LETTER III
The S.S. Kin Kiang — First View of Canton — The Island of Shameen — England in Canton — The Tartar City — Drains and Barricades — Canton at Night — Street Picturesqueness — Ghastly Gifts — Oriental Enchantments — The Examination Hall
S.S. “KIN KIANG,” December 30.
You will remember that it is not very long since a piratical party of Chinese, shipping as steerage passengers on board one of these Hong Kong river steamers, massacred the officers and captured the boat. On board this great, white, deck-above-deck American steamer there is but one European passenger beside myself, but there are four hundred and fifty second-class passengers, Chinamen, with the exception of a few Parsees, all handsomely dressed, nearly all smoking, and sitting or lying over the saloon deck up to the saloon doors. In the steerage there are fifteen hundred Chinese steerage passengers, all men. The Chinese are a noisy people, their language is inharmonious, and the lower class male voices, at least, are harsh and coarse. The fifteen hundred men seem to be all shouting at once, and the din which comes up through the hatchways is fearful. This noisy mass of humanity is practically imprisoned below, for there is a heavy iron grating securely padlocked over each exit, and a European, “armed to the teeth,” stands by each, ready to shoot the first man who attempts to force it. In this saloon there is a stand of six rifles with bayonets, and four revolvers, and, as we started, a man carefully took the sheaths off the bayonets, and loaded the firearms with ball cartridge.
Canton, January 1, 1879. — The Canton river for the ninety miles up here has nothing interesting about it. Soon after leaving Hong Kong the country becomes nearly a dead level, mainly rice-swamps varied by patches of bananas, with their great fronds torn to tatters by the prevailing strong breeze. A very high pagoda marks Whampoa, once a prosperous port, but now, like Macao, nearly deserted. An hour after disgorging three boat loads of Chinamen at Whampoa, we arrived at the beginning of Canton, but it took more than half an hour of cautious threading of our way among junks, sampans, house-boats, and slipper-boats, before we moored to the crowded and shabby wharf. If my expectations of Canton had been much raised they would certainly have been disappointed, for the city stands on a perfectly level site, and has no marked features within or around it except the broad and bridgeless tidal river which sweeps through it at a rapid rate. In the distance are the White–Cloud hills, which were painted softly in amethyst on a tender green sky, and nearer are some rocky hills, which are red at all hours of daylight. Boats and masts conceal the view of the city from the river to a great extent, but even when from a vantage ground it is seen spread out below, it is so densely packed, its streets are so narrow, and its open spaces so few, that one almost doubts whether the million and a half of people attributed to it are really crowded within the narrow area. From the river, and indeed from any point of view, Canton is less imposing even than Tokiyo. Few objects rise above the monotonous level, and the few are unimpressive. There are two or three pagodas looking like shot towers. There is a double-towered Romish cathedral of great size, not yet finished. There is the “Nine-storied pagoda.” But in truth the most prominent objects from the river are the “godowns” of the pawnbrokers, lofty, square towers of gray brick which dominate the city, play a very important part in its social economy, and are very far removed from those establishments with the trinity of gilded balls, which hide themselves shamefacedly away in our English by-streets. At one part of the riverside there are some substantial looking foreign houses among trees, on the site of the foreign factories of former days, but they and indeed all else are hidden by a crowd of boats, a town of boats, a floating suburb. Indeed, boats are my earliest and strongest impressions of what on my arrival I was hasty enough to think a mean city. It is not only along the sides of the broad Pearl river, but along the network of innumerable canals and creeks which communicate with it, that they are found.
These boats, the first marvel of a marvelous city, have come between me and my landing. When the steamer had disgorged her two thousand passengers, Mr. Mackrill Smith, whose guest I am, brought me in a bamboo chair, carried by two coolies, through a covered and crowded street of merchandise six feet wide, to Shameen, the island in the river on which the foreigners reside; most of the missionary community, however, living in the buildings on the site of the old factory farther down.
I am now domiciled on Shameen, a reclaimed mud flat, in the beautiful house belonging to the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co. This island, which has on the one side the swift flowing Canton river, with its ever shifting life, has on the other a canal, on which an enormous population lives in house boats, moored stem and stern, without any space between them. A stone bridge with an iron gate gives access into one of the best parts of Canton, commercially speaking; but all the business connected with tea, silk, and other productions, which is carried on by such renowned firms as Jardine, Matheson & Co., the Dents, the Deacons, and others, is transacted in these handsome dwellings of stone or brick, each standing in its tropical garden, with a wall or ornamental railing or bamboo hedge surrounding it, but without any outward sign of commerce at all. The settlement, insular and exclusive, hears little and knows less of the crowded Chinese city at its gates. It reproduces English life as far as possible, and adds a boundless hospitality of its own, receiving all strangers who are in any way accredited, and many who are not. A high sea-wall with a broad concrete walk, shaded by banyan trees, runs round it, a distance of a mile and a quarter. It is quite flat and covered with carefully kept grass, intersected with concrete walks and banyan avenues, the tropical gardens of the rich merchants giving variety and color.
The community at present consists of forty-five people — English, French, and German. The establishment of the electric telegraph has not only favored business, but has enabled some of the senior partners of the old firms to return home, leaving very junior partners or senior clerks here, who receive their instructions from England. Consequently, in some of these large family dwellings there are only young men “keeping bach.” There are a pretty English church, a club bungalow, a book club, lawn tennis and croquet grounds, and a small hall used for dancing, lectures and amateur theatricals. No wheeled vehicle larger than a perambulator ever disturbs the quiet. People who go into the city are carried in chairs, or drop down the river in their luxurious covered boats, but for exercise they mostly walk on the bund, and play croquet or lawn tennis. In this glorious weather the island is very charming. It is possible to spend the whole year here, as the tidal breezes modify the moist heat of summer; but the English children look pale and languid even now.
Canton, January 4. — If I were to describe Canton, and had time for it, my letters would soon swell to the size of Archdeacon Gray’s quaint and fascinating book, “Walks in Canton;” but I have no time, and must content myself with brief sketches of two or three things which have greatly interested me, and of the arrangement and management of the city; putting the last first, if I am able “to make head or tail of it,” and to cram its leading features into a letter.
Viewing Canton from the “five-storied pagoda,” or from the dignified elevation of a pawn tower, it is apparent that it is surrounded by a high wall, beyond which here and there are suburban villages, some wealthy and wood-embosomed, others mean and mangy. The river divides it from a very populous and important suburb. Within the city lies the kernel of the whole, the Tartar city, occupied by the garrison and a military colony numbering about twenty thousand persons. This interesting area is walled round, and contains the residence of the Tartar General, and the consulates of the great European Powers. It is well wooded and less closely built than the rest of Canton. Descending from any elevation one finds oneself at once involved at any and every point in a maze of narrow, crowded streets of high brick and stone houses, mostly from five to eight feet wide. These streets are covered in at the height of the house roofs by screens of canvas matting, or thin boards, which afford a pleasant shade, and at the same time let the sunbeams glance and trickle among the long, pendent signboards and banners which swing aloft, and upon the busy, many-colored, jostling throng below.
Every street is paved with large slabs of granite, and under each of the massive foot-ways (for carriage-ways there are none) there is a drain for carrying off the rain-water, which is then conveyed into six large culverts, from them into four creeks which intersect the city, and thence into the river. These large drains are supervised by the “prefect,” who is bound by an ancient law to have them thoroughly cleansed every autumn, while each of the small drains is cleansed by the orders and at the expense of the “vestry” of the street under which it passes. This ancient sanitary law, like many other of the admirable laws of this empire, is said to be by no means punctiliously carried out; and that Canton is a very healthy city, and that pestilences of any kind rarely gain a footing in it, may be attributed rather to the excellent plan of sending out the garbage of the city daily to fertilize the gardens and fields of the neighborhood, than to the vigilance of the municipal authorities.
There are heavy and ancient gates or barricades which enclose each street, and which are locked at night, only to be opened by favor of the watchmen who guard them. Their closing brings to an end the busy street life, and at 10 P.M. Canton, cut up into small sections, barred out from each other, is like a city of the dead. Each gate watchman is appointed and paid by the “vestry” of the street in which he keeps guard. They wear uniform, but are miserable dilapidated-looking creatures, and I have twice seen one fast asleep. In the principal streets night watchmen are stationed in watch-towers, which consist of small mat huts, placed on scaffolds raised far above the house-tops, on bamboo poles bound together with strong cords. These men are on the look-out for armed bands of robbers, but specially for fire. They are provided with tom-toms and small gongs on which to proclaim the hours of the night, but, should fire arise, a loud, rapid, and incessant beating of the gong gives the alarm to all the elevated brotherhood in turn, who at the same time, by concerted signals, inform the citizens below of the ward and street in which the fire has originated. In each principal street there is a very large well, covered with granite slabs, with its exact position denoted on a granite slab on the adjoining wall. These wells, which are abundant reservoirs, are never opened except in case of fire.
Besides these watchmen, eleven hundred military constabulary are answerable for the good order of the “new city” and its suburbs, and a thousand more, called the Governor’s brigade, garrison the outer gates in the city wall and several interior guard-houses, all the inner gates being garrisoned by Tartar troops. Canton is divided into thirty-six wards, under twelve officers in summer, but in winter, as now, when burglars are supposed to be more on the alert, this number is increased. Each officer having soldiers under him traverses at intervals during the night every street under his jurisdiction, and these armed followers, whether to intimidate criminals or to show their vigilance, are in the habit of discharging their old-fashioned matchlocks and gingalls as they patrol. In consequence of so many precautions, which are carried out very thoroughly, fires and burglaries are much minimized, and the proverb “as safe as Canton” appears to have a substantial foundation. The barricaded streets at night have an eerie solemnity about them. One night, my present hostess, Mrs. H., and I prowled through some of them quite unattended, on our way back from a friend’s dwelling, roused up the watchmen to unlock and unbar the gates, saw no other people astir, went down one of the water streets, hailed a boat, and were deposited close to the door of our own abode about midnight; such an event being quite of common occurrence in this quarter.
In the streets the roofs of the houses and shops are rarely, if ever, regular, nor are the houses themselves arranged in a direct line, This queer effect results from queer causes. Every Chinese house is built on the principles of geomancy, which do not admit of straight lines, and were these to be disregarded the astrologers and soothsayers under whose auspices all houses are erected, predict fearful evils to the impious builders. There are few open spaces in Canton, and these are decorated, not with statues, but with monumental arches of brick, red sandstone, or gray granite, which are put up as memorials of virtuous men and women, learned or aged men, and specially dutiful sons or daughters. Such memorials are erected by citizens, and, in some cases, by Imperial sanction or decree.
The public buildings and temples, though they bear magnificent names, are extremely ugly, and are the subjects of slow but manifest decay, while the streets of shops exceed in picturesqueness everything I have ever seen. Much of this is given by the perpendicular sign boards, fixed or hanging, upon which are painted on an appropriate background immense Chinese characters in gold, vermilion, or black. Two or three of these belong to each shop, and set forth its name and the nature of the goods which are to be purchased at it. The effect of these boards as the sun’s rays fall upon them here and there is fascinating. The interiors of the shops are lofty, glass lamps hang from the ceilings and large lanterns above every door, and both are painted in bright colors, with the characters signifying happiness, or with birds, butterflies, flowers, or landscapes. The shop wall which faces the door invariably has upon it a gigantic fresco or portrait of the tutelary god of the building, or a sheet of red paper on which the characters forming his name are placed, or the character Shan, which implies all gods, and these and the altars below are seen from the street. There is a recess outside each shop, and at dusk the joss-sticks burning in these fill the city with the fragrance of incense.
As there are streets of shops and trades, so there are streets of dwelling-houses, but even the finest of these present a miserable appearance to the passers-by, for all one can see is a lofty and dimly-lighted stone vestibule, furnished with carved ebony chairs with marble seats and backs, and not infrequently with gigantic coffins placed on end, the gift of pious juniors to their seniors! A porter stands in this vestibule ready to open the lofty triple gate which admits to the courtyard of the interior. Many Chinese mansions contain six or seven courtyards, each with its colonnade, drawing, dining, and reception rooms, and at the back of all there is a flower garden adorned with rockeries, fish-ponds, dwarf trees, and miniature pagodas and bridges.
The streets in which the poor dwell are formed of low, small, dark, and dirty houses, of two or three rooms each. The streets of dwellings are as mean and ugly as those of shops are brilliant and picturesque.
This is a meagre outline of what may be called the anatomy of this ancient city, which dates from the fourth century B.C., when it was walled only by a stockade of bamboo and mud, but was known by the name of “the martial city of the south,” changed later into “the city of rams.” At this date it has probably greater importance than it ever had, and no city but London impresses me so much with the idea of solid wealth and increasing prosperity.
My admiration and amazement never cease. I grudge the hours that I am obliged to spend in sleep; a week has gone like half a day, each hour heightening my impressions of the fascination and interest of Canton, and of the singular force and importance of the Chinese. Canton is intoxicating from its picturesqueness, color, novelty and movement. to-day I have been carried eighteen miles through and round it, reveling the whole time in its enchantments, and drinking for the first time of that water of which it may truly be said that who so drinks “shall thirst again” — true Orientalism. As we sat at mid-day at the five-storied pagoda, which from a corner of the outer wall overlooks the Tartar city, and ever since, through this crowded week, I have wished that the sun would stand still in the cloudless sky, and let me dream of gorgeous sunlight, light without heat, of narrow lanes rich in color, of the glints of sunlight on embroideries and cloth of gold, resplendent even in the darkness, of hurrying and colored crowds in the shadow, with the blue sky in narrow strips high above, of gorgeous marriage processions, and the “voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride,” of glittering trains of mandarins, of funeral processions, with the wail of hired mourners clad in sackcloth and ashes, of the Tartar city with its pagodas, of the hills of graves, great cities of the dead outside the walls, fiery-red under the tropic blue, of the “potter’s field” with its pools of blood and sacks of heads, and crosses for crucifixion, now, as on Calvary, symbolical of shame alone, of the wonderful river life, and all the busy, crowded, costumed hurry of the streets, where blue banners hanging here and there show that in those houses death has stilled some busy brains forevermore. And I should like to tell you of the Buddhist and Confucian temples; of the monastery garden, which is the original of the famous “Willow Pattern;” of the great Free Dispensary which is to rival that of the Medical Mission; of the asylums for lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations of officials; of the “Beggars’ Square” and beggars’ customs; of the trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall with its streets numbering eleven thousand six hundred and seventy-three cells for the candidates for the literary honors which are the only road to office and distinction in China, but Canton deserves a volume, and Archdeacon Gray has written one!
I. L. B.
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
Chapter II
LETTER II
A Delightful Climate — Imprisoned Fever Germs — “Pidjun” English — Hong Kong Harbor — Prosperity of Hong Kong — Rampageous Criminal Classes — Circumspice!
THE PALACE, VICTORIA, December 29.
I like and admire Victoria. It is so pleasant to come in from the dark, misty, coarse, loud-tongued Pacific, and the December colorlessness of Japan to bright blue waters crisped by a perpetual north wind — to the flaming hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars. Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love, — bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan, date, sago, and traveler’s palms, and numberless other trees and shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered and tended, but exotics after all.
It is a most delightful winter climate. There has not been any rain for three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless, the air dry and very bracing. It is cold enough at night for fires, and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees, and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable height, the lowest temperature is 40 degrees. It is impossible to praise the climate too highly, with its bright sky, cool dry air, and five months of rainlessness; but I should write very differently if I came here four months later, when the mercury ranges from 80 degrees to 90 degrees both by day and night, and the cloudy sky rests ever on the summits of the island peaks, and everything is moist, and the rain comes down continually in torrents, rising in hot vapors when the sun shines, and people become limp and miserable, and their possessions limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations, or is disturbed in any way, fever immediately breaks out.
Victoria is a beautiful city. It reminds me of Genoa, but that most of its streets are so steep as to be impassable for wheeled vehicles, and some of them are merely grand flights of stairs, arched over by dense foliaged trees, so as to look like some tropical, colored, deep colonnades. It has covered green balconies with festoons of creepers, lofty houses, streets narrow enough to exclude much of the sun, people and costumes of all nations, processions of Portuguese priests and nuns; and all its many-colored life is seen to full advantage under this blue sky and brilliant sun.
This house is magnificently situated, and very large and airy. Part is the Episcopal Palace, and the rest St. Paul’s College, of which Bishop Burdon is warden. The mountainous grounds are beautiful, and the entrance blazes with poinsettias. There are no female servants, but Chinese men perform all the domestic service satisfactorily. I learn that for a Chinese servant to appear without his skull-cap is rude, but to appear with his pig-tail wound round his head instead of pendent, is a gross insult! The “Pidjun English” is revolting, and the most dignified persons demean themselves by speaking it. The word “pidjun” appears to refer generally to business. “My pidjun” is undoubtedly “my work.” How the whole English-speaking community, without distinction of rank, has come to communicate with the Chinese in this baby talk is extraordinary.
If you order a fire you say something like this: “Fire makee, chop, chop, here, makee fire number one,” chop being quick, and number one good, or “first-class.” If a servant tells you that some one has called he says, “One piecey manee here speak missey,” and if one asks who he is, he very likely answers, “No sabe,” or else, “Number one, tink,” by which he implies that the visitor is, in his opinion, a gentleman. After the courteous, kindly Japanese, the Chinese seem indifferent, rough and disagreeable, except the well-to-do merchants in the shops, who are bland, complacent, and courteous. Their rude stare and the way they hustle you in the streets and shout their “pidjun” English at you is not attractive. Then they have an ugly habit of speaking of us as barbarian or foreign devils. Since I knew the word I have heard it several times in the streets, and Bishop Burdon says that before his servants found out that he knew Chinese, they were always speaking of him and Mrs. Burdon by this very ugly name.
[Victoria is, or should be, well known, so I will not describe its cliques, its boundless hospitalities, its extravagances in living, its quarrels, its gayeties, its picnics, balls, regattas, races, dinner parties, lawn tennis parties, amateur theatricals, afternoon teas, and all its other modes of creating a whirl which passes for pleasure or occupation. Rather, I would write of some of the facts concerning this very remarkable settlement, which is on its way to being the most important British colony in the Far East.
Moored to England by the electric cable, and replete with all the magnificent enterprises and luxuries of English civilization, with a population of one hundred and sixty thousand, of which only seven thousand, including soldiers and sailors, are white, and possessing the most imposing city of the East on its shores, the colony is only forty years old; the island of Hong Kong having been ceded to England in 1841, while its charter only bears the date of 1843. The island, which is about eleven miles long, from two to five broad, and with an area of about twenty-nine square miles, is one of a number situated off the south-eastern coast of China at the mouth of the Canton river, ninety miles from Canton. It is one of the many “thieves’ islands,” and one of the first necessities of the administration was to clear out the hordes of sea and river pirates which infested its very intricate neighborhood. It lies just within the tropic of Cancer in lat. 22 degrees N. and long. 114 degrees E. The Ly-ee-moon Pass, the narrow strait which separates it from the Chinese mainland, is only half a mile wide. Kowloon, on the mainland, an arid peninsula, on which some of the Hong Kongese have been attempting to create a suburb, was ceded to England in 1861. The whole island of Hong Kong is picturesque. The magnificent harbor, which has an area of ten square miles, is surrounded by fantastic, broken mountains from three thousand to four thousand feet high, and the magnificent city of Victoria extends for four miles along its southern shore, with its six thousand houses of stone and brick and the princely mansions and roomy bungalows of its merchants and officials scrambling up the steep sides of the Peak, the highest point of the island, carrying verdure and shade with them. Damp as its summer is, the average rainfall scarcely exceeds seventy-eight inches, but it is hotter than Singapore in the hot season, though the latter is under eighty miles from the Equator.
The causes by which this little island, which produces nothing, has risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria, with its magnificent harbor, is a factory for our Chinese commerce and offers unrivaled facilities for the military and naval forces which are necessary for the protection not only of that commerce but of our interests in the far East. It is hardly too much to say that it is the naval and commercial terminus of the Suez Canal. Will it be believed that the amount of British and foreign tonnage annually entering and leaving the port averages two millions of tons? and that the number of native vessels trading to it is about fifty-two thousand, raising the total ascertained tonnage to upward of three millions and a half, or half a million tons in excess of Singapore? To this must be added thousands of smaller native boats of every build and rig trading to Hong Kong, not only from the Chinese coasts and rivers, but from Siam, Japan, and Cochin China. Besides the “P. and O.,” the Messageries Maritimes, the Pacific Mail Company, the Eastern and Australian Mail Company, the Japanese “Mitsu Bichi” Mail Company, etc., all regular mail lines, it has a number of lines of steamers trading to England, America, and Germany, with local lines both Chinese and English, and lines of fine sailing clippers, which, however, are gradually falling into disuse, owing to the dangerous navigation of the China seas, and the increasing demand for speed.
Victorian firms have almost the entire control of the tea and silk trade, and Victoria is the centre of the trade in opium, sugar, flour, salt, earthenware, oil, amber, cotton, and cotton goods, sandal-wood, ivory, betel, vegetables, live stock, granite, and much else. The much abused term “emporium of commerce” may most correctly be applied to it.
It has five docks, three slips, and every requisite for making extensive repairs for ships of war and merchantmen.
It has telegraphic communication with the whole civilized world, and its trade is kept thereby in a continual fever.
It has a large garrison, for which it pays to England 20,000 pounds a year. Were it not for this force, its six hundred and fifty policemen, of whom only one hundred and ten are Europeans, might not be able to overawe even as much as they do the rowdy and ruffianly elements of its heterogeneous population. As it is, the wealthier foreign residents, for the security of their property, are obliged to supplement the services of the public caretakers by employing private watchmen, who patrol their grounds at night. It must be admitted that the criminal classes are very rampageous in Victoria, whether from undue and unwise leniency in the treatment of crime, or whether from the extraordinary mass of criminals to which our flag affords security is not for a stranger to say, though the general clamor raised when I visited the great Chinese prison in Canton, “I wish I were in your prison in Hong Kong,” and my own visit to the Victoria prison, render the former suspicion at least permissible.
Hong Kong possesses the usual establishment of a Crown Colony, and the government is administered by a Governor, aided by a Legislative Council, of which he is the President, and which is composed of the Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney–General, the Treasurer, and four unofficial members, nominated by the Crown on the Governor’s recommendation.
The enormous preponderance of the mixed Oriental population is a source of some difficulty, and it is not easy by our laws to punish and destroy a peculiarly hateful form of slavery which is recognized by Chinese custom, and which has attained gigantic proportions in Victoria. There is an immense preponderance of the masculine element, nearly six to one among the Europeans, and among the Orientals the men are nearly two and a half times as numerous as the women.
As Victoria is a free port, it is impossible to estimate the value of its imports and exports, but its harbor, full of huge merchantmen, and craft of all nations, its busy wharves, its crowd of lighters loading and unloading by day and night, its thronged streets and handsome shops, its huge warehouses, packed with tea, silk, and all the costly products of the East, and its hillsides terraced with the luxurious houses of its merchants, all say, “Circumspice, these are better than statistics!”]
I. L. B.
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A Delightful Climate — Imprisoned Fever Germs — “Pidjun” English — Hong Kong Harbor — Prosperity of Hong Kong — Rampageous Criminal Classes — Circumspice!
THE PALACE, VICTORIA, December 29.
I like and admire Victoria. It is so pleasant to come in from the dark, misty, coarse, loud-tongued Pacific, and the December colorlessness of Japan to bright blue waters crisped by a perpetual north wind — to the flaming hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars. Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love, — bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan, date, sago, and traveler’s palms, and numberless other trees and shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered and tended, but exotics after all.
It is a most delightful winter climate. There has not been any rain for three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless, the air dry and very bracing. It is cold enough at night for fires, and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees, and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable height, the lowest temperature is 40 degrees. It is impossible to praise the climate too highly, with its bright sky, cool dry air, and five months of rainlessness; but I should write very differently if I came here four months later, when the mercury ranges from 80 degrees to 90 degrees both by day and night, and the cloudy sky rests ever on the summits of the island peaks, and everything is moist, and the rain comes down continually in torrents, rising in hot vapors when the sun shines, and people become limp and miserable, and their possessions limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations, or is disturbed in any way, fever immediately breaks out.
Victoria is a beautiful city. It reminds me of Genoa, but that most of its streets are so steep as to be impassable for wheeled vehicles, and some of them are merely grand flights of stairs, arched over by dense foliaged trees, so as to look like some tropical, colored, deep colonnades. It has covered green balconies with festoons of creepers, lofty houses, streets narrow enough to exclude much of the sun, people and costumes of all nations, processions of Portuguese priests and nuns; and all its many-colored life is seen to full advantage under this blue sky and brilliant sun.
This house is magnificently situated, and very large and airy. Part is the Episcopal Palace, and the rest St. Paul’s College, of which Bishop Burdon is warden. The mountainous grounds are beautiful, and the entrance blazes with poinsettias. There are no female servants, but Chinese men perform all the domestic service satisfactorily. I learn that for a Chinese servant to appear without his skull-cap is rude, but to appear with his pig-tail wound round his head instead of pendent, is a gross insult! The “Pidjun English” is revolting, and the most dignified persons demean themselves by speaking it. The word “pidjun” appears to refer generally to business. “My pidjun” is undoubtedly “my work.” How the whole English-speaking community, without distinction of rank, has come to communicate with the Chinese in this baby talk is extraordinary.
If you order a fire you say something like this: “Fire makee, chop, chop, here, makee fire number one,” chop being quick, and number one good, or “first-class.” If a servant tells you that some one has called he says, “One piecey manee here speak missey,” and if one asks who he is, he very likely answers, “No sabe,” or else, “Number one, tink,” by which he implies that the visitor is, in his opinion, a gentleman. After the courteous, kindly Japanese, the Chinese seem indifferent, rough and disagreeable, except the well-to-do merchants in the shops, who are bland, complacent, and courteous. Their rude stare and the way they hustle you in the streets and shout their “pidjun” English at you is not attractive. Then they have an ugly habit of speaking of us as barbarian or foreign devils. Since I knew the word I have heard it several times in the streets, and Bishop Burdon says that before his servants found out that he knew Chinese, they were always speaking of him and Mrs. Burdon by this very ugly name.
[Victoria is, or should be, well known, so I will not describe its cliques, its boundless hospitalities, its extravagances in living, its quarrels, its gayeties, its picnics, balls, regattas, races, dinner parties, lawn tennis parties, amateur theatricals, afternoon teas, and all its other modes of creating a whirl which passes for pleasure or occupation. Rather, I would write of some of the facts concerning this very remarkable settlement, which is on its way to being the most important British colony in the Far East.
Moored to England by the electric cable, and replete with all the magnificent enterprises and luxuries of English civilization, with a population of one hundred and sixty thousand, of which only seven thousand, including soldiers and sailors, are white, and possessing the most imposing city of the East on its shores, the colony is only forty years old; the island of Hong Kong having been ceded to England in 1841, while its charter only bears the date of 1843. The island, which is about eleven miles long, from two to five broad, and with an area of about twenty-nine square miles, is one of a number situated off the south-eastern coast of China at the mouth of the Canton river, ninety miles from Canton. It is one of the many “thieves’ islands,” and one of the first necessities of the administration was to clear out the hordes of sea and river pirates which infested its very intricate neighborhood. It lies just within the tropic of Cancer in lat. 22 degrees N. and long. 114 degrees E. The Ly-ee-moon Pass, the narrow strait which separates it from the Chinese mainland, is only half a mile wide. Kowloon, on the mainland, an arid peninsula, on which some of the Hong Kongese have been attempting to create a suburb, was ceded to England in 1861. The whole island of Hong Kong is picturesque. The magnificent harbor, which has an area of ten square miles, is surrounded by fantastic, broken mountains from three thousand to four thousand feet high, and the magnificent city of Victoria extends for four miles along its southern shore, with its six thousand houses of stone and brick and the princely mansions and roomy bungalows of its merchants and officials scrambling up the steep sides of the Peak, the highest point of the island, carrying verdure and shade with them. Damp as its summer is, the average rainfall scarcely exceeds seventy-eight inches, but it is hotter than Singapore in the hot season, though the latter is under eighty miles from the Equator.
The causes by which this little island, which produces nothing, has risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria, with its magnificent harbor, is a factory for our Chinese commerce and offers unrivaled facilities for the military and naval forces which are necessary for the protection not only of that commerce but of our interests in the far East. It is hardly too much to say that it is the naval and commercial terminus of the Suez Canal. Will it be believed that the amount of British and foreign tonnage annually entering and leaving the port averages two millions of tons? and that the number of native vessels trading to it is about fifty-two thousand, raising the total ascertained tonnage to upward of three millions and a half, or half a million tons in excess of Singapore? To this must be added thousands of smaller native boats of every build and rig trading to Hong Kong, not only from the Chinese coasts and rivers, but from Siam, Japan, and Cochin China. Besides the “P. and O.,” the Messageries Maritimes, the Pacific Mail Company, the Eastern and Australian Mail Company, the Japanese “Mitsu Bichi” Mail Company, etc., all regular mail lines, it has a number of lines of steamers trading to England, America, and Germany, with local lines both Chinese and English, and lines of fine sailing clippers, which, however, are gradually falling into disuse, owing to the dangerous navigation of the China seas, and the increasing demand for speed.
Victorian firms have almost the entire control of the tea and silk trade, and Victoria is the centre of the trade in opium, sugar, flour, salt, earthenware, oil, amber, cotton, and cotton goods, sandal-wood, ivory, betel, vegetables, live stock, granite, and much else. The much abused term “emporium of commerce” may most correctly be applied to it.
It has five docks, three slips, and every requisite for making extensive repairs for ships of war and merchantmen.
It has telegraphic communication with the whole civilized world, and its trade is kept thereby in a continual fever.
It has a large garrison, for which it pays to England 20,000 pounds a year. Were it not for this force, its six hundred and fifty policemen, of whom only one hundred and ten are Europeans, might not be able to overawe even as much as they do the rowdy and ruffianly elements of its heterogeneous population. As it is, the wealthier foreign residents, for the security of their property, are obliged to supplement the services of the public caretakers by employing private watchmen, who patrol their grounds at night. It must be admitted that the criminal classes are very rampageous in Victoria, whether from undue and unwise leniency in the treatment of crime, or whether from the extraordinary mass of criminals to which our flag affords security is not for a stranger to say, though the general clamor raised when I visited the great Chinese prison in Canton, “I wish I were in your prison in Hong Kong,” and my own visit to the Victoria prison, render the former suspicion at least permissible.
Hong Kong possesses the usual establishment of a Crown Colony, and the government is administered by a Governor, aided by a Legislative Council, of which he is the President, and which is composed of the Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney–General, the Treasurer, and four unofficial members, nominated by the Crown on the Governor’s recommendation.
The enormous preponderance of the mixed Oriental population is a source of some difficulty, and it is not easy by our laws to punish and destroy a peculiarly hateful form of slavery which is recognized by Chinese custom, and which has attained gigantic proportions in Victoria. There is an immense preponderance of the masculine element, nearly six to one among the Europeans, and among the Orientals the men are nearly two and a half times as numerous as the women.
As Victoria is a free port, it is impossible to estimate the value of its imports and exports, but its harbor, full of huge merchantmen, and craft of all nations, its busy wharves, its crowd of lighters loading and unloading by day and night, its thronged streets and handsome shops, its huge warehouses, packed with tea, silk, and all the costly products of the East, and its hillsides terraced with the luxurious houses of its merchants, all say, “Circumspice, these are better than statistics!”]
I. L. B.
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Chapter 1
LETTER I
The Steamer Volga — Days of Darkness — First View of Hong Kong — Hong Kong on Fire — Apathy of the Houseless — The Fire Breaks Out Again — An Eclipse of Gayety
S.S. “VOLGA,” CHINA SEA, Christmas Eve, 1878.
The snowy dome of Fujisan, reddening in the sunrise, rose above the violet woodlands of Mississippi Bay as we steamed out of Yokohama harbor on the 19th, and three days later I saw the last of Japan — a rugged coast, lashed by a wintry sea.
THE PALACE, VICTORIA, HONG KONG, December 27.
Of the voyage to Hong Kong little need be said. The Volga is a miserable steamer, with no place to sit in, and nothing to sit on but the benches by the dinner-table in the dismal saloon. The master, a worthy man, so far as I ever saw of him, was Goth, Vandal, Hun, Visigoth, all in one. The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold. She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because of a smoky chimney. There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the table-linen frowsy. There were four French and two Japanese male passengers, who sat at meals in top-coats, comforters, and hats. I had a large cabin, the salon des dames, and the undivided attention of a very competent, but completely desponding stewardess. Being debarred from the deck by incessant showers of spray, sleet, and snow, and the cold of mid-winter being unbearable in the dark, damp saloon, I went to bed at four for the first two days. On the third it blew half a gale, with a short violent sea, and this heavy weather lasted till we reached Hong Kong, five days afterward. During those cold, dark, noisy days, when even the stewards could scarcely keep their feet, I suffered so much in my spine from the violent movements of the ship that I did not leave my cabin; and besides being unable to read, write, or work, owing to the darkness, I was obliged to hold on by day and night to avoid being much hurt by the rolling, my berth being athwart ships; consequently, that week, which I had relied upon for “overtaking” large arrears of writing and sewing, was so much lost out of life — irrecoverably and shamefully lost, I felt — as each dismal day, dawned and died without sunrise or sunset, on the dark and stormy Pacific. No one, it seemed, knew any more English than “Yes” and “No;” and as the ship knocked French out of my memory, I had not even the resource of talking with the stewardess, who told me on the last day of our imprisonment that she was “triste, triste,” and “one mass of bruises!”
In this same gale, but on a dry day, we came close up with the mainland of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint. This one exceeded all my expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious continent which has been my dream from childhood — bare, lofty, rocky, basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic, perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese high-sterned fishing-boats with treble-reefed, three-cornered brown sails, appearing on the tops of surges, at once to vanish. Soon we were among mountainous islands; and then, by a narrow and picturesque channel, entered the outer harbor, with the scorched and arid peaks of Hong Kong on one side; and on the other the yet redder and rockier mainland, without a tree or trace of cultivation, or even of habitation, except here and there a few stone huts clustering round inlets, in which boats were lying. We were within the tropic of Cancer, but still the cold, coarse bluster continued, so that it was barely possible to see China except in snatches from behind the deck-house.
Turning through another channel, we abruptly entered the inner harbor, and sailed into the summer, blue sky, blue water, a summer sun, and a cool breeze, while a tender veil of blue haze softened the outlines of the flushed mountains. Victoria, which is the capital of the British colony of the island of Hong Kong, and which colloquially is called Hong Kong, looked magnificent, suggesting Gibraltar, but far, far finer, its peak eighteen hundred feet in height — a giant among lesser peaks, rising abruptly from the sea above the great granite city which clusters upon its lower declivities, looking out from dense greenery and tropical gardens, and the deep shade of palms and bananas, the lines of many of its streets traced in foliage, all contrasting with the scorched red soil and barren crags which were its universal aspect before we acquired it in 1843. A forest of masts above the town betoken its commercial importance, and “P. and O.” and Messageries Maritimes steamers, ships of war of all nations, low-hulled, big-masted clippers, store and hospital ships, and a great fishing fleet lay at anchor in the harbor. The English and Romish cathedrals, the Episcopal Palace, with St. Paul’s College, great high blocks of commercial buildings, huge sugar factories, great barracks in terraces, battery above battery, Government House, and massive stone wharves, came rapidly into view, and over all, its rich folds spreading out fully on the breeze, floated the English flag.
But dense volumes of smoke rolling and eddying, and covering with their black folds the lower slopes and the town itself made a surprising spectacle, and even as we anchored came off the rapid tolling of bells, the roll of drums, and the murmur of a “city at unrest.” No one met me. A few Chinese boats came off, and then a steam launch with the M. M. agent in an obvious flurry. I asked him how to get ashore, and he replied, “It’s no use going ashore, the town’s half burned, and burning still; there’s not a bed at any hotel for love or money, and we are going to make up beds here.” However, through the politeness of the mail agent, I did go ashore in the launch, but we had to climb through and over at least eight tiers of boats, crammed with refugees, mainly women and children, and piled up with all sorts of household goods, whole and broken, which had been thrown into them promiscuously to save them. “The palace of the English bishop,” they said, was still untouched; so, escaping from an indescribable hubbub, I got into a bamboo chair, with two long poles which rested on the shoulders of two lean coolies, who carried me to my destination at a swinging pace through streets as steep as those of Varenna. Streets choked up with household goods and the costly contents of shops, treasured books and nick-nacks lying on the dusty pavements, with beds, pictures, clothing, mirrors, goods of all sorts; Chinamen dragging their possessions to the hills; Chinawomen, some of them with hoofs rather than feet, carrying their children on their backs and under their arms; officers, black with smoke, working at the hose like firemen; parties of troops marching as steadily as on parade, or keeping guard in perilous places; Mr. Pope Henessey, the Governor, ubiquitous in a chair with four scarlet bearers; men belonging to the insurance companies running about with drawn swords; the miscellaneous population running hither and thither; loud and frequent explosions; heavy crashes as of tottering walls, and, above all, the loud bell of the Romish cathedral tolling rapidly, calling to work or prayer, made a scene of intense excitement; while utterly unmoved, in grand Oriental calm (or apathy), with the waves of tumult breaking round their feet, stood Sikh sentries, majestic men, with swarthy faces and great, crimson turbans. Through the encumbered streets and up grand flights of stairs my bearers brought me to these picturesque grounds, which were covered over with furniture and goods of all descriptions brought hither for safety, and Chinese families camping out among them. Indeed, the Bishop and Mrs. Burdon had not only thrown open their beautiful grounds to these poor people, but had accommodated some Chinese families in rooms in the palace under their own. The apathy or calm of the Chinese women as they sat houseless amidst their possessions was very striking. In the broad, covered corridor which runs round the palace everything the Burdons most value was lying ready for instantaneous removal, and I was warned not to unpack or take off my traveling dress. The Bishop and I at once went down to the fire, which was got under, and saw the wreck of the city and the houseless people camping out among the things they had saved. Fire was still burning or smouldering everywhere, high walls were falling, hose were playing on mountains of smouldering timber, whole streets were blocked with masses of fallen brick and stone, charred telegraph poles and fused wires were lying about, with half burned ledgers and half burned everything. The colored population exceeds one hundred and fifty-two thousand souls, and only those who know the Babel which an eastern crowd is capable of making under ordinary circumstances can imagine what the deafening din of human tongues was under these very extraordinary ones. In the prison, which was threatened by the flames, were over eight hundred ruffians of all nations, and it was held by one hundred soldiers with ten rounds of ammunition each, prepared to convey the criminals to a place of safety and to shoot any who attempted to escape. The dread of these miscreants, which was everywhere expressed, is not unreasonable, for the position of Victoria, and the freedom and protection afforded by our laws, together with the present Governor’s known sympathies with colored people, have attracted here thousands of the scum of Canton and other Chinese cities, to say nothing of a mass of European and Asiatic ruffianism, much of which is at all times percolating through the magnificent Victoria prison.
On returning, I was just beginning to unpack when the flames burst out again. It was luridly grand in the twilight, the tongues of flame lapping up house after house, the jets of flame loaded with blazing fragments, the explosions, each one succeeded by a burst of flame, carrying high into the air all sorts of projectiles, beams and rafters paraffine soaked, strewing them over the doomed city, the leaping flames coming nearer and nearer, the great volumes of smoke, spark-laden, rolling toward us, all mingling with a din indescribable. Burning fragments shortly fell on the window-sills, and as the wind was very strong and setting this way, there seemed so little prospect of the palace being saved that important papers were sent to the cathedral and several of the refugees fled with their things to the hills. At that moment the wind changed, and the great drift of flame and smoke was carried in a comparatively harmless direction, the fire was got well in hand the second time, the official quarter was saved, and before 10 P.M. we were able for the first time since my arrival at mid-day to sit down to food.
Most people seem much upset as well from personal peril as from sympathy, and all parties and picnics for two days were given up. Even the newspapers did not come out this morning, the types of one of them being in this garden. The city is now patrolled night and day by strong parties of marines and Sikhs, for both the disposition to loot and the facilities for looting are very great.
I. L. B.
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The Steamer Volga — Days of Darkness — First View of Hong Kong — Hong Kong on Fire — Apathy of the Houseless — The Fire Breaks Out Again — An Eclipse of Gayety
S.S. “VOLGA,” CHINA SEA, Christmas Eve, 1878.
The snowy dome of Fujisan, reddening in the sunrise, rose above the violet woodlands of Mississippi Bay as we steamed out of Yokohama harbor on the 19th, and three days later I saw the last of Japan — a rugged coast, lashed by a wintry sea.
THE PALACE, VICTORIA, HONG KONG, December 27.
Of the voyage to Hong Kong little need be said. The Volga is a miserable steamer, with no place to sit in, and nothing to sit on but the benches by the dinner-table in the dismal saloon. The master, a worthy man, so far as I ever saw of him, was Goth, Vandal, Hun, Visigoth, all in one. The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold. She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because of a smoky chimney. There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the table-linen frowsy. There were four French and two Japanese male passengers, who sat at meals in top-coats, comforters, and hats. I had a large cabin, the salon des dames, and the undivided attention of a very competent, but completely desponding stewardess. Being debarred from the deck by incessant showers of spray, sleet, and snow, and the cold of mid-winter being unbearable in the dark, damp saloon, I went to bed at four for the first two days. On the third it blew half a gale, with a short violent sea, and this heavy weather lasted till we reached Hong Kong, five days afterward. During those cold, dark, noisy days, when even the stewards could scarcely keep their feet, I suffered so much in my spine from the violent movements of the ship that I did not leave my cabin; and besides being unable to read, write, or work, owing to the darkness, I was obliged to hold on by day and night to avoid being much hurt by the rolling, my berth being athwart ships; consequently, that week, which I had relied upon for “overtaking” large arrears of writing and sewing, was so much lost out of life — irrecoverably and shamefully lost, I felt — as each dismal day, dawned and died without sunrise or sunset, on the dark and stormy Pacific. No one, it seemed, knew any more English than “Yes” and “No;” and as the ship knocked French out of my memory, I had not even the resource of talking with the stewardess, who told me on the last day of our imprisonment that she was “triste, triste,” and “one mass of bruises!”
In this same gale, but on a dry day, we came close up with the mainland of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint. This one exceeded all my expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious continent which has been my dream from childhood — bare, lofty, rocky, basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic, perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese high-sterned fishing-boats with treble-reefed, three-cornered brown sails, appearing on the tops of surges, at once to vanish. Soon we were among mountainous islands; and then, by a narrow and picturesque channel, entered the outer harbor, with the scorched and arid peaks of Hong Kong on one side; and on the other the yet redder and rockier mainland, without a tree or trace of cultivation, or even of habitation, except here and there a few stone huts clustering round inlets, in which boats were lying. We were within the tropic of Cancer, but still the cold, coarse bluster continued, so that it was barely possible to see China except in snatches from behind the deck-house.
Turning through another channel, we abruptly entered the inner harbor, and sailed into the summer, blue sky, blue water, a summer sun, and a cool breeze, while a tender veil of blue haze softened the outlines of the flushed mountains. Victoria, which is the capital of the British colony of the island of Hong Kong, and which colloquially is called Hong Kong, looked magnificent, suggesting Gibraltar, but far, far finer, its peak eighteen hundred feet in height — a giant among lesser peaks, rising abruptly from the sea above the great granite city which clusters upon its lower declivities, looking out from dense greenery and tropical gardens, and the deep shade of palms and bananas, the lines of many of its streets traced in foliage, all contrasting with the scorched red soil and barren crags which were its universal aspect before we acquired it in 1843. A forest of masts above the town betoken its commercial importance, and “P. and O.” and Messageries Maritimes steamers, ships of war of all nations, low-hulled, big-masted clippers, store and hospital ships, and a great fishing fleet lay at anchor in the harbor. The English and Romish cathedrals, the Episcopal Palace, with St. Paul’s College, great high blocks of commercial buildings, huge sugar factories, great barracks in terraces, battery above battery, Government House, and massive stone wharves, came rapidly into view, and over all, its rich folds spreading out fully on the breeze, floated the English flag.
But dense volumes of smoke rolling and eddying, and covering with their black folds the lower slopes and the town itself made a surprising spectacle, and even as we anchored came off the rapid tolling of bells, the roll of drums, and the murmur of a “city at unrest.” No one met me. A few Chinese boats came off, and then a steam launch with the M. M. agent in an obvious flurry. I asked him how to get ashore, and he replied, “It’s no use going ashore, the town’s half burned, and burning still; there’s not a bed at any hotel for love or money, and we are going to make up beds here.” However, through the politeness of the mail agent, I did go ashore in the launch, but we had to climb through and over at least eight tiers of boats, crammed with refugees, mainly women and children, and piled up with all sorts of household goods, whole and broken, which had been thrown into them promiscuously to save them. “The palace of the English bishop,” they said, was still untouched; so, escaping from an indescribable hubbub, I got into a bamboo chair, with two long poles which rested on the shoulders of two lean coolies, who carried me to my destination at a swinging pace through streets as steep as those of Varenna. Streets choked up with household goods and the costly contents of shops, treasured books and nick-nacks lying on the dusty pavements, with beds, pictures, clothing, mirrors, goods of all sorts; Chinamen dragging their possessions to the hills; Chinawomen, some of them with hoofs rather than feet, carrying their children on their backs and under their arms; officers, black with smoke, working at the hose like firemen; parties of troops marching as steadily as on parade, or keeping guard in perilous places; Mr. Pope Henessey, the Governor, ubiquitous in a chair with four scarlet bearers; men belonging to the insurance companies running about with drawn swords; the miscellaneous population running hither and thither; loud and frequent explosions; heavy crashes as of tottering walls, and, above all, the loud bell of the Romish cathedral tolling rapidly, calling to work or prayer, made a scene of intense excitement; while utterly unmoved, in grand Oriental calm (or apathy), with the waves of tumult breaking round their feet, stood Sikh sentries, majestic men, with swarthy faces and great, crimson turbans. Through the encumbered streets and up grand flights of stairs my bearers brought me to these picturesque grounds, which were covered over with furniture and goods of all descriptions brought hither for safety, and Chinese families camping out among them. Indeed, the Bishop and Mrs. Burdon had not only thrown open their beautiful grounds to these poor people, but had accommodated some Chinese families in rooms in the palace under their own. The apathy or calm of the Chinese women as they sat houseless amidst their possessions was very striking. In the broad, covered corridor which runs round the palace everything the Burdons most value was lying ready for instantaneous removal, and I was warned not to unpack or take off my traveling dress. The Bishop and I at once went down to the fire, which was got under, and saw the wreck of the city and the houseless people camping out among the things they had saved. Fire was still burning or smouldering everywhere, high walls were falling, hose were playing on mountains of smouldering timber, whole streets were blocked with masses of fallen brick and stone, charred telegraph poles and fused wires were lying about, with half burned ledgers and half burned everything. The colored population exceeds one hundred and fifty-two thousand souls, and only those who know the Babel which an eastern crowd is capable of making under ordinary circumstances can imagine what the deafening din of human tongues was under these very extraordinary ones. In the prison, which was threatened by the flames, were over eight hundred ruffians of all nations, and it was held by one hundred soldiers with ten rounds of ammunition each, prepared to convey the criminals to a place of safety and to shoot any who attempted to escape. The dread of these miscreants, which was everywhere expressed, is not unreasonable, for the position of Victoria, and the freedom and protection afforded by our laws, together with the present Governor’s known sympathies with colored people, have attracted here thousands of the scum of Canton and other Chinese cities, to say nothing of a mass of European and Asiatic ruffianism, much of which is at all times percolating through the magnificent Victoria prison.
On returning, I was just beginning to unpack when the flames burst out again. It was luridly grand in the twilight, the tongues of flame lapping up house after house, the jets of flame loaded with blazing fragments, the explosions, each one succeeded by a burst of flame, carrying high into the air all sorts of projectiles, beams and rafters paraffine soaked, strewing them over the doomed city, the leaping flames coming nearer and nearer, the great volumes of smoke, spark-laden, rolling toward us, all mingling with a din indescribable. Burning fragments shortly fell on the window-sills, and as the wind was very strong and setting this way, there seemed so little prospect of the palace being saved that important papers were sent to the cathedral and several of the refugees fled with their things to the hills. At that moment the wind changed, and the great drift of flame and smoke was carried in a comparatively harmless direction, the fire was got well in hand the second time, the official quarter was saved, and before 10 P.M. we were able for the first time since my arrival at mid-day to sit down to food.
Most people seem much upset as well from personal peril as from sympathy, and all parties and picnics for two days were given up. Even the newspapers did not come out this morning, the types of one of them being in this garden. The city is now patrolled night and day by strong parties of marines and Sikhs, for both the disposition to loot and the facilities for looting are very great.
I. L. B.
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APPENDIX C
No. I
From H.B.M.‘s Resident, Perak, to Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements Residency, Kwala Kansa, December 14, 1878.
Sir — In reference to your letter of the 28th June last, directing, by command of His Excellency the Governor, my particular attention to the plan adopted in Selangor for the extinction of the claims against slave-debtors, by a valuation of their services to their creditors according to a fixed scale, and directing me to consider to His Excellency with a view to its being afterward submitted for the consideration of the Council of State:
1. I have the honor to state in reply that a copy of that letter and its inclosure was supplied to the Assistant Resident of Perak, and its contents communicated to the other magistrates, with instructions on all occasions in which such cases should be brought before them, to endeavor, with the consent of the creditors, to come to a settlement on such a basis.
2. The Toh Puan Halimah, daughter of the exiled Laxamana of Perak, and chief wife of the banished Mentri of the State, had invested most of her private money in advances of this description, which, up to the time of British interference, was the favorite form of security, and she is now the largest claimant in the country for the repayment of her money. Another, Wan Teh Sapiah, has also claims of a like nature on several families, and both these ladies willingly undertook to accept of liquidation by such an arrangement.
3. In the former case it has, I am sorry to say, fallen through, from the impossibility of inducing the debtors to work regularly, and from very many of them, who are living in entire freedom in different parts of the country, declining to come into the arrangement, though acknowledging their debts.
4. In many other cases the creditors from the first put forward the certainty of the failure of such a system from the above-mentioned cause; others have objected that they had no regular employment in which to place their debtors; others, that they are utterly ruined by the events of recent years, and that they would accede to the proposal if fairly carried out on the other part, provided the Government would advance money as the native Rajahs did to enable them to open mines or gardens in which they could employ their debtors; nearly all have declared themselves willing, and even anxious, to accept a just amount in payment of their debts, several suggesting that the State might conveniently undertake to do this, employing the labor in public works until the debtor should be free.
5. I cannot undertake to say what may have been the practice in former times, as to the treatment, in Perak, of this class of persons; but no case of cruelty or any great hardship has been brought to my notice since I came into the country. By far the larger number of the slave-debtors live with their families apart and often at great distances from their masters, enjoying all the fruits of their labor, rendering occasional assistance to them when called upon to do so, which, in the majority of cases, is of rare occurrence.
6. The circumstances of Perak would probably be found to differ from those of Selangor, which I understand has a much smaller population; was governed by an enlightened ruler under the advice of British Residents, who succeeded in introducing the present regulation immediately after the conquest of the district.
7. To introduce such a measure into Perak at the present time would, in my opinion, have a very disturbing effect, and although I do not think that it would lead to any extensive or organized armed resistance, I am sure that it would so shake the confidence which has arisen between the European officers and principal people that years would be required to restore it.
8. I confess that I am not able to devote all my sympathy to the weaker class in this question. I concur with the principal natives that the introduction of a measure which formed no part of the original contract would practically amount to a confiscation of their property, the value of the labor of this class of persons being scarcely more than nominal; and I adhere to the opinion that the just and politic course is, as has been done, to prohibit any extension or renewal of the practice either of slave indebtedness or slavery; to secure good treatment for the servile classes under penalty of enforced manumission; to reduce claims when they come before the magistrates to the minimum which justice to the creditor will permit; to await the increased means of freeing themselves which must develop for the poorer classes upon the extensive introduction of European capital into agricultural industries; and, finally, to purchase at a rate which, in consequence of the notorious discouragement with which every case is treated by the European officers and the courts, and the pressure of other influences, will, in time, be much diminished from what would probably be considered a fair equivalent. I have, etc.,
(Signed) Hugh Low, Resident. The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements, Singapore.
No. II
From H.B.M.‘s Resident, Perak, to the Honorable the Colonial Secretary
Teluk Anson, April 26, 1882.
Sir — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th instant, calling upon me for information as to the progress made toward the extinction of debt slavery in this State since 1879, for transmission to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State.
2. In reply I have the honor to report that the policy explained in my letters to your predecessor, dated 28th May and 14th December, 1878, has been steadily pursued in Perak; all slave debtors who have appealed to the protection of the courts having their cases adjudicated upon on the most liberal terms consistent with justice to the creditors, and a considerable number have availed themselves of the facilities presented to them and bought up the claims upon them.
3. Further and more intimate knowledge of the people has confirmed the impression that whatever may have been the case in former times, cruelty to slaves or slave debtors has been very rare since the establishment of settled government, and in every instance in which such has come to my knowledge or to that of the British officers, manumission without compensation was carried out.
4. Three such cases have occurred in the families of two very high officers of State, and these, with one other case, are all the instances of cruelty which have been reported to me.
5. An attempt was made in 1879 to procure a census of the population through the chiefs of the village communities. Each of these chiefs recorded the name of every householder in his district with the number of persons, distinguishing their sex and condition.
6. A total of 47,359 is thus arrived at for the free native Malay population. Of these 14,875 were males above, and 9,313 below, 16 years of age. The females numbered 14,761 and 8,410.
7. The number of slaves was returned as 1,670, of whom 775 were males and 895 females. The slave debtors were respectively 728 and 652, giving a total of 1,380; the two servile classes numbering, of both sexes, 3,050. I fear, however, that these numbers do not include all the bond population, as His Highness the Regent and one or two others with extensive claims did not give in returns.
8. I regret to state that the attempt which, as reported in my letter of the 14th December, was liberally made by the Toh Puan Halimah, chief wife of the ex-Mentri of Perak, to facilitate the manumission of her slaves and debtors by working off the just claims against them on fair terms, was successful only to a very inconsiderable extent. The Malays of Perak are, as a rule, so adverse to and so unaccustomed to steady labor, and can so easily provide for their wants, that they altogether decline, except for short periods, to perform services of any nature even for high wages.
9. The opinion of those having claims upon the servile classes is now pretty general in favor of manumission upon equitable terms, and although a few old Conservative families in such districts as Kinta would prefer to adhere to the former state of things, I have considered that the time has arrived when a general measure having this end in view may be taken into consideration in the hope of carrying it out completely in the year 1883.
10. His Excellency the Governor may have observed in the minutes of the March Session of the Council of State that the subject of manumission of slaves and debtors was brought to the notice of His Highness, the Regent by the Resident, and that a meeting of the Council was appointed for the 15th May, for the purpose of considering the terms on which such a measure should be based, and the manner in which it should be carried out.
11. My own idea is that a commission, consisting of one or two native chiefs and the principal European officer of each district, should be appointed to inquire, under written instructions, into the circumstances of each case, and award, subject to the approval of the Government, such compensation as may seem fair to both parties; that the money necessary to pay the amounts awarded shall be advanced by the Government; that the sum adjudged to be paid for manumission shall remain in whole or in part, as may be determined in Council, a debt from the freedman to the State, which he shall be bound to repay by a deduction of a portion of his wages for labor on the public works of the country, which he must continue until his debt is cleared off, should he be unable or unwilling to raise the money by other means; that male relatives shall take upon them the obligations incurred for the freedom of female relations who may themselves be unable to pay; and that, from the date of the completion of the measure, every person in the State shall be absolutely free, and slavery and bond indebtedness declared to be illegal institutions and forever abolished.
12. I have formerly stated it as the opinion of the best informed natives that a sum varying from $60,000 to $80,000 would be sufficient to meet the necessary expenditure, but I fear that the larger amount would be insufficient, as it would be advisable to deal with an institution involving so great a change in the habits of, and loss to the people, with a certain measure of liberality. I have, etc.
(Signed) Hugh Low, Resident. The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, etc., etc., etc., Straits Settlements.
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From H.B.M.‘s Resident, Perak, to Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements Residency, Kwala Kansa, December 14, 1878.
Sir — In reference to your letter of the 28th June last, directing, by command of His Excellency the Governor, my particular attention to the plan adopted in Selangor for the extinction of the claims against slave-debtors, by a valuation of their services to their creditors according to a fixed scale, and directing me to consider to His Excellency with a view to its being afterward submitted for the consideration of the Council of State:
1. I have the honor to state in reply that a copy of that letter and its inclosure was supplied to the Assistant Resident of Perak, and its contents communicated to the other magistrates, with instructions on all occasions in which such cases should be brought before them, to endeavor, with the consent of the creditors, to come to a settlement on such a basis.
2. The Toh Puan Halimah, daughter of the exiled Laxamana of Perak, and chief wife of the banished Mentri of the State, had invested most of her private money in advances of this description, which, up to the time of British interference, was the favorite form of security, and she is now the largest claimant in the country for the repayment of her money. Another, Wan Teh Sapiah, has also claims of a like nature on several families, and both these ladies willingly undertook to accept of liquidation by such an arrangement.
3. In the former case it has, I am sorry to say, fallen through, from the impossibility of inducing the debtors to work regularly, and from very many of them, who are living in entire freedom in different parts of the country, declining to come into the arrangement, though acknowledging their debts.
4. In many other cases the creditors from the first put forward the certainty of the failure of such a system from the above-mentioned cause; others have objected that they had no regular employment in which to place their debtors; others, that they are utterly ruined by the events of recent years, and that they would accede to the proposal if fairly carried out on the other part, provided the Government would advance money as the native Rajahs did to enable them to open mines or gardens in which they could employ their debtors; nearly all have declared themselves willing, and even anxious, to accept a just amount in payment of their debts, several suggesting that the State might conveniently undertake to do this, employing the labor in public works until the debtor should be free.
5. I cannot undertake to say what may have been the practice in former times, as to the treatment, in Perak, of this class of persons; but no case of cruelty or any great hardship has been brought to my notice since I came into the country. By far the larger number of the slave-debtors live with their families apart and often at great distances from their masters, enjoying all the fruits of their labor, rendering occasional assistance to them when called upon to do so, which, in the majority of cases, is of rare occurrence.
6. The circumstances of Perak would probably be found to differ from those of Selangor, which I understand has a much smaller population; was governed by an enlightened ruler under the advice of British Residents, who succeeded in introducing the present regulation immediately after the conquest of the district.
7. To introduce such a measure into Perak at the present time would, in my opinion, have a very disturbing effect, and although I do not think that it would lead to any extensive or organized armed resistance, I am sure that it would so shake the confidence which has arisen between the European officers and principal people that years would be required to restore it.
8. I confess that I am not able to devote all my sympathy to the weaker class in this question. I concur with the principal natives that the introduction of a measure which formed no part of the original contract would practically amount to a confiscation of their property, the value of the labor of this class of persons being scarcely more than nominal; and I adhere to the opinion that the just and politic course is, as has been done, to prohibit any extension or renewal of the practice either of slave indebtedness or slavery; to secure good treatment for the servile classes under penalty of enforced manumission; to reduce claims when they come before the magistrates to the minimum which justice to the creditor will permit; to await the increased means of freeing themselves which must develop for the poorer classes upon the extensive introduction of European capital into agricultural industries; and, finally, to purchase at a rate which, in consequence of the notorious discouragement with which every case is treated by the European officers and the courts, and the pressure of other influences, will, in time, be much diminished from what would probably be considered a fair equivalent. I have, etc.,
(Signed) Hugh Low, Resident. The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements, Singapore.
No. II
From H.B.M.‘s Resident, Perak, to the Honorable the Colonial Secretary
Teluk Anson, April 26, 1882.
Sir — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th instant, calling upon me for information as to the progress made toward the extinction of debt slavery in this State since 1879, for transmission to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State.
2. In reply I have the honor to report that the policy explained in my letters to your predecessor, dated 28th May and 14th December, 1878, has been steadily pursued in Perak; all slave debtors who have appealed to the protection of the courts having their cases adjudicated upon on the most liberal terms consistent with justice to the creditors, and a considerable number have availed themselves of the facilities presented to them and bought up the claims upon them.
3. Further and more intimate knowledge of the people has confirmed the impression that whatever may have been the case in former times, cruelty to slaves or slave debtors has been very rare since the establishment of settled government, and in every instance in which such has come to my knowledge or to that of the British officers, manumission without compensation was carried out.
4. Three such cases have occurred in the families of two very high officers of State, and these, with one other case, are all the instances of cruelty which have been reported to me.
5. An attempt was made in 1879 to procure a census of the population through the chiefs of the village communities. Each of these chiefs recorded the name of every householder in his district with the number of persons, distinguishing their sex and condition.
6. A total of 47,359 is thus arrived at for the free native Malay population. Of these 14,875 were males above, and 9,313 below, 16 years of age. The females numbered 14,761 and 8,410.
7. The number of slaves was returned as 1,670, of whom 775 were males and 895 females. The slave debtors were respectively 728 and 652, giving a total of 1,380; the two servile classes numbering, of both sexes, 3,050. I fear, however, that these numbers do not include all the bond population, as His Highness the Regent and one or two others with extensive claims did not give in returns.
8. I regret to state that the attempt which, as reported in my letter of the 14th December, was liberally made by the Toh Puan Halimah, chief wife of the ex-Mentri of Perak, to facilitate the manumission of her slaves and debtors by working off the just claims against them on fair terms, was successful only to a very inconsiderable extent. The Malays of Perak are, as a rule, so adverse to and so unaccustomed to steady labor, and can so easily provide for their wants, that they altogether decline, except for short periods, to perform services of any nature even for high wages.
9. The opinion of those having claims upon the servile classes is now pretty general in favor of manumission upon equitable terms, and although a few old Conservative families in such districts as Kinta would prefer to adhere to the former state of things, I have considered that the time has arrived when a general measure having this end in view may be taken into consideration in the hope of carrying it out completely in the year 1883.
10. His Excellency the Governor may have observed in the minutes of the March Session of the Council of State that the subject of manumission of slaves and debtors was brought to the notice of His Highness, the Regent by the Resident, and that a meeting of the Council was appointed for the 15th May, for the purpose of considering the terms on which such a measure should be based, and the manner in which it should be carried out.
11. My own idea is that a commission, consisting of one or two native chiefs and the principal European officer of each district, should be appointed to inquire, under written instructions, into the circumstances of each case, and award, subject to the approval of the Government, such compensation as may seem fair to both parties; that the money necessary to pay the amounts awarded shall be advanced by the Government; that the sum adjudged to be paid for manumission shall remain in whole or in part, as may be determined in Council, a debt from the freedman to the State, which he shall be bound to repay by a deduction of a portion of his wages for labor on the public works of the country, which he must continue until his debt is cleared off, should he be unable or unwilling to raise the money by other means; that male relatives shall take upon them the obligations incurred for the freedom of female relations who may themselves be unable to pay; and that, from the date of the completion of the measure, every person in the State shall be absolutely free, and slavery and bond indebtedness declared to be illegal institutions and forever abolished.
12. I have formerly stated it as the opinion of the best informed natives that a sum varying from $60,000 to $80,000 would be sufficient to meet the necessary expenditure, but I fear that the larger amount would be insufficient, as it would be advisable to deal with an institution involving so great a change in the habits of, and loss to the people, with a certain measure of liberality. I have, etc.
(Signed) Hugh Low, Resident. The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, etc., etc., etc., Straits Settlements.
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The Golden Chersonese and the way thither
APPENDIX B (Table Of Content)
Slavery in the Malay States.
Langat, 30th June, 1875.
Sir — When on board the Colonial steamer Pluto last week, accompanying His Excellency the Governor in a tour to some of the native States, His Excellency made inquiry of me with regard to the present state of debt-slavery in the Peninsula.
This was a subject so large and important as hardly to admit of thorough explanation in a conversation; I therefore asked His Excellency’s leave to report upon it.
I now beg to give you a detailed account of the circumstances of debt-slavery as known to me personally.
In treating the question under its present condition — I mean under Malay rule — it is necessary to consider the all-but slavery of the debtors and the difficulty of making any arrangement between debtor and creditor which while it frees the one will satisfy the other, and still be in keeping with the “adat Malayu,” as interpreted in these States.
The relative positions of debtor and creditor in the Western States, more especially in Perak, involve evils which are, I believe, quite unknown to Europeans, even those living so near as Singapore.
The evils to which I refer have hitherto been regarded as unavoidable, and a part of the ordinary relations between Rajahs and subjects.
I may premise by saying that though the system of “debt-slavery,” as it has been called, exists to some extent in all the States, it is only seen in its worst light where a Rajah or chief is the creditor and a subject the debtor.
Few subjects in a Malay country are well off. The principal reason of this is, that as soon as a man or woman is known to be in possession of money, he or she would be robbed by the Rajah; or the money would be borrowed with no intention of future payment, whether the subject wished to lend or not.
Thus, when a Ryot (or subject) is in want of money, he goes to his Rajah or chief to lend it him, because he alone can do so. Either money or goods are then lent, and a certain time stipulated for payment. If at the expiration of that time the money is not paid, it is usual to await some time longer, say two or three, or even six months.
Should payment not then be made, the debtor, if a single man, is taken into the creditor’s house; he becomes one of his followers, and is bound to execute any order or do any work the Rajah as creditor may demand, until the debt is paid, however long a time that may be.
During this time the Rajah usually provides the debtor with food and clothing, but if the creditor gives him money, that money is added to the debt.
Often, however, the Rajah gives nothing, and the debtor has to find food and clothing as he can.
Should the debtor marry — and the Rajah will in all probability find him a wife — then the debtor’s wife, his children, his grandchildren, all become equally bound with himself to the payment of this debt.
Should the debtor be originally married, then not only he, but his wife and children, are taken into the Rajah’s house, and are his to order until the debt is paid.
Should the debtor be a woman, unmarried, or a widow, the same course is taken, and whoever marries her becomes jointly responsible for the debt; and this goes on through generations — the children and grandchildren of the debtor being held in the same bondage by the children and grandchildren of the creditor.
Should at any time the debtor succeed in raising the amount of the debt and proffer it to the creditor, then it would be customary to accept it. If, however, a large family were in bondage for the debt, one whose numbers seemed to the Rajah to add to his dignity, then he would probably refuse to accept payment, not absolutely, but would say “wait,” and the waiting might last for years.
Debtors once absorbed into the Rajah’s household are looked upon as his property, just as his bullocks or his goats, and those who alone would have the power to interfere look on and say nothing, because they do the same themselves.
In different States this debtor-bondage is carried to greater or less extremities, but in Perak the cruelties exercised toward debtors are even exclaimed against by Malays in other States.
Many chiefs in Perak have a following principally composed of young men and girls, for the most part debtors.
The men are treated as I have already described — either food and clothes are found for them or not; they are usually found — for the Rajah’s power and his pride consists in the number of arms-bearing followers he has at his beck and call; men, too, are useful to him in many other ways. Those who have grown old in their bondage, whether men or women, either for very shame the Rajah provides for, or he compels their children to support them.
The men either (1) follow because they like it (a very small percentage indeed); or (2) they are debtors, or the children of debtors; or (3) they are real slaves from Sumatra or Abyssinia, or the children of slaves.
The girls are treated differently; they are (1) either slaves or the daughters of slaves; or (2) debtors, the daughters or granddaughters of debtors; or (3) the Rajah has simply taken them from their houses into his own house because he wanted them; or (4) they follow him for pleasure.
In Perak some of the chiefs do not provide their girls with food or clothing, but they tell them to get these necessaries of life as best they can, i.e., by prostitution — for the labor of the debtor being the property of the creditor, prostitution is in this case a necessity and not a choice.
Each Rajah in his own district claims the privilege of fining, either for a capital offence or for a trifling misdeed. Should, then, a man be fined and not pay the fine, he and his family, if he has one, are at once taken into this debt-bondage, not to work out the fine, but to toil away their lives amid blows and upbraidings — the daughters driven to prostitution, the sons to thieving, and even greater crimes.
This is no exaggerated statement, but the plain truth.
When the Rajah gives nothing, neither food nor clothes, or when he is a passionate man, and threatens to kill one or other of his followers for some trivial offence, or for no offence at all, it often happens that one will seek refuge in flight. If caught, though, it may be said to be the received custom to inflict only some slight punishment; yet that would not deter a Rajah from punishing such an offence even with death should it seem good to him.
Bond-debtors are handed about from one Rajah to another without a thought of consulting them. If one runs away and is caught, it is at great risk of being put to death, while probably no one would move a finger to save him, his master excusing himself on the plea that it is necessary to frighten others from running away also.
These Rajah-creditors would tell you smilingly that they knew by Mohammedan law the creditors can take and sell all their debtor’s property for an overdue debt, and that then the debtor is free; but they never act on that principle.
Many men and women, however, rarely incur debts, knowing well what lies before them in case of non-payment.
Malays, by their laws, are allowed to buy and sell slaves, and if, having for years lost sight of a slave, the owner finds him or her, he takes the slave with his wife and family, if he has one, as his lawful property.
There is one other phase of debtor-bondage, and that a common one, where the father or mother places one or more of their own children as security with the creditor for a debt; thus in reality selling their own flesh and blood into often a life-long bondage. If these children die on the creditor’s hands, the parents supply their places by others, or the Rajah, should he wish it, can at any time after the debt is due, take the whole family into his house.
Only the other day a man here, for a debt of $40, placed his daughter in a Rajah’s hands and ran away. Probably he will never return; meanwhile the girl must obey her master in all things like the veriest slave. Such a state of things as this is only brought about by the custom which allows it.
Another common practice in the States, more especially in Perak, is to capture, as you might wild beasts, the unoffending Jakun women, and make them and their children slaves through generations.
In April I was in Ulu Selangor, and the headmen there complained that a chief from Slim had a fortnight before caught 14 Jakuns and one Malay in Ulu Selangor, had chained them and driven off to Slim. Arrived there, the Malay was liberated and he returned.
Letters were written to Slim and Perak, but though we ascertained the party had reached Slim, they did not remain there, and they have not yet been discovered.
I have already stated that the Rajah looks to the number of his following as the gauge of his power, and other Rajahs will respect and fear him accordingly. Thus he tries to get men into his service in this way, and is rather inclined to refuse payment should the debtor be so fortunate as to raise the requisite amount of his debt.
Almost the only chance the debtor has of raising this amount is by successful gambling. Of course it hardly ever happens that he is successful; but, like all gamblers, he always thinks he will be, and thus gambling becomes a mania with him, which he will gratify at all costs, caring little by what means he gets money for play so long as he does obtain it.
These are the general facts relating to the position of the slave-debtor, and these things which I have described, seemingly so difficult of belief, are done almost daily; looked upon by those who do them as a right divine; by the victims as a fate from which there is no reprieve.
To compel his followers to obey him implicitly, the Rajah treats them with a severity which sometimes makes death the punishment of the slightest offence to him. These followers he thus holds to do whatever he bids them, even to the commission of the gravest crimes.
They again, having to provide themselves with food and clothes, and yet having to work for him, are led to prey on the defenceless population, from whom, in the name of their Rajah-master, they extort whatever there is to get, and on whom they sometimes visit those cruelties which they have themselves already experienced.
This system of debtor bondage influences, then, the whole population, not slightly but deeply, in ways it is hardly possible to credit except when seen in a constant intercourse with all classes of Malay society.
The question at issue seems to be; how to deprive the Rajah of this great power — an unscrupulous instrument in unscrupulous hands — how to free the debtors from their bondage, the women from lives of forced prostitution, the unoffending population from the robberies and murderous freaks of Rajahs and their bondsmen.*
[*Some of these remarks apply specially to Selangor, in which State slavery is now abolished. I. L. B.]
In Perak it is different; the debtor-bondage is one of the chief customs — one of the “pillars of the State” — an abuse jealously guarded by the Perak Rajahs and Chiefs, and especially by those who make the worst uses of it.
I have often discussed this question of debt-slavery with the Malays themselves, but they say they see no way under the rule of their Rajahs to put down this curse of their country, with all the evils that follow in its train. I have, etc.
(Signed) Frank A. Swettenham, (Now Asst. Colonial Secretary at Singapore.) The Honorable the Secretary for Native States, Singapore, Straits Settlements.
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Slavery in the Malay States.
Langat, 30th June, 1875.
Sir — When on board the Colonial steamer Pluto last week, accompanying His Excellency the Governor in a tour to some of the native States, His Excellency made inquiry of me with regard to the present state of debt-slavery in the Peninsula.
This was a subject so large and important as hardly to admit of thorough explanation in a conversation; I therefore asked His Excellency’s leave to report upon it.
I now beg to give you a detailed account of the circumstances of debt-slavery as known to me personally.
In treating the question under its present condition — I mean under Malay rule — it is necessary to consider the all-but slavery of the debtors and the difficulty of making any arrangement between debtor and creditor which while it frees the one will satisfy the other, and still be in keeping with the “adat Malayu,” as interpreted in these States.
The relative positions of debtor and creditor in the Western States, more especially in Perak, involve evils which are, I believe, quite unknown to Europeans, even those living so near as Singapore.
The evils to which I refer have hitherto been regarded as unavoidable, and a part of the ordinary relations between Rajahs and subjects.
I may premise by saying that though the system of “debt-slavery,” as it has been called, exists to some extent in all the States, it is only seen in its worst light where a Rajah or chief is the creditor and a subject the debtor.
Few subjects in a Malay country are well off. The principal reason of this is, that as soon as a man or woman is known to be in possession of money, he or she would be robbed by the Rajah; or the money would be borrowed with no intention of future payment, whether the subject wished to lend or not.
Thus, when a Ryot (or subject) is in want of money, he goes to his Rajah or chief to lend it him, because he alone can do so. Either money or goods are then lent, and a certain time stipulated for payment. If at the expiration of that time the money is not paid, it is usual to await some time longer, say two or three, or even six months.
Should payment not then be made, the debtor, if a single man, is taken into the creditor’s house; he becomes one of his followers, and is bound to execute any order or do any work the Rajah as creditor may demand, until the debt is paid, however long a time that may be.
During this time the Rajah usually provides the debtor with food and clothing, but if the creditor gives him money, that money is added to the debt.
Often, however, the Rajah gives nothing, and the debtor has to find food and clothing as he can.
Should the debtor marry — and the Rajah will in all probability find him a wife — then the debtor’s wife, his children, his grandchildren, all become equally bound with himself to the payment of this debt.
Should the debtor be originally married, then not only he, but his wife and children, are taken into the Rajah’s house, and are his to order until the debt is paid.
Should the debtor be a woman, unmarried, or a widow, the same course is taken, and whoever marries her becomes jointly responsible for the debt; and this goes on through generations — the children and grandchildren of the debtor being held in the same bondage by the children and grandchildren of the creditor.
Should at any time the debtor succeed in raising the amount of the debt and proffer it to the creditor, then it would be customary to accept it. If, however, a large family were in bondage for the debt, one whose numbers seemed to the Rajah to add to his dignity, then he would probably refuse to accept payment, not absolutely, but would say “wait,” and the waiting might last for years.
Debtors once absorbed into the Rajah’s household are looked upon as his property, just as his bullocks or his goats, and those who alone would have the power to interfere look on and say nothing, because they do the same themselves.
In different States this debtor-bondage is carried to greater or less extremities, but in Perak the cruelties exercised toward debtors are even exclaimed against by Malays in other States.
Many chiefs in Perak have a following principally composed of young men and girls, for the most part debtors.
The men are treated as I have already described — either food and clothes are found for them or not; they are usually found — for the Rajah’s power and his pride consists in the number of arms-bearing followers he has at his beck and call; men, too, are useful to him in many other ways. Those who have grown old in their bondage, whether men or women, either for very shame the Rajah provides for, or he compels their children to support them.
The men either (1) follow because they like it (a very small percentage indeed); or (2) they are debtors, or the children of debtors; or (3) they are real slaves from Sumatra or Abyssinia, or the children of slaves.
The girls are treated differently; they are (1) either slaves or the daughters of slaves; or (2) debtors, the daughters or granddaughters of debtors; or (3) the Rajah has simply taken them from their houses into his own house because he wanted them; or (4) they follow him for pleasure.
In Perak some of the chiefs do not provide their girls with food or clothing, but they tell them to get these necessaries of life as best they can, i.e., by prostitution — for the labor of the debtor being the property of the creditor, prostitution is in this case a necessity and not a choice.
Each Rajah in his own district claims the privilege of fining, either for a capital offence or for a trifling misdeed. Should, then, a man be fined and not pay the fine, he and his family, if he has one, are at once taken into this debt-bondage, not to work out the fine, but to toil away their lives amid blows and upbraidings — the daughters driven to prostitution, the sons to thieving, and even greater crimes.
This is no exaggerated statement, but the plain truth.
When the Rajah gives nothing, neither food nor clothes, or when he is a passionate man, and threatens to kill one or other of his followers for some trivial offence, or for no offence at all, it often happens that one will seek refuge in flight. If caught, though, it may be said to be the received custom to inflict only some slight punishment; yet that would not deter a Rajah from punishing such an offence even with death should it seem good to him.
Bond-debtors are handed about from one Rajah to another without a thought of consulting them. If one runs away and is caught, it is at great risk of being put to death, while probably no one would move a finger to save him, his master excusing himself on the plea that it is necessary to frighten others from running away also.
These Rajah-creditors would tell you smilingly that they knew by Mohammedan law the creditors can take and sell all their debtor’s property for an overdue debt, and that then the debtor is free; but they never act on that principle.
Many men and women, however, rarely incur debts, knowing well what lies before them in case of non-payment.
Malays, by their laws, are allowed to buy and sell slaves, and if, having for years lost sight of a slave, the owner finds him or her, he takes the slave with his wife and family, if he has one, as his lawful property.
There is one other phase of debtor-bondage, and that a common one, where the father or mother places one or more of their own children as security with the creditor for a debt; thus in reality selling their own flesh and blood into often a life-long bondage. If these children die on the creditor’s hands, the parents supply their places by others, or the Rajah, should he wish it, can at any time after the debt is due, take the whole family into his house.
Only the other day a man here, for a debt of $40, placed his daughter in a Rajah’s hands and ran away. Probably he will never return; meanwhile the girl must obey her master in all things like the veriest slave. Such a state of things as this is only brought about by the custom which allows it.
Another common practice in the States, more especially in Perak, is to capture, as you might wild beasts, the unoffending Jakun women, and make them and their children slaves through generations.
In April I was in Ulu Selangor, and the headmen there complained that a chief from Slim had a fortnight before caught 14 Jakuns and one Malay in Ulu Selangor, had chained them and driven off to Slim. Arrived there, the Malay was liberated and he returned.
Letters were written to Slim and Perak, but though we ascertained the party had reached Slim, they did not remain there, and they have not yet been discovered.
I have already stated that the Rajah looks to the number of his following as the gauge of his power, and other Rajahs will respect and fear him accordingly. Thus he tries to get men into his service in this way, and is rather inclined to refuse payment should the debtor be so fortunate as to raise the requisite amount of his debt.
Almost the only chance the debtor has of raising this amount is by successful gambling. Of course it hardly ever happens that he is successful; but, like all gamblers, he always thinks he will be, and thus gambling becomes a mania with him, which he will gratify at all costs, caring little by what means he gets money for play so long as he does obtain it.
These are the general facts relating to the position of the slave-debtor, and these things which I have described, seemingly so difficult of belief, are done almost daily; looked upon by those who do them as a right divine; by the victims as a fate from which there is no reprieve.
To compel his followers to obey him implicitly, the Rajah treats them with a severity which sometimes makes death the punishment of the slightest offence to him. These followers he thus holds to do whatever he bids them, even to the commission of the gravest crimes.
They again, having to provide themselves with food and clothes, and yet having to work for him, are led to prey on the defenceless population, from whom, in the name of their Rajah-master, they extort whatever there is to get, and on whom they sometimes visit those cruelties which they have themselves already experienced.
This system of debtor bondage influences, then, the whole population, not slightly but deeply, in ways it is hardly possible to credit except when seen in a constant intercourse with all classes of Malay society.
The question at issue seems to be; how to deprive the Rajah of this great power — an unscrupulous instrument in unscrupulous hands — how to free the debtors from their bondage, the women from lives of forced prostitution, the unoffending population from the robberies and murderous freaks of Rajahs and their bondsmen.*
[*Some of these remarks apply specially to Selangor, in which State slavery is now abolished. I. L. B.]
In Perak it is different; the debtor-bondage is one of the chief customs — one of the “pillars of the State” — an abuse jealously guarded by the Perak Rajahs and Chiefs, and especially by those who make the worst uses of it.
I have often discussed this question of debt-slavery with the Malays themselves, but they say they see no way under the rule of their Rajahs to put down this curse of their country, with all the evils that follow in its train. I have, etc.
(Signed) Frank A. Swettenham, (Now Asst. Colonial Secretary at Singapore.) The Honorable the Secretary for Native States, Singapore, Straits Settlements.
| Next |
The Golden Chersonese and the way thither
by
Isabella L. Bird
Table of Contents
PREFACE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
The Aurea Chersonesus — The Conquest of Malacca — The Straits Settlements — The Configuration of the Peninsula — A Terra Incognita — The Monsoons — Products of the Peninsula — The Great Vampire — Beasts and Reptiles — Malignant and Harmless Insects — Land and Water Birds — Traditions of Malay Immigration — Wild and Civilized Races — Kafirs — The Samangs and Orang-outang — Characteristics of the Jakuns — Babas and Sinkehs — The Malay Physiognomy — Language andLiterature — Malay Poetry and Music — Malay Astronomy — Education and Law — Malay Sports — Domestic Habits — Weapons — Slavery and Debt Bondage — Government — “No Information”
LETTER I
The Steamer Volga — Days of Darkness — First View of Hong Kong — Hong Kong on Fire — Apathy of the Houseless — The Fire Breaks Out Again — An Eclipse of Gayety
LETTER II
A Delightful Climate — Imprisoned Fever Germs — “Pidjun” English — Hong Kong Harbor — Prosperity of Hong Kong — Rampageous Criminal Classes — Circumspice!
LETTER III
The S.S. Kin Kiang — First View of Canton — The Island of Shameen — England in Canton — The Tartar City — Drains and Barricades — Canton at Night — Street Picturesqueness — Ghastly Gifts — Oriental Enchantments — The Examination Hall
LETTER IV
“Faithful unto Death” — “Foreign Devils” — Junks and Boats — Chinese Luxury — Canton Afloat — An Al Fresco Lunch–Light and Color — A Mundane Disappointment — Street Sights and Sounds — Street Costume — Food and Restaurants — A Marriage Procession — Temples and Worship — Crippled Feet
LETTER IV (Continued)
Outside the Naam–Hoi Prison — The Punishment of the Cangue — Crime and Misery — A Birthday Banquet — “Prisoners and Captives” — Prison Mortality — Cruelties and Iniquities — The Porch of the Mandarin — The Judgment–Seat — The Precincts of the Judgment–Seat — An Aged Claimant — Instruments of Punishment — The Question by Torture
LETTER IV (Continued)
The “Covent Garden” of Canton — Preliminaries of Execution — A Death Procession — The “Field of Blood” — “The Death of the Cross” — A Fair Comparison
LETTER V
Portuguese Missionaries — A Chinese Hospital — Chinese Anaesthetics — Surgery and Medicine — Ventilation and Cleanliness — A Chinese “Afternoon Tea” — A New Inspiration
LETTER VI
A Cochin China River — The Ambition of Saigon — A French Colonial Metropolis — European Life in Saigon-A Cochin–Chinese Village — “Afternoon Tea” in Choquan — Anamese Children — Anamite Costume — Anamite River–Dwellings — An Amphibious Population — An Unsuccessful Colony — “With the Big Toe” — Three Persecuting Kings — Saigon
LETTER VII
Beauties of the Tropics — Singapore Hospitality — An Equatorial Metropolis — An Aimless Existence — The Growth of Singapore — “Farms” and “Farmers” — The Staple of Conversation — The Glitter of “Barbaric Gold” — A Polyglot Population — A Mediocre People — Female Grace and Beauty — The “Asian Mystery” — Oriental Picturesqueness — The Metamorphosis of Singapore
LETTER VIII
St. Andrew’s Cathedral — Singapore Harbor Scenes — Chinese Preponderance — First Impressions of Malacca — A Town “Out of the Running”
LETTER IX
The Lieutenant–Governor of Malacca — A Charming Household — The Old Stadthaus — A Stately Habitation — An Endless Siesta — A Tropic Dream — Chinese Houses — Chinese Wealth and Ascendency — “Opium Farming” — The Malacca Jungle — Mohammedan Burial–Places — Malay Villages — Malay Characteristics — Costume and Ornament — Bigotry and Pilgrimage — The Malay Buffalo
LETTER X
Malacca Mediaevalism — Tiger Stories — The Chinese Carnival — Gold and Gems — A Weight of Splendor — New–Year Rejoicings — Syed Abdulrahman — A Mohammedan Princess — A Haunted City — Francis Xavier — The Reward of “Pluck” — Projects of Travel
A CHAPTER ON SUNGEI UJONG
The Puzzles of the Peninsula — Sungei Ujong — A Malay Confederation — Syed Abdulrahman — The Revenue of Sungei Ujong — Scenery and Productions — The New Datu Klana — A “Dual Control”
LETTER XI
A Mangrove Swamp — Jungle Dwellers — The Sempang Police Station — Shooting Alligators — The River Linggi — A Somber–Faced Throng — Stuck Fast at Permatang Pasir — Fair Impediments
LETTER XII
The Tomb of “A Great Prophet” — “Durance Vile” — Fragile Travelers — Our Craft — A Night in the Jungle — Nocturnal Revelations — January in the Perak Jungle — Glories of the Jungle — Activity and Stillness — An Uneasy Night — A Slim Repast — Betel–Chewing — A Severe Disappointment — Police Station at Rassa
LETTER XIII
The Appurtenances of Civilization — Babu — Characteristics of Captain Murray — An Embodied Government — Chinese Mining Enterprise — A Chinese Gaming–House — The “Capitans China” — New–Year Visits — Sittings “In Equity” — A Court of Justice — The Serambang Prison — “Plantation Hill” — A Monster Bonfire — An Ant World — An Ant Funeral — Night on “Plantation Hill” — The Murder of Mr. Lloyd — A Chinese Dragon Play — A Visit to a Malay Prince — The Datu Bandar’s House — A Great Temptation — The Return Journey — An Obituary Quotation
A CHAPTER ON SELANGOR*
Selangor — Capabilities of Selangor — Natural Capabilities — Lawlessness in Selangor — British Interference in Selangor — A Hopeful Outlook
LETTER XIV
The S.S. Rainbow — Sunset at Malacca — A Night at Sea — The Residency at Klang — Our “Next-of-Kin” — The Decay of Klang — A Remarkable Chinaman — Theatrical Magnificence — Misdeed of a “Rogue Elephant” — “A Cobra! A Cobra!”
LETTER XIV (Continued)
Yachting in the Malacca Straits — A Tropic Dream — The Rajah Moussa — Tiger Stories — A Grand Excitement — A “Man–Eating Kris” — A Royal Residence — A Council of State — The Sultan’s Attendants — The “Light of the Harem” — The Sultan’s Offering
LETTER XV
Tiger Mosquitoes — Insect Torments — A Hadji’s Fate — Malay Custom — Oaths and Lies — A False Alarm
LETTER XVI
A Yachting Voyage — The Destruction of Selangor — Varieties of Slime — Swamp Fever — An Unprosperous Region — A “Deadly–Lively” Morning — A Waif and Stray — The Superintendent of Police
LETTER XVII
The Dindings — The Tragedy on Pulu Pangkor — A Tropic Sunrise — Sir W. Robinson’s Departure — “A Touch of the Sun” — Kling Beauty — A Question and Answer — The Bazaars of Georgetown — The Chinaman Goes Ahead — The Products of Pinang — Pepper–Planting
A CHAPTER ON PERAK
The Boundaries and Rivers of Perak — Tin Mining — Fruits and Vegetables — The Gomuti Palm — The Trade of Perak — A Future of Coffee — A Hopeful Lookout — Chinese Difficulties — Chinese Disturbances in Larut — The “Pangkor Treaty” — A “Little War” — The Settlement of Perak — The Resident and Assistant–Resident
LETTER XVIII
Province Wellesley — Water Buffaloes — A Glorious Night — Perak Officials — A “Dismal Swamp” — Elephants at Home — An Epigrammatic Description — The British Residency at Taipeng — Sultan Abdulla’s Boys — A Chinese Mining Town — The “Armed Police” — An Alligator’s Victim — Major Swinburne — A Larut Dinner Party — A Morning Hymn
LETTER XIX
The Chinese in Larut — “Monkey Cups” — Chinese Hospitality — A Sikh Belle
LETTER XX
Novel Circumstances — The Excitements of the Jungle — Eternal Summer — The Sensitive Plant — The Lotus Lake of Matang — Elephant Ugliness — A Malay Mahout — A Novel Experience — Domestic Pets — Malay Hospitality–Land Leeches — “A Fearful Joy” — The End of My First Elephant Ride — Kwala Kangsa
LETTER XX (CONTINUED)
Mystification — A Grotesque Dinner–Party — Mahmoud and Eblis — Fun and Frolic — Mahmoud’s Antics — A Perak Jungle — The Poetry of Tropical Life — Village Life — The Officials of the Mosques — A Moslem Funeral — The “Royal Elephant” — Swimming the Perak — The Village of Koto-lamah — A “Pirate’s Nest” — Rajah Dris
LETTER XX (Continued)
A Joyous Welcome — A Severe Mortification — The British Resident — Daily Visitors — Rajah Dris — A Tipsy Ape — Marriage Ceremonies — Marriage Festivities — Malay Children — The Rajah Muda Yusuf — A Dreary Funeral — Fascinating Companionship — A Cocoa–Nut Gatherer — The Argus Pheasant — An Opium Wreck — Rhinoceros Horns — Elephant–Taming — Petrifying Influences of Islamism — A Dwindling Race
LETTER XXI
A Malay Interior — Malay Bird–Scaring — Rice Culture — Picturesque Dismalness — A Bad Spell — An Alarm — Possibilities of Peril — Patience and Kindness — Masculine Clatter
LETTER XXII
A Pleasant Canter — A Morning Hymn — The Pass of Bukit Berapit — The “Wearing World” Again! — A Bad Spirit — Malay Demonology — “Running Amuck” — An Amok–Runner’s Career — The Supposed Origin of Amok — Jungle Openings in Perak — Debt–Slavery — The Fate of Three Runaway Slaves — Moslem Prayers — “Living Like Leeches” — Malay Proverbs — A “Ten–Thousand-Man Umbrella”
LETTER XXIII
“Gang Murders” — Malay Nicknames — A Persecuted Infant — The Last of the Golden Chersonese
APPENDIX A
Residents.
APPENDIX B
Slavery in the Malay States.
APPENDIX C
THE CONTENT
The treaty of Pangkor provides “that the Resident’s advice must be asked and acted upon (in Perak) on all questions other than those relating to Malay religion and custom, and that the collection and control of all revenue and the general administration of the country must be regulated under the advice of these Residents.” It was on the same terms that Residents were appointed at Selangor and Sungei Ujong.
Derived from the 1892 G.P. Putnam’s Sons edition.
Rendered into HTML on Saturday January 10 21:41:13 CST 2004, by Steve Thomas for The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.
For offline reading, the complete set of pages is available for download from http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/bird_i/golden/golden.zip
The complete work is also available as a single file, at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/bird_i/golden/golden.html
Isabella L. Bird
Table of Contents
PREFACE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
The Aurea Chersonesus — The Conquest of Malacca — The Straits Settlements — The Configuration of the Peninsula — A Terra Incognita — The Monsoons — Products of the Peninsula — The Great Vampire — Beasts and Reptiles — Malignant and Harmless Insects — Land and Water Birds — Traditions of Malay Immigration — Wild and Civilized Races — Kafirs — The Samangs and Orang-outang — Characteristics of the Jakuns — Babas and Sinkehs — The Malay Physiognomy — Language andLiterature — Malay Poetry and Music — Malay Astronomy — Education and Law — Malay Sports — Domestic Habits — Weapons — Slavery and Debt Bondage — Government — “No Information”
LETTER I
The Steamer Volga — Days of Darkness — First View of Hong Kong — Hong Kong on Fire — Apathy of the Houseless — The Fire Breaks Out Again — An Eclipse of Gayety
LETTER II
A Delightful Climate — Imprisoned Fever Germs — “Pidjun” English — Hong Kong Harbor — Prosperity of Hong Kong — Rampageous Criminal Classes — Circumspice!
LETTER III
The S.S. Kin Kiang — First View of Canton — The Island of Shameen — England in Canton — The Tartar City — Drains and Barricades — Canton at Night — Street Picturesqueness — Ghastly Gifts — Oriental Enchantments — The Examination Hall
LETTER IV
“Faithful unto Death” — “Foreign Devils” — Junks and Boats — Chinese Luxury — Canton Afloat — An Al Fresco Lunch–Light and Color — A Mundane Disappointment — Street Sights and Sounds — Street Costume — Food and Restaurants — A Marriage Procession — Temples and Worship — Crippled Feet
LETTER IV (Continued)
Outside the Naam–Hoi Prison — The Punishment of the Cangue — Crime and Misery — A Birthday Banquet — “Prisoners and Captives” — Prison Mortality — Cruelties and Iniquities — The Porch of the Mandarin — The Judgment–Seat — The Precincts of the Judgment–Seat — An Aged Claimant — Instruments of Punishment — The Question by Torture
LETTER IV (Continued)
The “Covent Garden” of Canton — Preliminaries of Execution — A Death Procession — The “Field of Blood” — “The Death of the Cross” — A Fair Comparison
LETTER V
Portuguese Missionaries — A Chinese Hospital — Chinese Anaesthetics — Surgery and Medicine — Ventilation and Cleanliness — A Chinese “Afternoon Tea” — A New Inspiration
LETTER VI
A Cochin China River — The Ambition of Saigon — A French Colonial Metropolis — European Life in Saigon-A Cochin–Chinese Village — “Afternoon Tea” in Choquan — Anamese Children — Anamite Costume — Anamite River–Dwellings — An Amphibious Population — An Unsuccessful Colony — “With the Big Toe” — Three Persecuting Kings — Saigon
LETTER VII
Beauties of the Tropics — Singapore Hospitality — An Equatorial Metropolis — An Aimless Existence — The Growth of Singapore — “Farms” and “Farmers” — The Staple of Conversation — The Glitter of “Barbaric Gold” — A Polyglot Population — A Mediocre People — Female Grace and Beauty — The “Asian Mystery” — Oriental Picturesqueness — The Metamorphosis of Singapore
LETTER VIII
St. Andrew’s Cathedral — Singapore Harbor Scenes — Chinese Preponderance — First Impressions of Malacca — A Town “Out of the Running”
LETTER IX
The Lieutenant–Governor of Malacca — A Charming Household — The Old Stadthaus — A Stately Habitation — An Endless Siesta — A Tropic Dream — Chinese Houses — Chinese Wealth and Ascendency — “Opium Farming” — The Malacca Jungle — Mohammedan Burial–Places — Malay Villages — Malay Characteristics — Costume and Ornament — Bigotry and Pilgrimage — The Malay Buffalo
LETTER X
Malacca Mediaevalism — Tiger Stories — The Chinese Carnival — Gold and Gems — A Weight of Splendor — New–Year Rejoicings — Syed Abdulrahman — A Mohammedan Princess — A Haunted City — Francis Xavier — The Reward of “Pluck” — Projects of Travel
A CHAPTER ON SUNGEI UJONG
The Puzzles of the Peninsula — Sungei Ujong — A Malay Confederation — Syed Abdulrahman — The Revenue of Sungei Ujong — Scenery and Productions — The New Datu Klana — A “Dual Control”
LETTER XI
A Mangrove Swamp — Jungle Dwellers — The Sempang Police Station — Shooting Alligators — The River Linggi — A Somber–Faced Throng — Stuck Fast at Permatang Pasir — Fair Impediments
LETTER XII
The Tomb of “A Great Prophet” — “Durance Vile” — Fragile Travelers — Our Craft — A Night in the Jungle — Nocturnal Revelations — January in the Perak Jungle — Glories of the Jungle — Activity and Stillness — An Uneasy Night — A Slim Repast — Betel–Chewing — A Severe Disappointment — Police Station at Rassa
LETTER XIII
The Appurtenances of Civilization — Babu — Characteristics of Captain Murray — An Embodied Government — Chinese Mining Enterprise — A Chinese Gaming–House — The “Capitans China” — New–Year Visits — Sittings “In Equity” — A Court of Justice — The Serambang Prison — “Plantation Hill” — A Monster Bonfire — An Ant World — An Ant Funeral — Night on “Plantation Hill” — The Murder of Mr. Lloyd — A Chinese Dragon Play — A Visit to a Malay Prince — The Datu Bandar’s House — A Great Temptation — The Return Journey — An Obituary Quotation
A CHAPTER ON SELANGOR*
Selangor — Capabilities of Selangor — Natural Capabilities — Lawlessness in Selangor — British Interference in Selangor — A Hopeful Outlook
LETTER XIV
The S.S. Rainbow — Sunset at Malacca — A Night at Sea — The Residency at Klang — Our “Next-of-Kin” — The Decay of Klang — A Remarkable Chinaman — Theatrical Magnificence — Misdeed of a “Rogue Elephant” — “A Cobra! A Cobra!”
LETTER XIV (Continued)
Yachting in the Malacca Straits — A Tropic Dream — The Rajah Moussa — Tiger Stories — A Grand Excitement — A “Man–Eating Kris” — A Royal Residence — A Council of State — The Sultan’s Attendants — The “Light of the Harem” — The Sultan’s Offering
LETTER XV
Tiger Mosquitoes — Insect Torments — A Hadji’s Fate — Malay Custom — Oaths and Lies — A False Alarm
LETTER XVI
A Yachting Voyage — The Destruction of Selangor — Varieties of Slime — Swamp Fever — An Unprosperous Region — A “Deadly–Lively” Morning — A Waif and Stray — The Superintendent of Police
LETTER XVII
The Dindings — The Tragedy on Pulu Pangkor — A Tropic Sunrise — Sir W. Robinson’s Departure — “A Touch of the Sun” — Kling Beauty — A Question and Answer — The Bazaars of Georgetown — The Chinaman Goes Ahead — The Products of Pinang — Pepper–Planting
A CHAPTER ON PERAK
The Boundaries and Rivers of Perak — Tin Mining — Fruits and Vegetables — The Gomuti Palm — The Trade of Perak — A Future of Coffee — A Hopeful Lookout — Chinese Difficulties — Chinese Disturbances in Larut — The “Pangkor Treaty” — A “Little War” — The Settlement of Perak — The Resident and Assistant–Resident
LETTER XVIII
Province Wellesley — Water Buffaloes — A Glorious Night — Perak Officials — A “Dismal Swamp” — Elephants at Home — An Epigrammatic Description — The British Residency at Taipeng — Sultan Abdulla’s Boys — A Chinese Mining Town — The “Armed Police” — An Alligator’s Victim — Major Swinburne — A Larut Dinner Party — A Morning Hymn
LETTER XIX
The Chinese in Larut — “Monkey Cups” — Chinese Hospitality — A Sikh Belle
LETTER XX
Novel Circumstances — The Excitements of the Jungle — Eternal Summer — The Sensitive Plant — The Lotus Lake of Matang — Elephant Ugliness — A Malay Mahout — A Novel Experience — Domestic Pets — Malay Hospitality–Land Leeches — “A Fearful Joy” — The End of My First Elephant Ride — Kwala Kangsa
LETTER XX (CONTINUED)
Mystification — A Grotesque Dinner–Party — Mahmoud and Eblis — Fun and Frolic — Mahmoud’s Antics — A Perak Jungle — The Poetry of Tropical Life — Village Life — The Officials of the Mosques — A Moslem Funeral — The “Royal Elephant” — Swimming the Perak — The Village of Koto-lamah — A “Pirate’s Nest” — Rajah Dris
LETTER XX (Continued)
A Joyous Welcome — A Severe Mortification — The British Resident — Daily Visitors — Rajah Dris — A Tipsy Ape — Marriage Ceremonies — Marriage Festivities — Malay Children — The Rajah Muda Yusuf — A Dreary Funeral — Fascinating Companionship — A Cocoa–Nut Gatherer — The Argus Pheasant — An Opium Wreck — Rhinoceros Horns — Elephant–Taming — Petrifying Influences of Islamism — A Dwindling Race
LETTER XXI
A Malay Interior — Malay Bird–Scaring — Rice Culture — Picturesque Dismalness — A Bad Spell — An Alarm — Possibilities of Peril — Patience and Kindness — Masculine Clatter
LETTER XXII
A Pleasant Canter — A Morning Hymn — The Pass of Bukit Berapit — The “Wearing World” Again! — A Bad Spirit — Malay Demonology — “Running Amuck” — An Amok–Runner’s Career — The Supposed Origin of Amok — Jungle Openings in Perak — Debt–Slavery — The Fate of Three Runaway Slaves — Moslem Prayers — “Living Like Leeches” — Malay Proverbs — A “Ten–Thousand-Man Umbrella”
LETTER XXIII
“Gang Murders” — Malay Nicknames — A Persecuted Infant — The Last of the Golden Chersonese
APPENDIX A
Residents.
APPENDIX B
Slavery in the Malay States.
APPENDIX C
THE CONTENT
APPENDIX A
Residents.
A policy of advice, and that alone, was contemplated by the Colonial Office; but without its orders or even cognizance affairs were such that the government of those Malayan States to which Residents have been accredited has been from the first exercised by the Residents themselves, mainly because neither in Perak, Selangor, or Sungei Ujong has there ever been a ruler powerful enough to carry out such an officer’s advice, the Rajahs and other petty chiefs being able to set him at defiance. Advice would be given that peace and order should be preserved, justice administered without regard to the rank of the criminal, the collection of revenue placed upon a satisfactory footing, and good administration generally secured, but had any reigning prince attempted to carry out these recommendations he would have been overborne by the Rajahs, whose revenues depended on the very practices which the Resident denounced, and by the piratical bands whose source of livelihood was the weakness and mal-administration of the rulers. The Pangkor Treaty contained the words that the Resident’s advice “_must be acted upon_,” and consequently the Residents have taken the direction of public affairs, organizing armed forces, imposing taxes, taking into their own hands the collection of the revenues, receiving all complaints, executing justice, punishing evil-doers, apprehending criminals, and repressing armed gangs of robbers. These officers are, in fact, far more the agents of the Governor of the Straits Settlements than the advisers of the native princes, and though paid out of native revenues are the virtual rulers of the country in all matters, except those which relate to Malay religion and custom. As stated by Lord Carnarvon, “Their special objects should be the maintenance of peace and law, the initiation of a sound system of taxation, with the consequent development of the general resources of the country, and the supervision of the collection of the revenue so as to insure the receipt of funds necessary to carry out the principal engagements of the Government, and to pay for the cost of British officers and whatever establishments may be found necessary to support them.” Lord Carnarvon in the same dispatch states: “Neither annexation nor the government of the country by British officers in the name of the Sultan [a measure very little removed from annexation] could be allowed;” and elsewhere he says: “It should be our present policy to find and train up some chief or chiefs of sufficient capacity and enlightenment to appreciate the advantages of a civilized government, and to render some effectual assistance in the government of the country.”The treaty of Pangkor provides “that the Resident’s advice must be asked and acted upon (in Perak) on all questions other than those relating to Malay religion and custom, and that the collection and control of all revenue and the general administration of the country must be regulated under the advice of these Residents.” It was on the same terms that Residents were appointed at Selangor and Sungei Ujong.
Rendered into HTML on Sat Jan 10 22:38:40 2004, by Steve Thomas for The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.
Derived from the 1892 G.P. Putnam’s Sons edition.
Rendered into HTML on Saturday January 10 21:41:13 CST 2004, by Steve Thomas for The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.
For offline reading, the complete set of pages is available for download from http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/bird_i/golden/golden.zip
The complete work is also available as a single file, at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/bird_i/golden/golden.html
Pangkor Treaty of 1874
The Pangkor Treaty of 1874 was a treaty signed between the British and the Sultan of Perak. Signed on January 20, 1874, on the island of Pangkor off Perak, the treaty is significant in the history of the Malay states as it legitimized British control of the Malay rulers and paved the way for British imperialism in Malaya.
Perak was a major tin producer throughout the nineteenth century, leading the United Kingdom, which had already colonized Penang, Malacca and Singapore, to consider Perak of significant importance. However, local strife, collectively known as the Larut War, between the local Malay elites and frequent clashes between Chinese secret societies disrupted the supply of tin from the mines of Perak.
In 1871, Sultan Ali of Perak died. Raja Abdullah, as Raja Muda or heir apparent, should have succeeded to the throne, but because he had not been present at the burial of the late Sultan Ali, Raja Bendahara Raja Ismail was proclaimed Sultan of Perak instead. At around the same time, two Chinese secret societies, known as Ghee Hin led by Chin Ah Yam and Hai San led by Chung Keng Quee, constantly waged battle against each other for control of the tin mines.
In 1871, Sultan Ali of Perak died. Raja Abdullah, as Raja Muda or heir apparent, should have succeeded to the throne, but because he had not been present at the burial of the late Sultan Ali, Raja Bendahara Raja Ismail was proclaimed Sultan of Perak instead. At around the same time, two Chinese secret societies, known as Ghee Hin led by Chin Ah Yam and Hai San led by Chung Keng Quee, constantly waged battle against each other for control of the tin mines.
Agreement
Raja Abdullah later asked the British for help in solving these two problems. In her book "The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither" (Published 1892 G.P. Putnam's Sons) Victorian traveller and adventuress, Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904), describes how Raja Muda Abdullah as he then was turned to his friend in Singapore, Tan Kim Ching. Tan, together with an English merchant in Singapore drafted a letter to Governor Sir Andrew Clarke which Abdullah signed. The letter expressed Abdullah's desire to place Perak under British protection, and "to have a man of sufficient abilities to show (him) a good system of government." On the 26th of September, 1872 Chung Keng Quee had already presented a petition, signed by himself and 44 other Chinese leaders, seeking British interference following the attack of 12,000 men of Chung Shan by 2,000 men of Sen Ning. (The Petition.) The British immediately saw this as a great opportunity to expand its influence in Southeast Asia and strengthened its monopoly on tin. As a result, the Pangkor Treaty of 1874 was signed.
Raja Abdullah later asked the British for help in solving these two problems. In her book "The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither" (Published 1892 G.P. Putnam's Sons) Victorian traveller and adventuress, Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904), describes how Raja Muda Abdullah as he then was turned to his friend in Singapore, Tan Kim Ching. Tan, together with an English merchant in Singapore drafted a letter to Governor Sir Andrew Clarke which Abdullah signed. The letter expressed Abdullah's desire to place Perak under British protection, and "to have a man of sufficient abilities to show (him) a good system of government." On the 26th of September, 1872 Chung Keng Quee had already presented a petition, signed by himself and 44 other Chinese leaders, seeking British interference following the attack of 12,000 men of Chung Shan by 2,000 men of Sen Ning. (The Petition.) The British immediately saw this as a great opportunity to expand its influence in Southeast Asia and strengthened its monopoly on tin. As a result, the Pangkor Treaty of 1874 was signed.
Terms and conditions
The agreement dictated:
Raja Abdullah was acknowledged as the legitimate Sultan to replace Sultan Ismail who would be given a title and a pension of 1000 Mexican pesos a month.
The Sultan would receive a British Resident whose advice had to be sought and adhered to in all matters except those pertaining to the religion and customs of the Malays.
All collections and control of taxes as well as the administration of the state would be done in the name of the Sultan, but the Sultan was to govern according to the advice and consent of the Resident.
The Minister of Larut would continue to be in control but would no longer be recognized as a liberated leader. Instead, a British officer, who would have vast authority in administering the district, would be appointed in Larut.
The Sultan, and not the British government, would pay the salary of the Resident.
Perak ceded Dinding and Pangkor Island to the United Kingdom.
The agreement dictated:
Raja Abdullah was acknowledged as the legitimate Sultan to replace Sultan Ismail who would be given a title and a pension of 1000 Mexican pesos a month.
The Sultan would receive a British Resident whose advice had to be sought and adhered to in all matters except those pertaining to the religion and customs of the Malays.
All collections and control of taxes as well as the administration of the state would be done in the name of the Sultan, but the Sultan was to govern according to the advice and consent of the Resident.
The Minister of Larut would continue to be in control but would no longer be recognized as a liberated leader. Instead, a British officer, who would have vast authority in administering the district, would be appointed in Larut.
The Sultan, and not the British government, would pay the salary of the Resident.
Perak ceded Dinding and Pangkor Island to the United Kingdom.
Result
Raja Ismail did not attend the meeting arranged between Sir Andrew Clarke and Raja Abdullah. Raja Ismail obviously did not recognize the agreement but had no choice as he was faced with the alliance between Raja Abdullah and the British. As a result, Raja Abdullah was made Sultan, and Sir James W.W. Birch was appointed as Perak's first British Resident after the treaty came into force.
Following this precedent, the British actively became involved in three other Malay states: Negeri Sembilan, Selangor and Pahang. These states, along with Perak, were later reorganized into the Federated Malay States.
Raja Ismail did not attend the meeting arranged between Sir Andrew Clarke and Raja Abdullah. Raja Ismail obviously did not recognize the agreement but had no choice as he was faced with the alliance between Raja Abdullah and the British. As a result, Raja Abdullah was made Sultan, and Sir James W.W. Birch was appointed as Perak's first British Resident after the treaty came into force.
Following this precedent, the British actively became involved in three other Malay states: Negeri Sembilan, Selangor and Pahang. These states, along with Perak, were later reorganized into the Federated Malay States.
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