor two
years afterward, he found that what had been a populous and thriving
place was almost deserted, the few hovels which remained were in ruins,
the plantations were overgrown with rank jungle growths, and their
owners had fled; the mines in the interior were deserted, and the roads
and jungle paths were infested by bands of half-starved robbers.*
[*This account of Selangor does not rest on local hearsay, but on the
authority of two of the leading officials of the Colonial Government.]
Selangor is a most wretched place - worse than Klang. On one side of the
river there is a fishing village of mat and attap hovels on stilts
raised a few feet above the slime of a mangrove swamp; and on the other
an expanse of slime, with larger houses on stilts, and an attempt at a
street of Chinese shops, and a gambling-den, which I entered, and found
full of gamblers at noonday. The same place serves for a spirit and
champagne shop. Slime was everywhere oozing, bubbling, smelling putrid
in the sun, all glimmering, shining, and iridescent, breeding fever and
horrible life; while land-crabs boring holes, crabs of a brilliant
turquoise-blue color, which fades at death, and reptiles like fish,
with great bags below their mouths, and innumerable armor-plated
insects, were rioting in it under the broiling sun.
We landed by a steep ladder upon a jetty with a gridiron top, only safe
for shoeless feet, and Mr. Hawley and I went up to the fort by steps
cut in the earth. There are fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to
have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly
oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round it, in which, near the
entrance, some of the Dutch brickwork is still visible. The trees round
it are much tattered and torn by English shell. In front of the
entrance there is a large flat stone on a rude support. On this a young
girl was sacrificed some years ago, and the Malay guns were smeared
with her blood, in the idea that it would make them successful. I was
told this story, but have no means of testing its accuracy.
Within the fort the collector and magistrate - a very inert-looking
Dutch half-caste - has a wretched habitation, mostly made of attap. We
sat there for some time. It looked most miserable, the few things about
being empty bottles and meat-tins. A man would need many resources,
great energy, and an earnest desire to do his duty, in order to save
him from complete degeneracy. He has no better prospect from his
elevation, than a nearly level plateau of mangrove swamps and jungle,
with low hills in the distance, in which the rivers rise. It was
hot - rather.
In the meantime the Resident was trying a case, and when it was
concluded we steamed out to sea and hugged all day the most monotonous
coast I ever saw, only just, if just, above high-water mark, with a
great level of mangrove swamps and dense jungle behind, with high,
jungle-covered hills in the very far distance, a vast area of
beast-haunted country, of which nothing is known by Europeans, and
almost nothing by the Malays themselves. So very small a vessel tumbles
about a good deal even with a very light breeze, and instead of going
to dinner I lay on the roof of the cabin studying blue-books. At
nightfall we anchored at the mouth of the Bernam river, to avoid the
inland mosquitoes, but we must have brought some with us, for I was
malignantly bitten. Mrs. Daly and I shared the lack of privacy and
comfort of the cabin. Perfect though the Abdulsamat is, there is very
little rest to be got in a small and overcrowded vessel, and besides,
the heat was awful. I think we were not far enough from the swampy
shore, for Mrs. Daly was seized with fever during the night, and a
Malay servant also. In the morning Mrs. Daly. who is comely and has a
very nice complexion, looked haggard, yellow, and much shaken.
At daylight we weighed anchor and steamed for many miles up the muddy,
mangrove-fringed river Bernam, the mangroves occasionally varied by the
nipah palm. We met several palm-trees floating with their roots and
some of their fruits above the water, like those we saw yesterday
evening out on the Malacca Straits, looking like crowded Malay prahus
with tattered mat-sails.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 75 of 118
Words from 75816 to 76836
of 120530
