In Front Of The Residency There Is A Six-Pounder Flanked By
Two Piles Of Shot.
Behind it there is a guard-room, with racks of
rifles and bayonets for the Resident's body-guard of twelve men, and
quarters for the married soldiers, for soldiers they are, though they
are called policemen.
A gong hangs in front of the porch on which to
sound the alarm, and a hundred men fully armed can turn out at five
minutes' notice.
The family consists of the Resident, his wife, a dignified and gracious
woman, with a sweet but plaintive expression of countenance, and an
afflicted daughter, on whom her mother attends with a loving, vigilant,
and ceaseless devotion of a most pathetic kind. The circle is completed
by a handsome black monkey tied to a post, and an ape which they call
an ouf, from the solitary monosyllable which it utters, but which I
believe to be the "agile gibbon," a creature so delicate that it has
never yet survived a voyage to England.
It is a beautiful creature. I could "put off" hours of time with it. It
walks on its hind legs with a curious human walk, hanging its long arms
down by its sides like B - - -. It will walk quietly by your side like
another person. It has nice dark eyes, with well-formed lids like ours,
a good nose, a human mouth with very nice white teeth, and a very
pleasant cheery look when it smiles, but when its face is at rest the
expression is sad and wistful. It spends a good deal of its time in
swinging itself most energetically. It has very pretty fingers and
finger-nails. It looks fearfully near of kin to us, and yet the gulf is
measureless. It can climb anywhere, and take long leaps. This morning
it went into a house in which a cluster of bananas is hanging, leaped
up to the roof, and in no time had peeled two, which it ate very
neatly. It has not even a rudimentary tail. When it sits with its arms
folded it looks like a gentlemanly person in a close-fitting fur suit.
The village of Klang is not interesting. It looks like a place which
has "seen better days," and does not impress one favorably as regards
the prosperity of the State. Above it the river passes through rich
alluvial deposits, well adapted for sugar, rice, and other products of
low-lying tropical lands; but though land can be purchased on a system
of deferred payments for two dollars an acre, these lands are still
covered with primeval jungle. Steam-launches and flattish-bottomed
native boats go up the river eighteen miles farther to a village called
Damarsara, from which a good country road has been made to the great
Chinese village and tin mines of Kwala Lumpor. The man-eating tigers,
which almost until now infested the old jungle track, have been driven
back, and plantations of tobacco, tapioca, and rice have been started
along the road.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 130 of 229
Words from 68068 to 68575
of 120530
