They Form Huge Breeding Grounds For Alligators And
Mosquitoes, And Usually For Malarial Fevers, But From The Latter The
Peninsula Is Very Free.
The seeds germinate while still attached to the
branch.
A long root pierces the covering and grows rapidly downward
from the heavy end of the fruit, which arrangement secures that when
the fruit falls off the root shall at once become embedded in the mud.
Nature has taken abundant trouble to insure the propagation of this
tree, nearly worthless as timber. Strange to say, its fruit is sweet
and eatable, and from its fermented juice wine can be made. The
mangrove swamp is to me an evil mystery.
Behind, the jungle stretches out - who can say how far, for no European
has ever penetrated it? - and out of it rise, jungle-covered, the Rumbow
hills. The elephant, the rhinoceros, the royal tiger, the black
panther, the boar, the leopard, and many other beasts roam in its
tangled, twilight depths, but in this fierce heat they must be all
asleep in their lairs. The Argus-pheasant too, one of the loveliest
birds of a region whose islands are the home of the Bird of Paradise,
haunts the shade, and the shade alone. In the jungle too, is the
beautiful bantam fowl, the possible progenitor of all that useful race.
The cobra, the python (?), the boa-constrictor, the viper, and at least
fourteen other ophidians, are winding their loathsome and lissom forms
through slimy jungle recesses; and large and small apes and monkeys,
flying foxes, iguanas, lizards, peacocks, frogs, turtles, tortoises,
alligators, besides tapirs, rarely seen, and the palandok or chevrotin,
the hog deer, the spotted deer, and the sambre, may not be far off. I
think that this part of the country, intersected by small, shallow,
muddy rivers, running up through slimy mangrove swamps into a vast and
impenetrable jungle, must be like many parts of Western Africa.
One cannot walk three hundred yards from this station, for there are no
tracks. We are beyond the little territory of Malacca, but this bit of
land was ceded to England after the "Malay disturbances" in 1875, and
on it has been placed the Sempang police station, a four-roomed
shelter, roofed with attap, a thatch made of the fronds of the nipah
palm, supported on high posts - an idea perhaps borrowed from the
mangrove - and reached by a ladder. In this four Malay policemen and a
corporal have dwelt for three years to keep down piracy. "Piracy," by
which these rivers were said to be infested, is a very ugly word,
suggestive of ugly deeds, bloody attacks, black flags, and no quarter;
but here it meant, in our use of the word at least, a particular mode
of raising revenue, and no boat could go up or down the Linggi without
paying black-mail to one or more river rajahs.
Our wretched little launch, moored to a cocoa-palm, flies a blue
ensign, and the Malay policemen wear an imperial crown upon their caps,
both representing somewhat touchingly in this equatorial jungle the
might of the small island lying far off amidst the fogs of the northern
seas, and in this instance at least not her might only, but the
security and justice of her rule.
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