I Must Not, However, Give The Impression That The Malays Are A Dirty
People.
They wash their clothes frequently, and bathe as often as is
possible.
They try to build their houses near water, and use small
bathing-sheds.
I went into another house, rather poorer than the former, and, with a
touching hospitality, they made signs to me to know if I would like a
cocoa-nut. I hinted that I would, and the man at once got up and called
to him an ape or monkey about three feet high, which was playing with a
child, and the animal went out with him, and in no time was at the top
of a tall cocoa-nut tree. His master said something to him, and he
moved about examining the nuts till he decided upon a green one, which
he wrung off, using teeth and hands for the operation. The slightly
acid milk was refreshing, but its "meat," which was of the consistency
and nearly the tastelessness of the white of an egg boiled for five
minutes, was not so good as that of the riper nuts.
I had walked on for some distance, and I had to walk back again before
I found my elephant. I had been poking about in the scrub in search of
some acid fruits, and when I got back to the road, was much surprised
to find that my boots were filled with blood, and on looking for the
cause I found five small brown leeches, beautifully striped with
yellow, firmly attached to my ankles. I had not heard that these were
pests in Perak, and feared that they were something worse; but the
elephant driver, seeing my plight, made some tobacco juice and squirted
it over the creatures, when they recoiled in great disgust. Owing to
the exercise I was obliged to take, the bites bled for several hours. I
do not remember feeling the first puncture. I have now heard that these
blood-suckers infest leaves and herbage, and that when they hear the
rustling made by man or animal in passing, they stretch themselves to
their fullest length, and if they can touch any part of his body or
dress they hold on to it, and as quickly as possible reach some spot
where they can suck their fill.
I am making my narrative as slow as my journey, but the things I write
of will be as new to you as they were to me. New it was certainly to
stand upon a carpet of the sensitive plant at noon, with the rays of a
nearly vertical sun streaming down from a cloudless, steely blue sky,
watching the jungle monster meekly kneeling on the ground, with two
Malays who do not know a word of English as my companions, and myself
unarmed and unescorted in the heart of a region so lately the scene of
war, about which seven blue books have been written, and about the
lawlessness and violence of which so many stories have been
industriously circulated.
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