When the whistle is heard from down
the river a great yell arises from all over the town. The steamer is
coming! People by the hundreds run down to the wharf amid great excitement
and joy. Many Malays do not work except on these occasions, when they are
engaged in loading and unloading. The principal Chinese merchant there,
Hong Seng, began his career as a coolie on the wharf. He has a fairly
well-stocked store with some European and American preserved articles, and
was reliable in his dealings, as the Chinese always are. He was rich
enough to have of late taken to himself a young wife, besides keeping his
first one. His two young sons who assisted him had been at school in
Singapore, and were proud to air their knowledge of English.
The house where I lived was on the main street, on the river bank, and in
the evening the little shops on either side started playing nasty, cheap
European phonographs the noise of which was most disagreeable. Most of the
records were of Chinese music, the harsh quality of which was magnified
tenfold by the imperfections of the instruments. When the nerve-wracking
concert became intolerable, they were always good enough to stop it at my
request.
However, there was one feature about this remote place which was
repugnant - the prevalent flogging of children with rattan, mostly among
the Mohammedan Malays.
