"You Are A
Man Of High Birth In Your Country, But I'm A Man Of High Birth In Mine,
And, So Long As I Bear Queen Victoria's Commission, I Refuse To Accept
Insult.
I take no future orders from your highness." Nor, it is said,
has he.
My human surroundings have an unusual amount of piquancy. Mr. Maxwell
is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and
upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the
Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able,
combative, dogmatic, well-read and well-informed, expresses himself
incisively, is self-reliant, strong-willed, thoroughly just, thoroughly
a gentleman, and has immense energy and business capacity, and a large
amount of governing power. He, too, likes talking, and talks well, but
with much perfectly good-natured vehemence. He is a man on whose word
one may implicitly rely. Brought up among Malays, and speaking their
language idiomatically, he not only likes them, but takes the trouble
to understand them and enter into their ideas and feelings. He studies
their literature, superstitions, and customs carefully, and has made
some valuable notes upon them. I should think that few people
understand the Malays better than he does. He dislikes the Chinese. I
have the very pleasant feeling regarding him that he is the right man
in the right place, and that his work is useful, conscientious, and
admirable. As Assistant Resident he is virtually dictator of Larut,
only subject to Mr. Low's interference. He is a judge, and can inflict
the penalty of death, the Regent's signature, however, being required
for the death-warrant. He rules the Chinese rigidly.
Captain Walker is a new comer, and does not know more about Perak than
I do.
At this dinner of four there was as much noise as twenty stupid people
would make! Something brought up the dead lock in Victoria, which
excited violent feeling for some reason not obvious. Captain Walker
threw off his somewhat suave A.D.C. manner, and looked dangerous, Mr.
Maxwell fought for victory, and Major Swinburne to beat Mr. Maxwell,
and the row was deafening. I doubt whether such an argument could have
been got up in moist, hot Singapore, or steamy Malacca! An energetic
difference seems of daily occurrence, and possibly is an essential
ingredient of friendship. That it should be possible shows what an
invigorating climate this must be. Major Swinburne, in an aggravating
tone, begins upon some peculiarity or foible, real or supposed, of his
friend, with a deluge or sarcasm, mimicry, ridicule, and invective,
torments him mercilessly, and without giving him time to reply,
disappears, saying, Parthian-like, "Now, my dear fellow, its no use
resenting it, you haven't such a friend as me in the world - you know if
it were not for me you'd be absolutely intolerable!" All this is very
amusing. How many differing characters are required to make up even the
world that I know!
It is strange to be in a house in which there are no pets, for a small
Malay bear which lives at the back can scarcely be called one.
Sometimes in the evening a wild animal called a lemur rushes wildly
through the house and out at the front veranda. I am always afraid of
being startled by his tearing through my room in the depths of the
night, for here, as in many other houses, instead of doors there are
screens raised a foot from the ground.
This morning I got up before daylight, and went up a hill which is
being cleared, to enjoy the sunrise, the loveliest time of the tropic
day. It was all dew and rose color, with a delicious freshness in the
air, prolonged unusually, because the sun was so slow to climb above
the eastern mountain tops. Then there was a sudden glory, and birds,
beasts, and insects broke into a vociferous chorus, the tuneless hymn
which ascends daily without a discord. There are sumptuously colored
sunsets to be seen from this elevation, but one has no time to enjoy
them, and they make one long for the lingering gold and purple of more
northern latitudes. I have really been industrious since I came here,
both in writing to you, and in "reading up" the native states in blue
books, etc.
I. L. B.
LETTER XIX
The Chinese in Larut - "Monkey Cups" - Chinese Hospitality - A Sikh Belle
BRITISH RESIDENCY, LARUT.
I am remaining here for another day or two, so have time to tell you a
little about the surroundings.
Larut province is a strip of land about seventy miles long, and from
twenty-five to forty-five broad. It was little known, and almost
unexplored till 1848, when a Malay, while bathing, found some coarse,
black sand, which, on being assayed, proved to be tin. He obtained
twenty Chinese coolies, opened a mine which turned out lucrative, and
the Chinese at home hearing that money was to be made, flocked into
Larut, but after some years took to quarreling about the ownership of
mines, and eventually to a war between the two leading clans, which
threatened to be a war of extermination, and resulted in British
interference, and the appointment of a Resident; and then Chinese
merchants in Pinang made advances of money and provisions to such of
their countrymen as were willing to work the abandoned mines. Very soon
the population increased to such an extent that it became necessary to
choose sites for mining towns, granting one to each faction; the Go
Kwan town being called Taipeng, and the Si Kwan town Kamunting.
American mining enterprise could hardly go ahead faster. At the end of
1873 the population of Larut was four thousand, the men of the fighting
factions only. Eleven months later these two mining towns contained
nine thousand inhabitants, a tenth of whom were shopkeepers, and the
district thirty-three thousand. Larut is level from the sea-shore to
the mountain range, twenty miles inland, and is very uninteresting.
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