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Isabella L. Bird - The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
tin, the import duty on opium, and the letting of opium and other licenses and farms. The expenditure
was 46,876 pounds, the heaviest items being for "establishments," "pensions," and "works and
buildings." The outlook for Selangor appears to be a peaceful one, and it is to be hoped that, under the
energetic administration of Sir F. A. Weld, its capabilities will be developed and its anomalies of law and
taxation reformed, and that both Malays and foreigners may experience those advantages of good order
and security which result from a just rule.
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!"
S.S. "RAINBOW," MALACCA ROADS, February 1, 5 P.M.
I am once again on board this quaint little Chinese steamer, which is rolling on a lazy ground-swell on
the heated, shallow sea. We were to have sailed at four P.M., but mat-sailed boats, with cargoes of
Chinese, Malays, fowls, pine-apples, and sugar-cane, kept coming off and delaying us. The little steamer
has long ago submerged her load-line, and is only about ten inches above the water, and still they load,
and still the mat-sailed boats and eight-paddled boats, with two red-clothed men facing forward on each
thwart, are disgorging men and goods into the overladen craft. A hundred and thirty men, mostly
Chinese, with a sprinkling of Javanese and Malays, are huddled on the little deck, with goats and
buffaloes, and forty coops of fowls and ducks; the fowls and ducks cackling and quacking, and the
Chinese clattering at the top of their voices - such a Babel!
An hour later, "Easy ahead," shouts the Portuguese-Malay captain, for the Rainbow is only licensed for
one hundred passengers, and the water runs in at the scuppers as she rolls, but five of the mat-sailed boats
have hooked on. "Run ahead! full speed!" the captain shouts in English; he dances with excitement, and
screams in Malay; the Chinamen are climbing up the stern, over the bulwarks, everywhere, fairly
boarding us; and with about a hundred and fifty souls on board, and not a white man or a Christian
among them, we steam away over the gaudy water into the gaudy sunset, and beautiful, dreamy, tropical
Malacca, with its palm-fringed shores, and its colored streets, and Mount Ophir with its golden history,
and the stately Stadthaus, whose ancient rooms have come to seem almost like my property, are passing
into memories. A gory ball drops suddenly from a gory sky into a flaming sea, and
"With one stride comes the dark."
There is no place for me except on this little bridge, on which the captain and I have just had an excellent
dinner, with hen-coops for seats. These noisy fowls are now quiet in the darkness, but the noisier Chinese
are still bawling at the top of their voices. It is too dark for another line.
British Residency, Klang Selangor. - You will not know where Klang is, and I think you won't find it in
any atlas or encyclopedia. Indeed, I almost doubt whether you will find Selangor, the Malay State of
which Klang is, after a fashion, the capital. At present I can tell you very little.
Selangor is bounded on the north by the "protected" State of Perak, which became notorious in England a
few years ago for a "little war," in which we inflicted a very heavy chastisement on the Malays for the
assassination of Mr. Birch, the British Resident. It has on its south and southeast Sungei Ujong, Jelabu,
and Pahang; but its boundaries in these directions are ill-defined. The Strait of Malacca bounds it on the
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