FASCICULI MALAYENSES 
xn 
Kuala Zircom. A small Malay fishing village, at the mouth of the Chenaw 
River, where we spent a night on our way to Senggora. Near Kuala Zircom 
we entered a curious encampment, the huts in which were roughly built on 
the ground of slabs of bark. The people who occupied it were Malays, who 
said that they had never heard of white men, and asked whether white men 
were like Malays, were Mahommedans. After we had warmed ourselves 
over a fire in one of the huts, and had grown more friendly with its inhabitants, 
who were very curious to know what manner of men we were, they told us 
that they were all just recovering from smallpox, and that the people of the 
village had driven them out of it. Little pieces of white bark, displayed on 
sticks at the Zircom side of the camp, were a sign that no one coming from 
that quarter might approach it, but no objection was made to us proceeding on 
our way in the opposite direction, 
Senggora, The town of Senggora is externally a Chinese city, surrounded 
with a high castellated wall, and formerly closed at nights by heavy gates, 
which are now fixed permanently open to admit the entry of telephone and 
telegraph wires. The principal buildings also are Chinese, except some of the 
many Buddhist monasteries, whose high-gabled roofs appear amidst the foliage 
of the trees with the softest of mellow orange-brown, dull copper-green, and 
emerald-green tiles; they are built in the true Siamese style of architecture, 
which is founded on the Chinese, but is less solid and even more fantastic. 
The population, a large proportion of the Buddhist part of which must be in 
celibate orders, is partly Chinese, partly Siamese, and partly Malay, but the 
Siamese official element is large, as Senggora is the centre of the administration 
of all the country between Kelantan and Ligor, and the Malays, who retain 
el Islam, have mostly foregone their proper language in favour of Siamese. 
Indeed, we found that English carried us further than Malay in the town, for 
many of the officials could speak English well, though there are no pure bred 
Europeans resident in the state. Across the straits from the modern town, 
which has been built by former Chinese governors on the south bank of the 
entrance to the Taleh Sap, lies old Senggora, now chiefly occupied by Malays, 
the descendants of prisoners of war brought from Kedah two generations ago. 
These people occupy themselves in fishing, and the size of their families is so 
notorious that childless Siamese women in the town procure all their 
drinking water from a well in one of the Malay villages, attributing the 
fecundity of its inhabitants to this source. The Malays have also, in the vicinity, 
several villages entirely to themselves in which the houses are erected partly 
on dry land and partly on piles in the lake, so that they can draw up their 
dug-outs directly from the surface and suspend them beneath the platform on 
