iSi 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUillST. 



[SEJPTESJIifiR I, 1883, 



way, and are naturally resorved, though as before-stated 

 very pulitu and respectful. 



liotli Chinese and Klings often forget to salaam a Eur- 

 opean before stating their business, but the Malay never 

 forgets himself and will alwa.ys say '• Tabbai tuan" (their 

 term of respect equivalent to your '■ salaam durai"). If 

 they are told to call next day, they ask the time they are 

 to come, and on being informed are vei'y i)iuictual, "Apa 

 mow orang?'' (What do you want, my man ?) is generally 

 answered by " blimya" — advances ou the work in progress 

 or about to be commenced. In making a contract the 

 Malay always wants to think over the matter with the 

 aid of his tobacco and betel-bo.\ ; he will uever begin a 

 thing in a hurry, and when lie engages men to help him 

 with the contract they must all form a council over their 

 cigarettes, the old ones being addicted to suuft ! 



As they go to bed late, very often through yarning and 

 singing it is diflicult to get them up early in the morning, 

 but as few work on wages for their employers the loss is 

 their own. They certainly do very little work in wet 

 weather, although highly paid, and hence scarcely clear 

 more than enough to live upon. The Midays are not 

 very clean in their habits, and are not hard on soap and 

 water: in fact the writer has not seen Malays bathing yet 

 during the past S or i) mouths in Perak. Of course we 

 presume they do liathe, and hope they do, yet their skins 

 tell the sad story of the great unwashed : they scratch 

 themselves into ugly sores, brought on jjartly by mosquito 

 bites, partly from constantly living on salt provisions, and 

 partly from their dislike of soap and w.ater. Then it we 

 enter a kampoug (village) the smells are overpowering, 

 caused by the lazy practice of pouring all their dirty 

 slops through the floor made with slabs of bark or strips 

 of palm .stem and a small opening left between each slab 

 or strip to allow males and females to spit their betel 

 juice and empty their rice water — beastly idea, but too 

 true. The customs of males and females are very much 

 alike: the women cook their husb.ands, rice, whilst he earn 

 the dollars to pay for it with strong smelling curries 

 when they can afford to buy them. Their dress is much 

 the same : a yellow and red sarong or comboy. Teeth 

 filed and blackened, the man wearing a little cap or topi ; 

 if dressed for a holiday he sports black shoes and red sash 

 with a piece of red or yellow silk round a white felt crown 

 of a hat, or say a hat without a brim. The sarong and 

 kris may be as csstly as a Malay geutleman or chief m.ay 

 wish it to be, with a different style of cap worn on one 

 side of the head, the cigarette always in the mouth and 

 in course of preparation, mild tobacco rolled in dried plant- 

 ain le:ives and skins of corncobs &c. This vile habit of 

 smoking from morn till night must tell on the Bfalay 

 constitution and cause degeneration of at one time a fine 

 race of people : the men as a rule look eniaeiat d and prc- 

 naturely old, and exceedingly short in stature, hair cut 

 short, aud wearing little or no ornaments. They have 

 like all other nations e.vtraorclinary stories handed down 

 from their forefathers. There is a legend of the tabooed 

 monkeys tabuoed from going from the left bank of the 

 Perak river to the right bank on pain of death aud they 

 hold to this fact to the present day that no moidiey wild 

 or tame ever lived to be old on the right bank of the 

 Perak river. The muther-in-law binl story is trenu'mlou.sly 

 tine: — It appe;n-s that a ]M;day had taken a great dislike 

 to his mother-in-law, and, tired of her stopping in his 

 house, one day hit upon a plan to abolish his nmther-iu- 

 law. Thi: \\ite \\'as sent off ou some long errand and told 

 not to ri;turn for some days ; the j)00r old woman was 

 then drugged with opium and sent into a sound sleep, 

 and then the dreadful Malay commenced operations, first, 

 by selecting a gif^nntie tree close to the family mansion, 

 aud, as his mother-indaw slept in fancied security, be 

 plied his axe to the tree,- until, after half a day's hard 

 labour eonipletetl his diabolical task, crash went the 

 tree and crash went the house containing the mother- 

 in-law, who never lived to tell the tale. The wily 

 Malay thought no witness near at haml, and was 

 about to return to his young wife when he was 

 suddeidy converted into a large ugly bird, and from that 

 day to this may be constantly heard in the dense forests of 

 Perak repeating the noise imitating the dreadful dead 

 commilted by him when in man's estate. -—The traveller's 

 steps are arrested almost daily on juugle journics by the 



e.xtraordiuary noise over his head " chop-chop-chop-chop .' 

 chop, chop, chop, chop, — ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha-aha-aha-aha." 

 It needs little description or explanation that the above 

 noise of the bird is a repetition of the tragic story. The 

 strokes of the axe until the tree fell on the mother-in-law 

 and the diabolical laughter of the bloodthirsty son-in-law 

 after the perpetration of the murder. There is no mistake 

 about the resemblance of the bird's noise tallying with 

 the Blal ly legend, and moreover, should a European lose his 

 path in the jungle, the same noise of loud laughter over- 

 head sounds uueomnmnly like mockery aud to say the least 

 of it would not tend to sooth one's nerves under the cir- 

 cumstances. The bird is known I believe to Jornithologists 

 as a species of hornbill with black and white plumage 

 and enormous double bill aud in size about as big as a 

 goose. AVhen flocking in numbers the noise of their flap- 

 ping wings approaching unseen is like the arrival of a 

 paddle-steamboat ; they fly very high aud rest themselves on 

 the tallest trees iu the forest very seldom appearing in 

 the open. 



The Malays are not communicative about their private 

 aflfairs: an instance of this was proved to me lately by our 

 krani (clerk) who had been iu the habit of riding one of 

 our elephants and sending rice to his wife and family 

 living in a distant kampong (village). Having occasion 

 myself to travel in the same direction via the Kwala Kangsa 

 high road, aud mounted on the same elephant with a 

 portmanteau, containing a change of clothes, all was going 

 smoothly until suddenly off went-the elephant at a tangent, 

 bolting up a lane through dense bamboo and plantain trees, 

 doriaus, coconut and other vegetation that proved it to 

 lead to some village. The mahout could not catch up for 

 the beast was galloping until we came to a stand-still at 

 a wooden fence of a paddy field, when the Marhout then 

 mounted again and turned his head back to the high road, ' 

 aud afterwards the brute got very sulky and Uke his com- 

 panion sister who smothered me with dirty water on a 

 previous journey, he drew up the contents of every little 

 pool in the road and perhaps to cool himself from the 

 sun's fierce heat at mid-day spm'tod his dirty water all over 

 poor me. I therefore, decided once for ever that elephant 

 travellirjg like many other things in this world was moi'e 

 pain than pleasure. Poor fellow, when I left Kw.ala Kangsa 

 and Gapis .side of the Perak, he was laid up with a snake 

 bite and was disabled from carrying rice and other stores 

 up to the Mountain Garden. There are no elephants con- 

 nected with the Laroot Garden ou Maxwell's Hill now 

 uuder my charge, and really I am better without one, for 

 they spoil all our hill paths. ^ 



The IMalay house is built without a nail, every part 

 tied with rattan cane aud raised on piles, thatched with 

 attaps aud the dividings or partitions of the .same material; 

 they can build a good shanty for from S'-O to ^oU or say 

 ECO. As for the cultivations round their houses, in the 

 kaiupongs (villages) plants are thick like in a village hamlet 

 among your Sinhalese ; things come up more by good 

 luck than good management, and like your Ceylon fruit 

 trees aud coconut palms thrive best within sound of the 

 human voice. 



The Malay dues not indulge his table for agri-horticultural 

 pursuits : iu fact a few ragged plantain trees, a cluster of 

 areka or betel-nut palms, dorian, jak and mangosteens 

 with a few beds of sweet potatoes imder their shade, and a 

 patch of sugarcane about makes up the sum total of a 

 swell Malay garden. The higher' class of Malay cultivates 

 coffee and other useful products ou a small scale, <and I had 

 to send one dozen picked Ledger plants in baskets to some 

 big chief near Kwala Kangsar. My knowledge of native 

 ranks here is as mixed up as it was ivith regard to your 

 Kandian chiefs : a case of which is the Duke of Wellington 

 and which is his horse— ''You i>ays your money, my 

 little dear, aud takes your choice." However, an amusing 

 story is related of one big Malay chief in Perak : he ap]'Iied 

 to Government for a set of teeth, and after several inter- 

 views the request was sanctioned and the teeth were didy 

 ordered, but previously to issuing the order a mould of wax or 

 something of that sort was inserted iuto the old gentleman's 

 mouth, and sad to relate, he went to sleep and sw;dlowe<l the 

 mould! Presunu'ng that the experiment was tiled with a se- 

 cond mould, and that the former was duly digestetl, the false 

 teeth arriveil and were presented to His Excellency ; the 

 tjuestion then arose to what department were these tetth to 



