We Left The Mines
On The 27th Of November, And The Next Day Reached The Malay
Village Of GúDong, Where I Stayed A Short Time To Buy Fruit And
Eggs, And Called Upon The Datu Bandar, Or Malay Governor Of The
Place.
He lived in a large, arid well-built house, very dirty
outside and in, and was very inquisitive about my business, and
particularly about the coal-mines.
These puzzle the natives
exceedingly, as they cannot understand the extensive and costly
preparations for working coal, and cannot believe it is to be
used only as fuel when wood is so abundant and so easily
obtained. It was evident that Europeans seldom came here, for
numbers of women skeltered away as I walked through the village
and one girl about ten or twelve years old, who had just brought
a bamboo full of water from the river, threw it down with a cry
of horror and alarm the moment she caught sight of me, turned
around and jumped into the stream. She swam beautifully, and kept
looking back as if expecting I would follow her, screaming
violently all the time; while a number of men and boys were
laughing at her ignorant terror.
At Jahi, the next village, the stream became so swift in
consequence of a flood, that my heavy boat could make no way, and
I was obliged to send it back and go on in a very small open one.
So far the river had been very monotonous, the banks being
cultivated as rice-fields, and little thatched huts alone
breaking the unpicturesque line of muddy bank crowned with tall
grasses, and backed by the top of the forest behind the
cultivated ground.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 97 of 419
Words from 25942 to 26228
of 114260
