The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, Isabella Lucy Bird [book club recommendations TXT] 📗

give rise to the ignorant statement, for after the proper head was dead the tail stood up and moved forward. The skin of this reptile was marked throughout with broad bands of black and white alternately. There was an ill-favored skull of a crocodile hanging up to dry, with teeth three inches long. One day lately a poor Hadji was carried off by one, and shortly afterwards this monster was caught, and on opening it they found the skull of the Hadji, part of his body, a bit of his clothing, and part of a goat. I brought away as spoils tiger's teeth and claws, crocodile's teeth, bear's teeth, etc.

I went also to the Government offices. The skin of a superb tiger, which was killed close to Klang after it had devoured six men, decorated the entrance. I heard two cases tried before the Resident. The first criminal was a Malay, who was "in trouble" for the very British crime of nearly beating his wife to death. She said she did not want to prosecute him, but to get a divorce. She was told to apply to the Imaum, and the man was bound over to keep the peace for six months. The next case was a very common one here, and the court was crowded with Chinese onlookers. A Chinaman had bought a girl (very nice-looking she was), and now a man wants to marry her, upon which her owner produces a promissory note from her, and demands $165 as her price! It was impossible to make him understand that the transaction is utterly illegal and immoral. The Resident addressed some very strong and just words to this man in reprobation of his conduct, which were translated for the benefit of the crowd.

I cannot elicit anything very definite, here or elsewhere, about the legal system under which criminals are tried in these States. Apparently, murder, robbery, forgery, and violent assault come under English criminal law, and must be equally punishable whether committed by a Briton, a Chinaman, or a Malay. But then nobody, except a Christian, can be punished for bigamy. So criminal law even undergoes modification by local custom; and the four wives of the Mussulman, and the subordinate wives of the Chinaman, have an equal claim to recognition with the one wife of the Englishman. Even Mohammedan law, by which the Malays profess to be ruled, is modified by Malay custom, which asserts itself specially in connection with marriage, its frequent attendant repudiation, and inheritance.

The "Malay custom" (adat Malayu) seems to have been originally a just and equitable code, though ofttimes severe in its punishments, as you will see if you can get Newbold's _Malacca_, and was probably suited to the people; but it has undergone such clippings and emendations by the successive Rajahs or Sultans of these native States, that the custom now in force bears a very faint resemblance to the original adat. It is said, indeed, that each alteration has been for the worse, and that now any chief who introduces anything of his own will, justifies it as "adat Malayu." Mr. Swettenham, the Assistant Colonial Secretary, says that the few upright Rajahs who exist say that there is no longer any "adat Malayu," but that everything is done by "adat Suka hate," i.e., the custom by which a man can best suit his own inclination.

So it seems that a most queerly muddled system of law prevails under our flag, Mohammedan law, modified by degenerate and evil custom, and to some extent by the discretion of the residents, existing alongside of fragments of English criminal law, or more perhaps correctly of "justice's justice," the Resident's notions of "equity," overriding all else.* Surely, as we have practically acquired those States, and are responsible for their good government, we ought to give them the blessing of a simple code of law, of which the residents shall be only the responsible interpreters, modified by the true "Malay custom" of course, but under the same conditions which are giving such growing satisfaction to the peoples of India and Ceylon. [*A Colonial friend tells me that he asked an English magistrate in one of the native States, by what law--English, Colonial, or Malay--he had sentenced some culprits to three years' imprisonment, and that the reply was a shrug, and "The rascals were served right."]

The oaths are equally inscrutable, and probably no oath, however terrible in formula, would restrain a Chinese coolie witness from telling a lie, if he thought it would be to his advantage.* [*Sir Benson Maxwell, late Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements, to whose kindness I am much indebted, wrote to me lately thus: "In China I believe an oath is rarely taken; when it is, it is in the form of an imprecation. The witness cuts off a cock's head, and prays that he may be so treated if he speaks falsely." "Would you cut off a cock's head to that?" I once asked a Chinese witness who had made a statement which I did not believe. "I would cut off an elephant's head to it," he replied. In the Colonial courts, Chinamen are sworn by burning a piece of paper on which is written some imprecation on themselves if they do not speak the truth.]

I went to see the jail, a tolerable building--a barred cage below, and a long room above--standing in a graveled courtyard, surrounded by a high wall. Formerly there were no prisons, and criminals were punished on the spot, either by being krissed, shot, or flogged. Here they have a liberal diet of rice and salt fish, and "hard labor" is only mild work on the roads. The prisoners, forty-two adult men, were drawn up in a row, and Mr. Syers called the roll, telling the crime of each man, and his conduct in prison; and most of those who had conducted themselves well were to be recommended to the Sultan for remission of part of their sentences. "Flog them if they are lazy," the Resident often said; but Mr. Syers says that he never punishes them except under aggravated circumstances. The prisoners are nearly all Chinamen, and their crimes are mostly murder, gang-robbery, assault, and theft. About half of them were in chains. There is an unusual mortality in the prison, attributed, though possibly not _attributable_, to the enforced disuse of opium. We went also to the hospital, mainly used by the police, a long airy shed, with a broad shelf on each side. Mr. Klyne, the apothecary, a half-caste, has a good many Malay dispensary patients.

On our return, four Malay women, including the Imaum's wife, came to see me. Each one would have made a picturesque picture, but they had no manners, and seized on my hands, which are coarsened, reddened, and swelled from heat and mosquito bites, all exclaiming, "chanti! chanti!"--pretty! pretty! I wondered at their bad taste, specially as they had very small and pretty hands themselves, with almond-shaped nails.

In the evening the "establishment" dined at the Residency. After dinner, as we sat in the darkness in the veranda, maddened by mosquito bites, about 9:30, the bugle at the fort sounded the "alarm," which was followed in a few seconds by the drum beating "to quarters," and in less than five minutes every approach to the Residency was held by men with fixed bayonets, and fourteen rounds of ball-cartridges each in their belts, and every road round Klang was being patrolled by pickets. I knew instinctively that it was "humbug," arranged to show the celerity with which the little army could be turned out; and shortly an orderly arrived with a note--"False alarm;" but Klang never subsided all night, and the Klings beat their tom-toms till daylight. I am writing at dawn now, in order that my letter may "catch the mail."

I. L. B.



LETTER XVI

A Yachting Voyage--The Destruction of Selangor--Varieties of Slime--Swamp Fever--An Unprosperous Region--A "Deadly-Lively" Morning--A Waif and Stray--The Superintendent of Police

STEAM-LAUNCH "ABDULSAMAT" February 7.

You will certainly think, from the dates of my letters, that I am usually at sea. The Resident, his daughter, Mrs. Daly, Mr. Hawley, a revenue officer, and I, left Klang this morning at eight for a two days' voyage in this bit of a thing. Blessed be "the belt of calms!" There was the usual pomp of a body-guard, some of whom are in attendance, and a military display on the pier, well drilled, and well officered in quiet, capable, admirable, unobtrusive Mr. Syers; but gentle Mrs. Douglas, devoted to her helpless daughter, standing above the jetty, a lone woman in forlorn, decayed Klang, haunts me as a vision of sadness, as I think of her sorrow and her dignified hospitality in the midst of it.

Now, at half-past eleven, we are aground with an ebb-tide on the bar of the Selangor river; so I may write a little, though I should like to be asleep.

Bernam River, Selangor, February 8th.--"Chi-laka!" (worthless good-for-nothing wretch), "Bodo!" (fool). I hear these words repeated incessantly in tones of thunder and fury, with accompaniments which need not be dwelt upon. The Malays are a revengeful people. If any official in British service were to knock them about and insult them, one can only say what has been said to me since I came to the native States: "Well, some day--all I can say is, God help him!" But then if an official were to be krissed, no matter how deservedly in Malay estimation, a gunboat would be sent up the river to "punish," and would kill, burn, and destroy; there would be a "little war," and a heavy war indemnity, and the true bearings of the case would be lost forever.

Yesterday, after a detention on the bar, we steamed up the broad, muddy Selangor river, margined by bubbling slime, on which alligators were basking in the torrid sun, to Selangor. Here the Dutch had a fort on the top of the hill. We destroyed it in August, 1871. Some Chinese whose connection with Selangor is not traceable, after murdering nearly everybody on board a Pinang-owned junk, took the vessel to Selangor. We demanded that the native chiefs should give up the pirates, and they gave up nine readily, but refused the tenth, against whom "it does not appear that there was any proof," and drew their krises on our police when they tried to arrest the man in defiance of them. The (acting) Governor of the Straits Settlements, instead of representing to the Sultan the misconduct, actual or supposed, of his officers, sent a war-ship to seize and punish them. This attempt was resented by the Selangor chiefs, and they fired on those who made it. The Rinaldo destroyed the town in consequence, and killed many of its inhabitants.

When the Viceroy, a brother of the Sultan of Kedah, retook Selangor two years afterward, he found that what had been a populous and thriving place was almost deserted, the few hovels which remained were in ruins, the plantations were overgrown with rank jungle growths, and their owners had fled; the mines in the interior were deserted, and the roads and jungle paths were infested by bands of half-starved robbers.* [*This account of Selangor does not rest on local hearsay, but on the authority of two of the leading officials of the Colonial Government.]

Selangor is a most wretched place--worse than Klang. On one side of the river there is a fishing village of mat and attap hovels on stilts raised a few feet above the slime of a mangrove swamp; and on the other an expanse of slime, with larger houses on stilts, and an attempt at a street of Chinese shops, and a gambling-den, which I entered, and found