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Updated: May 1, 2025
A snarling moan comes long and low, We may neither flee nor fight, For well our leaping pulses know The Terror that stalks by Night. If you put your finger on the map of the Malay Peninsula an inch or two from its exact centre, you will find a river in Pahang territory which has its rise in the watershed that divides that State from Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu.
Direct interference in the Government of Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu has been more than once attempted by the Siamese, during the last few years, strenuous efforts having been made to increase their influence on the East Coast of the Peninsula, since the visit of the King of Siam to the Malay States in 1890.
In Kĕlantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Râja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support.
From this it would seem that there is some grounds for the contention of Trĕnggânu and Kĕlantan that the bûnga ămas is a purely voluntary gift, sent as a token of friendship to a more powerful State, with which the sender desires to be on terms of amity.
The non-federated states consist of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Trengganu, the rights of suzerainty, protection, administration, and control of which were transferred by treaty from Siam to Great Britain in 1909, and the Sultanate of Johore, which occupies the extreme southern end of the peninsula, opposite Singapore.
This, when you come to think of it, was a sound course for the Sultân to pursue. The women of Kĕlantan are, many of them, well favoured enough. They are, for the most part, fine upstanding wenches, somewhat more largely built than most Malay women, and they appear more in public than is usual in the Peninsula.
Indeed, prior to 1888, few Kĕlantan men dared to set foot in Pahang, for, as an old Chief once said in my presence, the only use a Pahang native had for a Kĕlantan Malay, before the coming of the white men, was 'as a thing wherewith to sharpen the blade of his dagger, and this, be it remembered, is not a mere façon de parler.
Numerous rivers reach the coast on both sides of the central watershed, many of those rising in the highlands of Pahang and Kelantan being absolutely untraced and unnamed.
In 1909 it was England's turn again, but, disdaining the crude methods of the French, she informed the Siamese Government that she was prepared to relinquish her rights to maintain her own courts in Siam, the Siamese being expected to show their gratitude for this concession to their national pride by ceding to England the states of Kelantan, Trengganu and Kedah, in the Malay Peninsula, with a total area of about fifteen thousand square miles.
And the life of these people? Whether in Pahang, Trĕnggânu, or Kĕlantan it is much the same. Up country the natives live more chastely than do the people of the capital; they work harder, age sooner, lie less softly, experience less change, and are chiefly occupied in supporting themselves and their families. They rise early, work or idle through the day, and go to bed very soon after dark.
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