88 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



lacca, and we lived all together in an old stockade on the bank 

 of the Langat River. Whether it was the mosquitos, which 

 for numbers and venom could not be matched, or whether it 

 was the evil reputation of the place for deeds of violence is 

 needless to inquire, but the police were seized with panic, and 

 had to be replaced by another batch from Singapore, selected 

 not so much on account of their virtues as their so-called 

 vices. The exchange was satisfactory, for whatever sins they 

 committed they showed no signs of panic. 



" Later on I was encouraged by the statement that Bandar 

 Termasa, for all its unpromising appearance, was a place for 

 men, where those who had a difference settled it promptly 

 with the his, and cowards who came there either found their 

 courage or departed, k story that amused the gossips was 

 that, as a badly-wounded man was carried from the duelling- 

 field past the palisade which enclosed the Sultan's house, His 

 Highness had asked, through the bars, what was the matter, 

 and, being told, had laconically remarked, ' If he is wounded, 

 doctor him ; if he is dead, bury him.' 



" During my residence in the place a lady, for jealousy, 

 stabbed a man of considerable note thirteen times with his 

 own dagger, and sent the next morning to know whether I 

 would like to purchase it, as she did not much fancy the 

 weapon. The man was not killed, and made no complaint. 

 Another lady, for a similar reason, visited our stockade one 

 night, pushed the sentry on one side, and, finding the man she 

 wanted, attempted to stab him with a long kris she had 

 brought for the purpose. That was then the state of society 

 in Bandar Termasa. 



" I have said that we lived all together in a stockade. It 

 was a very rude structure, with log walls about 6ft. thick and 

 8ft. high, a mud floor, a thatch roof, and no doors. Outside 

 it was a high watch-tower of the same materials, but the 

 ladder to it had fallen down. Of roads there were none, but a 

 mud path ran through the stockade from river-bank to village, 

 distant some 300 yards. My ow-n accommodation was a cot 

 borrowed from the ' Hart ' and slung between two posts, 

 while the men slept on the walls of the stockade. 



"The place had drawbacks other than mosquitos, for the 

 public path ran through it, the tide at high-water completely 

 covered the floor, and the log walls were full of snakes. The 

 state of the surroundings w^ill best be understood when I say 

 that during the many months I lived there I did not wear 

 boots outside the stockade, because there was nothing to walk 

 upon but deep mud, and that the only water fit to use was 

 contained in a well or pond a quarter of a mile off, to which I 

 walked every day to bathe. 



" With the second batch of j)olice had come a European 



