Rounsevelle Wildman

“ The Dato Mamat captured a Portuguese ship within a man’s voice from the harbor of Malacca. On it was the foreign Governor’s daughter. She was dark, almost as dark as my people. Her eyes were black as night, with long, drooping lashes, and her hair fell about her shapely neck, a mass of waving curls. She was tall and stately, and her bearing was haughty. The mighty Laksamana, who had fought a hundred battles, and had a hundred wives picked from the princesses of the kingdom,—for there were none so noble but felt honored in his smiles,—loved this dark-skinned foreigner. ”

“ Acres of closely shaven lawns, dotted with flowering shrubs of the brightest reds, deepest purples, and fieriest solferinos, beds of rich-hued foliage plants, and cool, green masses of ferns meet your eye.
Perhaps you spy the inevitable tennis-court, swarming with players, and bordered with tables covered with tea and sweets. Red-turbaned Malay kebuns, or gardeners, are chasing the balls, and scrupulously clean Chinese “boys” are passing silently among the guests with trays of eatables. ”

“ When Noa had gone, the girl drew herself wearily up the ladder, and dropped on a cool palm mat near the never ceasing loom. For almost the first time in her short, uneventful life she fell to thinking of herself. She wondered if the white ladies in Singapore married because all had been arranged by a father who forgot you the moment you disappeared within the door of your own house,—if they loved one man better than another,—if they could always marry the one they liked best. She wondered why every one must be married,—why could she not go on and live just as she had,—she could weave and sew? ”

“ One evening we were pacing back and forth on the deck of the Rajah’s magnificent gunboat, the Raneé. A soft tropical breeze was blowing off shore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock carts were dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city of Singapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the natives came out to us in a babel of sound. ”

“ The tufted tops of a sentinel palm, the wide-spreading arms of the banian, clumps of green and yellow bamboo, and the fan-shaped [301] outlines of the traveller’s palm become distinguishable. As the great, red, tropical sun rises from behind the encircling hills, the monotony of the foliage is relieved in places by objects which it all but hid from view. The granite minaret of the Mohammedan mosque, the carved dome of a Buddhist temple, the slender spire of an English cathedral, the bold projections of Government House, and the wide, white sides of the Municipal buildings all hold the eye. ”

“ At noon we came upon a sandy stretch of soil that contained a few diseased cocoanut palms, fringed by a sluggish lagoon, and a great banian tree whose trunk was hardly more than a mass of interlaced roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys were scolding and whistling within its dense foliage with surprising intensity. Occasionally one would drop from an outreaching limb to one of the pendulous roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright, spring back to the protection of his mates. ”

“ As our boat drew up to the iron pier that extended from the broad palace steps out into the straits, the guns from the little fort on the hill above the town boomed out a welcome and the flags of our several countries were run to the tops of the poles. A squad of native soldiers presented arms, and we were conducted up the stone steps, to the cool, dim corridors of the reception or waiting room. Malays in red fezzes and silken sarongs that hung about their legs like skirts conducted us along a marble hall to our rooms in a wing of the palace. ”

“ We followed Baboo’s lead to the edge of the jungle, and there, stretched out in the hot sand, lay the great, tawny beast, stamped and pawed until he was almost unrecognizable.
All about him were the hoof-marks of the great sladang, the fiercest and wildest animal of the peninsula—the Malayan bull that will [26] charge a tiger, a black lion, a boa, and even a crocodile, on sight. Hunters will go miles to avoid one of them, and a herd of elephants will go trumpeting away in fear at their approach. ”

“ The low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to the grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses raised a man’s height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety ladders. ”

“ In 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles purchased the island on which Singapore now stands from the father of the late Sultan of Johore, the royal palace was a palm-thatched bungalow, the country an unbroken jungle, and the inhabitants pirates and fishermen by turns; the notorious Strait of Malacca was infested with long, keen, swift pirate praus, and the snake-like kris menaced the merchant marine of the world. ”

“ The women I meet simply draw their sarongs more closely about their heads as the sun ascends higher and higher into the heavens, and go clattering off down the road in their wooden pattens, unconscious of my envy or wonderment.
The sarong is more to the Malay than is [73] the kilt to the Scotchman. It is his dress by day and his covering at night. He uses it as a sail when far out from land in his cockle-shell boat, or as a bag in which to carry his provisions when following an elephant path through the dense jungle. ”

“ The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince’s hand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rush in the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, and then all was still.
If you run amok in Malaya, you may kill your enemy or your dearest friend, but you will be krissed in the end like a pariah dog. ”

“ The hot, moist air and the fierce rays of the equatorial sun fall upon child and plant alike, and they grow so fast that you can almost hear them!
The little Prince soon forgot his childhood companions in the gorgeous court of his Highness, the Sultan of Johore, and Noa took the place of his father on the launch, while the old man silently mourned as he leaned back in its stern, and alternately watched the sunlight that played along the carefully polished rails, and the deepening shadows that bound the black labyrinth of mangrove roots on the opposite shore. ”

“ I have never been able to find out whether it belongs to the Malay or the Kling or the Tamil.
The yelling became more distinct. A troop of brown and silver wah-wahs swung with their long arms out to the very edge of the jungle and then up to the tops of the highest trees, the while uttering the full, clear note from which they take their name; followed by a troop of gray little jungle [257] monkeys, whistling and scolding at the unwonted disturbance. A colony of cicadas on the limbs of a great gutta tree awoke into life and pierced our ears with buzz-saw strains. ”

“ It is only the wives of the nobles that are secluded in the istana isaras, or women palaces, according to Mohammedan law; the women of the poor are as free as the more civilized countries of Europe. They bask in the sun with their brown babies on their laps, or wander among the cocoanuts that always surround their palm-thatched homes, happy and contented, with no thought for the morrow. The trees furnish them their food, and a few hours before their looms of dark kamooning wood each week keep them supplied with their one article of dress—the sarong. ”

“ A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan ball within the light of a central fire,—made up the details of a little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to me within the last three years.
Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire, while we for politeness’ sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and syrah leaf from the punghulo’s state box. ”

“ Suddenly the conflict ceased and the pirates withdrew. In a short time we could see them building a number of small fires along the beach, and the aroma of rice curry came up to us with the breeze. The captain, I could see, was anxious, although my boyish feelings did not go beyond a sense of intoxicating excitement. I heard him say that nothing but a storm or a ship could save us in case we were besieged; that it was better to have the fight out at once and die with our arms in our hands than to starve to death. ”

“ Baboo believed he himself could have left Singapore any day and found Mecca in the dark.
We had been living some weeks in a government bungalow, fourteen miles from Singapore, across the island that looks out on the Straits of Malacca. The fishing and hunting were excellent. I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days had been getting ready to track down a tiger that had been prowling in the jungle about the bungalow.
But of a morning, as we lay lazily chatting in our long chairs behind the bamboo chicks, the cries of “Harimau! Harimau!” ”

“ Walks carry you out into the dim aisles of the native jungle. Monkeys, surprised at your footsteps, spring from limb to limb, and swing, chattering, out of sight in a mass of rubber-vines. Splendid macadamized roads, that are kept in perfect repair by a [314] force of naked Hindus and an iron roller drawn by six unwilling, hump-backed bullocks, spread out over the island in every direction. ”

“ From the jungle we emerged into an immense stone field,—padang-batu, the Malays called it. It extended along the mountain [174] side as far as we could see, in places quite bare, at others deeply fissured and covered with a most luxuriant vegetation. We tramped at times waist deep through ferns, some green, some dark red, and some lined with yellow, clumps of the splendid Dipteris Horsfieldi and Matonia pectinala, with their slender stems and wide-spreading palmate fronds towering two feet above our heads. ”

“ The famous old Straits of Malacca, which were once the haunts of the fierce Malayan pirates, separate the island from the mainland and the Sultanate of Johore.
The shipping that once worked its way through these narrow straits, in momentary fear that its mangrove-bound shores held a long, swift pirate prau, now goes further south and into the island-guarded harbor before Singapore.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the sea approach to Singapore. ”

“ Some seem only inhabited by a graceful waving burden of strange, tropical foliage, and [300] by a band of chattering monkeys; on others you detect a Malay kampong, or village, its umbrella-like houses of attap, close down to the shore, built high up on poles, so that half the time their boulevards are but vast mud-holes, the other half—Venice, filled with a moving crowd of sampans and fishing praus. ”

“ In him I saw the full realization of every boy’s wildest dreams,—a king of a tropical island.
The bell above the judges’ pavilion sounded, and a little whirlwind of running griffins dashed by amid the yells of a thousand natives in a dozen different tongues. The Rajah leaned out over the gayly decorated [85] railing with the eagerness of a boy, as he watched his own colors in the thick of the race. ”

“ Every man, woman, and child will turn his or her hand against you, from the mother who bore you to the outcast you have befriended. The laws are as immutable as fate.
Just where the great river Maur empties its vast volume of red water across a shifting bar into the Straits of Malacca, stands the kampong of Bander Maharani.
The Sultan Abubaker named the village in honor of his dead Sultana, and here, close down to the bank, was the palace of his nephew—the Governor, Prince Sulliman. ”

“ What live American boy has not had the desire, possibly but half-admitted, to some day be like his hero, dear old Crusoe, on a tropical island, monarch of all, hampered by no dictates of society or fashion? ”

“ The glare of the noonday sun, here on the equator, is inconceivable. It beats down in bald, irregular waves of heat that seem to stifle every living being and to burn the foliage to a cinder. Even the sharp, insistent whir of the cicada ceases when the thermometer on the sunny side of our palm-thatched [72] bungalow reaches 155°. If I am forced to go outside, I don my cork helmet, and hold a paper umbrella above it. ”