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Updated: May 7, 2025
A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan ball within the light of a central fire, made up the details of a little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to me within the last three years.
On a high, steep point there is a small clearing on which stands a mat bungalow with an attap roof, and below this there is a mat police station, but it was all desolate, nothing stirred, and though we had intended to spend the early hours of the night at the Dindings, we only lay a short time in the deep shadow upon the clear green water, watching scarlet fish playing in the coral forests, and the exquisite beauty of the island with its dense foliage in dark relief against the cool lemon sky.
On this a young girl was sacrificed some years ago, and the Malay guns were smeared with her blood, in the idea that it would make them successful. I was told this story, but have no means of testing its accuracy. Within the fort the collector and magistrate a very inert-looking Dutch half-caste has a wretched habitation, mostly made of attap. We sat there for some time.
Above this is a large wooden bungalow with an attap roof, which is the British Residency. There was no air, and the British ensign in front of the house hung limp on the flag-staff. Below there is a village, with clusters of Chinese houses on the ground, and Malay houses on stilts, standing singly, with one or two Government offices bulking largely among them.
We went on to Kamunting, a forlorn town, mainly built of attap, with roads and ditches needing much improvement, and I bargained for some Chinese purses and visited a gambling saloon, the place in which one sees the peculiar expression of the Chinese face at its fullest development. There is nothing very shocking about it, nothing more than an intensified love of gain without a mask.
The covering over with boughs fell to the share of the two lads, the shelter of the attap mats and her Malay dress seeming likely to be sufficient for Minnie's protection if they neared any Malay boat, that most dreaded being the naga whose occupants had been put to flight though even if that were encountered, the sampan was now so transformed that it was not likely to be recognised; and once more the little party were in motion, floating down towards the station, the Malay poling the boat and keeping as near as possible to the farther shore.
A substantial flight of stone steps leads from the river to a skeleton jetty with an attap roof, and near it a number of attap-roofed boats were lying, loaded with slabs of tin from the diggings in the interior, to be transhipped to Pinang. A dainty steam-launch, the Abdulsamat, nominally the Sultan's yacht, flying a large red and yellow flag, was also lying in the river. Mr.
There was a few moments' hesitation, and then the revolver fell softly upon the earth just beyond the shelter of the attap mat. The next moment Smithers had raised his foot and kicked the pistol aside, but with an unexpected result, for one chamber exploded with a loud bang. "I've done it now," said Smithers to himself.
He crossed to the other side of the building so as to be farthest from the tree where he had last seen the sentry, and, as quietly as he could, he began to climb the back wall of the great stable; and, as he had anticipated, this did not prove difficult, the crossbars and uprights, interlaced with cane and palm-strip, furnishing plenty of foot and hand hold, so that, without making much rustling, he drew himself up and up till his head came in contact with one of the sloping bamboo rafters, to which battens of the same cane were lashed with thin rotan; and, as he expected, upon these battens lay a dense thatch of so-called attap that is to say, large mats of palm-leaves were laid one over the other till a thick cover, which would throw off the most intense of the tropic rains, roofed the building in.
Here's poor Mister Archie lying down below badly hurt, and me stretched on the top of this attap roof, pinned out like a jolly old cock butterfly meant for a specimen. Think of it," he muttered, as he sat up and began feeling down his leg. "Shied a spear at me. It hurts, too. Good job it didn't hit me in the middle. It's a bit wet, but it can't be bad.
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