282 By Stream and Sea. 



If a photographer, on an expedition round the world, should 

 ever pass this way, let him take a view of Malacca from the 

 roadstead. The town lies in a crescent-shaped bay, with a 

 grand background of hills and mountains, terminated towards 

 the south by Mount Ophir, a lofty triple-peaked mountain 

 famous for its gold mines, and sometimes, though wrongly, 

 confounded with the Ophir which the Old Testament 

 associates with the riches of the East. 



The Straits contain numberless islands : some of them 

 the haunts of pirates ; others the basking grounds of turtle. 

 The latter afford the natives who take very kindly indeed 

 to the trade of fisherman a source of revenue, and I can 

 answer for the excellence of the creatures captured. There 

 are worse things in the world than turtle cutlet, fin, and soup. 

 As to the pirates, they still find the means, when they dare, 

 of picking up a dishonest livelihood, but their comb is being 

 cut to the smallest dimensions. We have several gunboats 

 upon the coast, and the Malays have long ago learned 

 that the little craft bite as well as bark. Formerly the 

 Straits swarmed with murderous sea-robbers, who lay hidden 

 behind the headlands watching for the becalmed trader 

 caught in the doldrums. The gallant mariners might resist 

 valorously to the death, but they would be overpowered by 

 numbers and barbarously despatched. 



The modern steamship has, amongst other benefits con- 

 ferred upon mankind, ruined the ancient Malay business of 

 murder and piracy. The pirates, nevertheless, retain their 

 old characteristics. Nothing but the unceasing vigilance 

 and determination of the English gunboats and law adminis- 

 trators on shore holds them in check. They prey upon any 

 small craft that unwarily falls into their clutches, and the 

 mariner's hand-books of the Archipelago contain frequent 

 paragraphs that conclude with warnings to boating parties 



