Penang

“ The hospitality and good feeling of the inhabitants of Penang cannot be exceeded. There is a considerable population of Chinese upon the island, (in addition to Malays, Indians, and Europeans,) who, besides being excellent mechanics, enter largely into the cultivation of spice trees, and often become not only honest and useful tenants, but actual [475] proprietors of small plantations. It is worth remembering, that from its geographical position, there is not half an hour's difference in the rising and setting of the sun at Penang throughout the whole year. ”

“ Penang itself is an island, and as we swing round to the capital town, Georgetown, on the inner or land side, we see an astonishing mass of green, with a great hill clothed almost to the summit rising behind the town. ”

“ Penang, where we spent only a day, is almost literally in the midst of an immense cocoanut plantation, and I was much interested in seeing the half-naked Hindus gathering the unhusked fruit for shipment. The tall, limbless trunks of the trees, surmounted only by a top-knot of fruit and foliage, are in nearly every case gapped and notched at intervals of about three feet to furnish toe-hold for the natives in climbing. ”

“ Behind the town, Penang Hill rises to a height of some 2700 ft., and upon it are built several government and private bungalows. The town possesses a fine European club, a racecourse, and good golf links. Coco-nuts are grown in considerable quantities along the seashore, and rice is cultivated at Bālek Pūlau and in the interior, but the jungle still spreads over wide areas. Penang has an excellent harbour, but has suffered from its proximity to Singapore. ”

“ We wandered along a shady path passing between the decayed pillars of a former gateway. In a neighbouring cocoa grove some natives were laying out the bare ground for a garden. The Waterfall is the celebrated beauty of Penang, and when we only saw some streams of water trickling down the side of a mountain between the jungle, we were greatly disappointed. ”

“ When I first visited Penang, Province Wellesley was a wilderness, inhabited only by a thin Malay population and numerous tigers. [14] It now wears another and more pleasing aspect, large tracts of its fertile [100] soil having been cleared and brought under cultivation. I know no better spot for the culture of sugar; and if it does not pay the planter here, those of Penang or Singapore have but a poor prospect. [15] Penang harbour is a very commodious and safe one, formed by the narrow strait between that island and the main land. ”

“ We speak now of the masses, the common people. Noble exceptions always exist. In size Penang is a little smaller than Singapore. Its wooded hills of vivid greenness rise above the town and surrounding sea in graceful undulations, growing more and more lofty as they recede inland, until they culminate in three mountain peaks. Penang is separated from the mainland by a narrow belt of sea not more than three miles wide, giving it a position of great commercial importance. ”

“ PENANG.— The Straits and China is a favourite resort, especially in hot weather, for it is curious, that the climate of the Straits, though under the line, is less hot and less oppressive than during the warmest season in Bengal. Europeans do not dread the sun there as they do in India. Penang, or Prince of Wales Island, was in former years a good deal frequented, but now few visitors spend any time there. George Town, the capital, stands upon a large tract of level ground on the mainland side of the island. ”

“ As in other parts of the Straits Settlements the men are far more numerous than the women. The total population of the settlement of Penang, which includes not only the island but Province Wellesley and the Dindings, was 248,207 in 1901. ”

“ At last, on the 5th of June, they were able to leave Ceylon; and they reached Penang, after a rough passage, on the 11th.
[Sidenote: Penang.]
Steamer 'Pekin,' Straits of Malacca.—June 12th.—You may perhaps remember that, when I first visited Penang in 1857, the Chinese established there mustered in force to do me honour. There was a sketch in the 'Illustrated News,' which portrayed our landing. No similar demonstration took place on this occasion; whether this was the result of accident or design, I cannot tell.... I have every inducement to labour to bring my work to a close ”

“ The chief mate, also, took the fever, and the second mate and crew deserted; and although the chief mate recovered and took the ship to Europe and home, the voyage was a melancholy disaster. In a tour I made round the world in 1859-1860, of which my revisit to California was the beginning, I went to Penang. In that fairy-like scene of sea and sky and shore, as beautiful as material earth can be, with its fruits and flowers of a perpetual summer,—somewhere in which still lurks the deadly fever,—I found the tomb of my kinsman, classmate, and friend. ”

“ They are much too human.
We called at Penang, an island on the western shore of the Peninsula, also belonging to Great Britain, and had time to drive around the settlement. The place is not to be compared to Singapore in size, but vegetation is even more luxuriant. It was very hot, and we envied the governor his residence on a mountain peak eighteen hundred feet above the sea, where, it was reported, fires are actually required at some seasons night and morning. Penang exports large quantities of tin, and we took on a lot for New York. ”

“ The main street of Penang—with its large buildings, hotels, banks, clubs, and commercial houses—presents much the same appearance as almost always meets the eye in the port towns on the south coast of Asia. ”

“ Darkness falls before the train reaches Penang, but a Chinese gentleman acts as pilot across some rocking boats, with only a faint flare from expiring torches to light the way, and starts the cringing coolies, with true politeness to the "foreign devils," but manifest wonder at their eccentric customs. ”

“ Virtue and vice have no special meaning to him. There is no sear and yellow leaf at Penang, or anywhere on the coast of the [Pg 121] Straits. Fruits and flowers are perennial: if a leaf falls, another springs into life on the vacant stem; if fruit is plucked, a blossom follows and another cluster ripens; nature is inexhaustible. Unlike most tropical regions, neither Penang nor Singapore are troubled with malarial fevers, and probably no spot on earth can be found better adapted to the wants of primitive man. ”

“ After a day and two nights we arrived at Penang, and at 9 A.M. went ashore, and all took carriages for a drive through one of the prettiest and hottest towns in the world. We were driven along wide, beautifully paved, clean streets for three miles to a water-fall and a botanical garden, and it was a drive well worth having. On both sides of the road were plantations [Pg 58] of cocoa-nut trees, bearing ripe fruit, and once I saw a large nut fall to the ground with a dull thud.
Our tough little horse, driven by a black man from India, trotted along very fast. ”

“ Both Penang and Singapore had beheld troubles almost as grave. Perak was a native state at the time, rich in antimony mines, which had attracted fifty thousand Chinamen, every single one belonging to a society established at Penang. Freed from all restraint, they followed their own instincts. The Malay Rajah did not interfere so long as they paid their dues. Pitched battles were incessant. On one occasion thirty thousand men engaged, of whom two thousand were left dead upon the field. The mother lodges at Penang took up these quarrels and attacked one another. ”

“ I have before mentioned, that a Penang brig had been seized by the Acheenese grab, the Nacodar (or master) of which, having been accused of trading in arms and ammunition, with one of the rajahs upon the coast, at present at war with the ruler of Acheen: many of the commanders of vessels then on the coast were desirous of getting, if possible, the vessel returned. She was the property of several native merchants at Penang, and had been chartered by an English merchant there for the Pedir coast, first calling at the Maldive islands for a cargo of dried fish. ”

“ The island of Penang is very beautiful, especially in the early morning light. It was fortunate we did not try to come in last night, as we could now see that we must inevitably have run through some of the innumerable stake nets I mentioned. As we approached Georgetown, the capital of the province, we passed many steamers and sailing ships at anchor in the roads. A pilot offered his services, but Tom declined them with thanks, and soon afterwards skilfully brought us up close in shore in the crowded roadstead. ”

“ They were tired and disgusted with everything. Accustomed, on an average, to walk twenty miles a day, at Penang, after strolling through a few streets, they had been weary. Exposed to privations and hardships in the Jungle (often owing to their own improvidence) they were soon nauseated with the ease and abundance offered them in the city. ”

“ English is spoken less in Penang than in any port I visited. A native photographer, when I questioned him about it, said:
"The Malays are proud, Miss. They have a language of their own and they are too proud to speak any other." ”

“ If we go on to the North at once, we shall be always increasing the distance that separates us. It is wearisome, too, passing over ground which I have travelled twice before. No interest of novelty to relieve the mind. Penang and Ceylon are very lovely, but one cares little, I think, for revisiting scenes which owe all their charm to the beauties of external nature. ”

“ They are not only in Georgetown, but all over the island of Penang, and on the main-land. Some of them have been here for many years, and either brought wives from China, or married Malay ones; they have no intention of going back to China but will end their days in Penang. The most of these old settlers are rich, and have fine houses, with magnificent gardens filled with fruits and flowers; but there are plenty of poor settlers who cultivate the soil, and live in modest huts among their market-gardens and pepper-fields. ”

“ I am not going to copy out my log, and I must run quickly over the incidents of my voyage. In standing through the straits of Malacca, we sighted the beautiful island of Paulo Penang, or Prince of Wales’ Island, a British possession, on the coast of Tenasserim, a part of the Malay Peninsula. It is hilly and well wooded, and is considered very healthy. ”

“ In 1800 he was appointed junior clerk on the establishment. In 1805 the East India Company decided to make Penang a regular presidency, and sent out a governor with a large staff, including Stamford Raffles, who was appointed assistant-secretary. On the eve of his departure he married Mrs Fancourt (Olivia Mariamne Devenish) , widow of a surgeon on the Madras Establishment; she proved herself a helpful wife and counsellor to her husband in his rapid rise to fortune during the following nine years, dying prematurely in Java in November 1814. ”

“ Was it not De Quincey that had a horror of the Chinese—of their inhumaneness and their inscrutability? Certainly the people in Penang are not nice; they are even terrible to behold. They work hard, which in this climate is manifestly wicked, and their eyes are just like the eyes of their own pet dragons. Our Hindu gods are passable, some of them even jolly—witness our pot-bellied Ganesh; but what can you do with a people who revel in D. T. monsters and crown their roof-ridges with flames of [Pg 229] fire, or the waves of the sea? ”

“ How many kinds of trees there are in Penang it is difficult to say, but there are great numbers of them. Some of them are so heavy that they will sink in water; the Chinese and Malays take these woods to make anchors for their boats and junks, and they use the rattans and bamboos for cordage if they cannot afford twisted ropes. Many of the [Pg 130] plants live entirely on air, and we saw trees a foot in diameter growing on a rock where there wasn't a particle of soil. The moist air is what they thrive on, and they seem as well satisfied on a rock as in the richest soil. ”

“ You will doubtless have learned long before this story of her visit, carried by the slow mails of the Far East, is read in the United States some account of the Emden's raid, but the cable can hardly carry a detailed picture of the destruction wrought in a brief hour or so yesterday in this busy harbor, and it seems worth while to describe for you how this sudden vision of war burst on Penang.
For those who do not know, the City of Penang lies on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, just below the Siamese border. It is the shipping point of the Federated Malay States, where 65 per cent. ”

“ A great part of the island was soon cleared and roads made, so that in 1792, seven years after it came into our hands, Captain Light was able to report that the population had increased to 10,000 souls; this increase of population has been steadily going on from year to year, until, with its dependencies, Penang, after a little more than a century, now numbers no less than 240,000. ”

“ It is administered by a district officer, with some assistants, who is responsible to the resident councillor of Penang. The country consists, for the most part, of fertile plain, thickly populated by Malays, and occupied in some parts by sugar-planters and others engaged in similar agricultural industries and employing Chinese and Tamil labour. About a tenth of the whole area is covered by low hills with thick jungle. Large quantities of rice are grown by the Malay inhabitants, and between October and February there is excellent snipe-shooting to be had in the paddy-fields. ”