Klings, Untroubled By Much Clothing, Own And
Drive These Vehicles, Which Are Increasing Rapidly.
The traffic on the
road of heavy buffalo carts, loaded with tin, cuts it up so badly that
without care one might often be thrown upon the pony's back at the
river end of it.
Near the port we met three elephants, the centre one of great size,
rolling along, one of them with a mahout seated behind his great
flapping ears. These are part of the regalia of the deposed Sultan, and
were sent down from the interior for me and my baggage. The smallest of
them would have carried me and my "Gladstone bag" and canvas roll. The
first sight of "elephants at home" is impressive, but they are
fearfully ugly, and their rolling gait does not promise well for the
ease of my future journey.
We passed through a swampy, but busy-looking Chinese village, masculine
almost solely, where Chinamen were building gharries and selling all
such things as Chinese coolies buy, just the same there as everywhere,
and at home there as everywhere; yellow, lean, smooth-shaven, keen,
industrious, self-reliant, sober, mercenary, reliable, mysterious,
opium-smoking, gambling, hugging clan ties, forming no others, and
managing their own matters even to the post and money-order offices,
through which they are constantly sending money to the interior of
China. I hope that it is not true that they look at us, as a singularly
able and highly educated Chinaman lately said to me that they do, as
"the incarnation of brute force allied to brute vices!" This is a
Chinese region, so the degression is excusable.
It was bright and hot, the glorious, equable equatorial heat, and when
we got out of the mangrove swamps through which the road is causewayed,
there was fine tropical foliage, and the trees were festooned with a
large, blue Thunbergia of great beauty. It is eight miles from the
landing at Teluk Kartang to Taipeng, where the British Residency is.
The road crosses uninteresting level country, but every jolt brings one
nearer to the Hijan mountains, which rise picturesquely from the plain
to a height of over three thousand feet. In the distance there is an
extraordinary "butte" or isolated hill, Gunong Pondok, a landmark for
the whole region, and on the right to the east a grand mountain range,
the highest peak of which cannot fall far short of eight thousand feet;
and the blue-green ranges showing the foam of at least one waterfall
almost helped one to be cool.
We reached Permatang, another Chinese village of some pretensions and
population, near which are two very large two-storied Malay houses in
some disrepair, in which the wife of the banished Mentri of Larut
lives, with a number of slaves. A quantity of mirthful-looking slave
girls were standing behind the window bars looking at us
surreptitiously. We alighted at the house of Mr. Wynne, the Government
Agent, who at once said something courteous and hospitable about
breakfast, which I was longing for; but after I had had a bath I found
that we were to pursue our journey, I regretting for the second time
already Mr. Maxwell's abstemiousness and power of going without food!
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 166 of 229
Words from 86825 to 87365
of 120530
