Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop

“ We passed through a swampy, but busy-looking Chinese village, masculine almost solely, where Chinamen were building gharries and selling all such things as Chinese coolies buy, just the same there as everywhere, and at home there as everywhere; yellow, lean, smooth-shaven, keen, industrious, self-reliant, sober, mercenary, reliable, mysterious, opium-smoking, gambling, hugging clan ties, forming no others, and managing their own matters even to the post and money-order offices, through which they are constantly sending money to the interior of China. ”

“ They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one instant; they chatter, read snatches from books, ask questions about everything, but are too volatile to care for the answers, turn somersaults, lean over my shoulders as I write, bring me puzzles, and shriek and turn head over heels when I can't find them out, and jump on Mr. Maxwell's shoulders begging for dollars. ”

“ In returning we saw many Malay kampongs under the palms, each with a fire lighted underneath it, and there were many other fires for the water-buffaloes, with groups of these uncouth brutes gathered invariably on the leeward side, glad to be smoked rather than bitten by the mosquitoes. These huge, thin-skinned animals have a strange antipathy to white people. They are petted and caressed by the Malays, and even small boys can do anything with them, and can ride upon their backs, but constantly when they see white people they raise their muzzles, and if there be room charge them madly. ”

“ He is a man on whose word one may implicitly rely. Brought up among Malays, and speaking their language idiomatically, he not only likes them, but takes the trouble to understand them and enter into their ideas and feelings. He studies their literature, superstitions, and customs carefully, and has made some valuable notes upon them. I should think that few people understand the Malays better than he does. He dislikes the Chinese. ”

“ They are miners, except those who keep the innumerable shops which supply the miners, and some of them are rich. Taipeng is tolerably empty during the day, but at dusk, when the miners return, the streets and gambling dens are crowded, and the usual Babel of Chinese tongues begins. There are scarcely any Malays in the town. ”

“ Maxwell is very pleasant, strong, both physically and mentally, clever and upright, educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but brought up in the Straits Settlements, of which his father was chief-justice. He is able, combative, dogmatic, well-read and well-informed, expresses himself incisively, is self-reliant, strong-willed, thoroughly just, thoroughly a gentleman, and has immense energy and business capacity, and a large amount of governing power. ”

“ No amount of world-wide practice in the getting in and out of strange vehicles is any help to the tortuous process necessary for mounting and dismounting from a Larut gharrie. A gharrie is a two- wheeled cart with a seat across it for two people and a board in front on which the driver sits when he is not running by his horse. ”

“ They are splendid-looking men, with long moustaches and whiskers, but they plait the long ends of the latter and tuck them up under their turbans. They have good-natured faces generally, and are sober, docile and peaceable, but Major Swinburne says that they indulge in violent wordy warfare on "theological subjects." They are devoted to the accumulation of money, and very many of them being betrothed to little girls in India, save nearly all their pay in order to buy land and settle there. ”

“ A buffalo is enormously strong, but he objects to the sun, and likes to bathe in rivers, and plaster himself with mud, and his tastes are much humored by his owners. A buffalo has often been known to vanquish a tiger when both have had fair play. ”

“ It is strange to be in a house in which there are no pets, for a small Malay bear which lives at the back can scarcely be called one. Sometimes in the evening a wild animal called a lemur rushes wildly through the house and out at the front veranda. ”

“ Maxwell's room and office on the other. Underneath are bath-rooms, and guard-rooms for the Sikh sentries. There are no ornaments or superfluities. There are two simple meals daily, with tea and bananas at 7 A.M., and afternoon tea at 5 P.M. Mr. Maxwell is most abstemious, and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There is a perpetual coming and going of Malays, and an air of business without fuss. There is a Chinese "housemaid," who found a snake, four feet long, coiled up under my down quilt yesterday, and a Malay butler, but I have not seen any other domestic. ”

“ Taipeng is a thriving, increasing place, of over six thousand inhabitants, solely Chinese, with the exception of a small Kling population, which keeps small shops, lends money, drives gharries and bullock-carts, and washes clothes. ”

“ Maxwell fought for victory, and Major Swinburne to beat Mr. Maxwell, and the row was deafening. I doubt whether such an argument could have been got up in moist, hot Singapore, or steamy Malacca! An energetic difference seems of daily occurrence, and possibly is an essential ingredient of friendship. ”

“ When I left Malacca, Captain Shaw said: "When you see Paul Swinburne you'll see a man you'll not see twice in a lifetime," so yesterday, when a tall, slender, aristocratic-looking man, who scarcely looks severable from the door-steps of a Pall Mall club, strode down the room and addressed me abruptly with the words: "The sooner you go away again the better ”

“ Klings, untroubled by much clothing, own and drive these vehicles, which are increasing rapidly. The traffic on the road of heavy buffalo carts, loaded with tin, cuts it up so badly that without care one might often be thrown upon the pony's back at the river end of it. ”

“ They get on admirably with the Malays, but look down on the Chinese, who are much afraid of them. One sees a single Sikh driving four or five Chinamen in front of him, having knotted their pigtails together for reins. ”

“ The bottom of the cart is filled up with grass and leaves, and you put your feet on the board in front, and the little rats of fiery Sumatra ponies, which will run till they drop, jolt you along at great speed. ”

“ But if it is planted more than two hundred yards from the beach, it needs either rich or well-manured soil, or the proximity of human habitations. It begins to bear fruit between its fourth and tenth years, according to soil, and a well-placed, generous tree bears from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty nuts a year. ”