He Was Told To Take A Banana Tree For
His Dinner, And He Broke Off The Tough Thick Stem Just
Above the ground
as if it had been a stick, then neatly stripped the eight-foot leaves,
and holding the
Thick end of each stalk under his foot, stripped off
the whole leaf on each side of the midrib, and then, with the dexterity
of a monkey peeling a banana, he peeled off the thick rind from the
stem, and revelled in the juices of the soft inside. I was sitting on
the ground in a place where there was scarcely room for him to pass,
and yet he was so noble and gentle that I never thought of getting up,
even though his ponderous feet just touched me, and I ate my lunch
within the swing of his huge proboscis, but he stood quite still,
except that he flapped his "ears" and squirted water over himself. Each
elephant has his own driver, and there is quite a large vocabulary of
elephant language. The mahout carried an invaluable knife-weapon,
called a parang, broadest and heaviest at the point, and as we passed
through the jungle he slashed to right and left to clear the track, and
quite thick twigs fell with hardly an effort on his part.
After traveling for several hours we came upon a kampong under palms
and nutmeg trees, and then dismounted and took our lunch, looking out
from deep shadow down upon the beautiful river lying in the glory of
the noonday sun, its banks bright with birds and butterflies. The
mahout was here among friends, and the salutations were numerous. If
nose-rubbing as a form of greeting is practiced I have never seen it.
What I have seen is that when one man approaches another, or is about
to pay a visit, he joins his hands as if in supplication, and the other
touches them on both sides, and afterward raises his hands to his lips
and forehead. It is a courteous looking mode of salutation.
At this point the Singhalese said that the natives told him that it was
possible to ford the Perak, but that the mahout said that the elephant
was a "diver," and would probably dive, but that there was no danger to
us except of getting very wet. I liked the prospect of a journey on the
other side, so we went down a steep bank into the broad, bright, river,
and putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the
elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving
majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of
his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every
now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent
connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were
sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the air, and so we
went for some distance up the clear, shining river, with the tropic sun
blazing down upon it, with everything that could rejoice the eye upon
its shores, with little beaches of golden sands, and above the forest
the mountains with varying shades of indigo coloring.
There would have been nothing left to wish for if you had been there to
see, though you would have tried to look as if you saw an elephant
moving submerged along a tropical river every day with people of three
races on his back!!
The Singhalese said, "I'm going to take you to Koto-lamah; no European
has been there since the war. I've never been there, nor the Resident
either." I have pored over blue books long enough to know that this is
a place which earned a most unenviable notoriety during the recent
troubles, and is described as "a stronghold of piracy, lawlessness, and
disaffection." As we were making a diagonal crossing of the Perak, the
Singhalese said, "A few months ago they would have been firing at us
from both sides of the river." It was a beautiful view at that point,
with the lovely river in its windings, and on the top of the steep bank
a kampong of largish houses under palms and durions. A good many people
assembled on the cliff, some with muskets and some with spears, and the
Singhalese said, "I wish we had not come;" but as the elephant
scrambled up the bank the people seemed quite friendly, and I
dismounted and climbed up to a large house with a very open floor, on
which fine mats were laid in several places. There were many women and
children in the room when I went in, and one of the former put a fine
mat over a rice sack for me. Presently the room filled up with people,
till there were fifty-nine seated in circles on the floor, but some of
the men remained standing, one a thorough villain in looks, a Hadji,
with a dirty green turban and a red sarong. The rest of the men wore
handkerchiefs and sarongs only.
These people really did look much like savages. They all carried
parangs, or the short kris called a golo, and haying been told that the
Malays were disarmed, I was surprised to see several muskets, a rifle,
and about thirty spears on the wall. So I found myself in the heart of
what has been officially described as "a nest of robbers and
murderers," "the centre of disturbance and disaffection," etc. To make
it yet more interesting, on inquiring whose house it was, the name of a
notorious "rebel" leader was mentioned, and one of the women, I was
told, is the principal wife or rather widow of the Maharajah Lela, who
was executed for complicity in the assassination of Mr. Birch.
However, though as a Briton I could not have been a welcome visitor,
they sent a monkey for two cocoa-nuts, and gave me their delicious
milk; and when I came away they took the entrance ladder from one of
the houses to help me to mount the elephant.
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