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VOLUNTEER POLICE FOR PROVINCE WELLESLEY. 198 
the temptations to which the office exposes its holders are so great 
that a good man who takes it soon becomes a bad one. None of 
the learned Malays of any reputation will accept it. The more 
ignorant Malays of the interior are exposed to be fleeced by any 
one who pretends tobe a Kali. Lately when at Kamlun I found 
a Malay going about among his friends in great anxiety of mind 
to borrow the large sum, for him and them, of ten dollars. “On 
enquiring into the cause, I learned that his wife had left him a few 
days before on pretext of visiting a sister at Bagan Jermal. 
Next day he receiveda summons under the chap of a Haji at Bagan 
Ajam professing to be a Kali, but of whom and his jurisdiction 
the Kamlun villagers had previously been happily in ignorance. 
He hastened to the sister, who told him that his wife was with the 
Kal. He went to the Kali, who would not produce her, but told 
him that if he wanted to get her back he must pay $10, “ which is 
as much,” said the man plaintively, “as I paid for her twenty 
years ago when she was a virgin”? (meaning her dower). 
11. The Malays of the interior are also infested by a class of 
parasitical Malays, or half Malays, who make it their business to 
spy out flaws in titles and latent causes of family disputes, incite 
to litigation, get the partition and sale of lands into their hands, 
and usually exact a share of the property much. beyond what 
any fair commission or actual costs of suit would amount to. 
Their own ignorance and carelessness are themselves a fruitful 
source of trouble and litigation. Wills are seldom brought into 
Court to be proved, or letters of administration applied for, until 
many years, sometimes 20 or 380, after the death of a land-holder 
and when, owing to intermediate deaths, itis difficult or impossible 
to prove the will or come to a satisfactory decision on contested 
facts of marriage, divorce or paternity. A will was brought to me 
afew days ago which had been acted on, without probate, for 
about 20 years. The testator had added some extraordinary im- 
precations at the end of it to prevent any of his family attempting 
to disregard it, but he had not signed it, neither he nor the writer 
appearing to have known that this was essential and would have 
accomplished what his legacy of curses has failed to do. There 
was a case in Court a few years ago which turned entirely on the 
question whether the person named as grantee in a Government 
grant of a piece of land was the father or the grand-father of cer- 
tain of the claimants, and after hearing much evidence, and giving 
the parties every opportunity to call additional witnesses, the Re- 
_corder was unable to make up his mind on the subject. 
12. Itappears to me that all these evils in mind, body and 
