The Centre Of
Pinang Is Wooded And Not Much Cultivated, But On The South And
South-West Coasts There Are Fine Sugar, Coffee And Pepper Plantations.
The Coffee Looks Very Healthy.
From the ridges in the centre of the
island the ground rises toward the north, till, at the Peak, it reaches
the height of two thousand nine hundred and twenty-two feet.
There is a
sanitarium there with a glorious view, and a delicious temperature
ranging from 60 degrees to 75 degrees, while in the town and on the low
lands it ranges from 80 degrees to 90 degrees. A sea breeze blows every
day, and rain falls throughout the year, except in January and
February. The vegetation is profuse, but less beautiful and tropical
than on the mainland, and I have seen very few flowers except in
gardens.
The products are manifold - guavas, mangoes, lemons, oranges, bananas,
plantains, shaddocks, bread-fruit, etc.; and sugar, rice, sweet
potatoes, ginger, areca, and cocoa-nuts, coffee, cloves, some nutmegs,
and black and white pepper. My gharrie driver took me to see a Chinese
pepper plantation - to me the most interesting thing that I saw on a
very long and hot drive. Pepper is a very profitable crop. The vine
begins to bear in three or four years after the cuttings have been
planted, and yields two crops annually for about thirteen years. It is
an East Indian plant, rather pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth,
a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough,
broadly ovate leaves. It is supported much as hops are. When the
berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose
pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are
either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them
from the spike, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. Black pepper
consists of such berries wrinkled and blackened in the process of
drying, and white pepper of similar berries freed from the skin and the
fleshy part of the fruit by being soaked in water and then rubbed. Some
planters bleach with chlorine to improve the appearance; but this
process, as may be supposed, does not improve the flavor.
In these climates the natives use enormous quantities of pepper, as
they do of all hot condiments, and the Europeans imitate them.
Although there are so many plantations, a great part of Pinang is
uncleared, and from the peak most of it looks like a forest. It
contains ninety thousand inhabitants, the Chinese more than equaling
all the other nationalities put together. Its trade, which in 1860 was
valued at 3,500,000 pounds, is now (1880) close upon 8,000,000 pounds,
Pinang being, like Singapore, a great entrepot and "distributing
point."
Now for the wilds once more!
I. L. B.
A CHAPTER ON PERAK
The Boundaries and Rivers of Perak - Tin Mining - Fruits and
Vegetables - The Gomuti Palm - The Trade of Perak - A Future of Coffee - A
Hopeful Lookout - Chinese Difficulties - Chinese Disturbances in
Larut - The "Pangkor Treaty" - A "Little War" - The Settlement of
Perak - The Resident and Assistant-Resident
The "protected" State of Perak (pronounced Payrah) is the richest and
most important of the States of the Peninsula, as well as one of the
largest. Its coast-line, broken into, however, by a bit of British
territory, is about one hundred and twenty-five miles in length. Its
sole southern boundary is the State of Selangor. On the north it has
the British colony of Province Wellesley, and the native States of
Kedah and Patani, tributary to Siam. Its eastern boundary is only an
approximate one, Kelantan joining it in the midst of a vast tract of
unexplored country inhabited solely by the Sakei and Semang aborigines.
The State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at
its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five
thousand square miles. The great artery of the country is the Perak
river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water
can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth,
and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther.
This river, even one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth at Kwala
Kangsa, is two hundred yards wide, and might easily be ascended by
"stern-wheel" boats drawing a foot of water, such as those which ply on
the upper Mississippi. Next in size to the Perak is the Kinta, which
falls into the Perak, besides which there are the Bernam and Batang
Padang rivers, both navigable for vessels of light draught. Along the
shores of these streams most of the Malay kampongs are built.
The interior of Perak is almost altogether covered with magnificent
forests, out of which rise isolated limestone hills, and mountain
ranges from five thousand to eight thousand feet in height. The scenery
is beautiful. The neighborhood of the mangrove swamps of the coast is
low and swampy, but as the ground rises, the earth which has been
washed down from the hills becomes fertile, and farther inland the
plains are so broken up by natural sand ridges which lighten the soil,
that it is very suitable for rice culture.
Tin is the most abundant of the mineral products of Perak, and, as in
the other States, the supply is apparently inexhaustible. So far it is
obtained in "stream works" only. The export of this metal has risen
from 144,000 pounds in 1876 to 436,000 pounds in 1881. Tin-mining
continues to attract a steady stream of Chinese immigration, and the
Resident believes that the number of Chinamen has increased from twenty
thousand in 1879 to forty thousand in 1881. Wealth is reckoned in slabs
of tin, and lately for an act of piracy a Rajah was fined so many slabs
of tin, instead of so many hogsheads of oil, as he would have been on
the West African coast.
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