( 21 ) 
The European is apt to fall foul of the Malay 
upon one point, and that is with regard to borrowing 
money, for there is no doubt that he is a 
borrower, and a skilful one to boot. Requests for 
loans are so nicely put, that they make him who 
refuses appear a churl in his own sight, though he 
may know quite well that the loan, if granted, will 
only be spent in dissipation, or muddled away. Most 
Malays would gladly accept a loan to any amount, 
if they could get it, and without any thought as to 
how repayment could be made. 
The village The Malay, in his natural state, is a 
and its peasant proprietor and cultivator. The 
sur- village in which he lives stands in a 
roundings. grove of fruit-trees and adjacent to it 
are the rice fields, marked out into 
rectangular patches by the banks which bound the 
various plots and retain the water when they are 
irrigated. 
The fruit trees of the grove comprise coconut 
and betel-palms with graceful stems and feathery 
foliage, tall durian-trees which bear the large spiny 
and strongly-smelling fruits of whose contents the 
Malay is so fond, and whose scent has acquired such 
notoriety. The durian merits further remark, for 
not only is this fruit beloved of the Malay, but bears 
and tigers visit the orchards in search of it during 
the season. The owner either sells the surplus of 
his durian crop himself — for it finds a ready sale 
among the Chinese — or lets the trees out for the 
seasorf for a fixed price. Watchers are stationed in 
little huts built in the grove, for the fruits are not 
picked by hand, but allowed to fall when ripe, and 
then gathered up, though sometimes the branches 
are shaken with the aid of a long pole. 
