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Isabella L. Bird - The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
lying close to them in the smoke on the leeward side, while Malays in red sarongs and handkerchiefs, and
pretty brown children scarcely clothed at all, lounged in the firelight. Then Chinese lamps and lanterns,
and the sound of what passes for music; then the refinement and brightness of the Government
bungalow, and at ten o'clock my chair with three bearers, and the solitude of the lonely Stadthaus.
I. L. B.
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
STADTHAUS, MALACCA, January 23.
Malacca fascinates me more and more daily. There is, among other things, a mediaevalism about it. The
noise of the modern world reaches it only in the faintest echoes; its sleep is almost dreamless, its
sensations seem to come out of books read in childhood. Thus, the splendid corpse of a royal tiger has
been brought in in a bullock-cart, the driver claiming the reward of fifteen dollars, and its claws were
given to me. It was trapped only six miles off, and its beautiful feline body had not had time to stiffen.
Even when dead, with its fierce head and cruel paws hanging over the end of the cart, it was not an object
to be disrespected. The same reward is offered for a rhinoceros, five dollars for a crocodile (alligator?)
and five dollars for a boa-constrictor or python. Lately, at five in the morning, a black tiger (panther?)
came down the principal street of Malacca, tore a Chinamen in pieces, and then, scared by a posse of
police in pursuit, jumped through a window into a house. Every door in the city was barred, as the rumor
spread like wildfire. The policemen very boldly entered the house, but the animal pinned the Malay
corporal to the wall. The second policeman, a white man, alas! ran away. The third, a Malay, at the risk
of his life, went close up to the tiger, shot him, and beat him over the head with the butt of his rifle,
which made the beast let go the corporal and turn on him, but fortunately he had scarcely got hold of him
when he fell dead. The corporal is just coming out of hospital, almost completely paralyzed, to be taken
care of for the rest of his life, and the man who rescued him has got promotion and a pension. A short
time ago a fine young tiger was brought alive to Captain Shaw, and he ordered a proper cage to be made,
in which to send him to England, telling Babu, the "double Hadji," to put it into the "godown" in its
bamboo cage; but the man put it into the kitchen, and in the morning the cage was found broken into
pieces, the kitchen shutters torn down, and the tiger gone! There was a complete panic in Malacca;
people kept their houses shut, and did not dare to go out even on business, and not only was the whole
police force turned out in pursuit, but the English garrison. It was some days before the scare subsided
and the people believed that the beast had escaped to its natural home in the jungle.
A tropical thunderstorm of the most violent kind occurred yesterday, when I was quite alone in the
Stadthaus. The rain fell in sheets, deluges, streams, and the lightning flashed perfectly blue through a
"darkness which could be felt." There is a sort of grandeur about this old Dutch Stadthaus, with its tale of
two centuries. Its smooth lawns, sloping steeply to the sea, are now brilliant with the gaudy parrot-like
blossoms of the "flame of the forest," the gorgeous Poinciana regia, with which they are studded.
Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of Japan and the noisy hurry of China! Its endless afternoon
remains unbroken except by the dreamy, colored, slow-moving Malay life which passes below the hill.
There is never any hurry or noise.
So had I written without prescience! The night of the awful silence which succeeded the thunderstorm
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