( 18 ) 
Young bloods are apt to be somewhat swagger- 
ing and self-assertive and in the towns, at any rate, 
great spendthrifts. It is very unusual for Malays 
who work for Government, or for others, to ask 
themselves whether they can save anything out of 
the current month’s pay. What they say is, “ Can 
we make it last out? ” 
Where the Malay pursues his normal life of 
rice-planting, extravagance is not so marked. The 
cultivator does not handle so priuch cash and is 
almost self-sufficing, except with regard to clothes 
and luxuries. The older men, too, are inclined to 
become penurious, while the better class of Malay 
peasant women grudges the useless spending of 
money. 
Gambling, cock-fighting and opium-smoking are 
sometimes connected with Malay extravagance, but 
opium smoking is generally a vice of the courts 
and of the rich, rather than of the peasantry, though 
Patani Malays bear rather a bad name in this res- 
pect. Even at the courts, opium-smoking is now 
dying or dead. Cock-fighting, generally without 
spurs, still goes on in places, though, as it is dis- 
couraged, it is not indulged in very openly. Card 
games are a common form of gambling. 
Many Europeans, as I have mentioned above, 
accuse the Malay of laziness. Let us examine this 
statement and see on what foundation of fact it 
rests, and, if they are lazy, how much it is their 
own fault. 
In the first place, no tropical race can be des- 
cribed as being very energetic, the climate is against 
it. Secondly, the circumstances of native environ- 
ment must be considered. The Malay Peninsula has 
a scanty native population and, at any rate until 
recently, the struggle for existence, in so far as 
