The New Datu Klana Is Very Unpopular, And So Remarkably Weak In
Character As Not To Be Able To Bring Any Influence To Bear Upon The
Settlement Of Any Difficult Question.
The Datu Bandar (alluded to in my
letter) is entirely opposed to progress of every kind, and, having a
great deal of influence, obstructs the present Resident in every
attempt to come to an understanding on the land grant question.
A
virulent cattle disease had put an end for the time being to cart
traffic; and the Linggi, the great high-road to the tin mines, had
become so shallow that the means of water transport were very limited.
Large numbers of jungle workers had returned to Malacca. The Resident's
report shows very significantly the formidable difficulties which
attend on the system of a "Dual Control," and on making any
interference with "Malay custom" regarding land, etc. 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.
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