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Updated: June 8, 2025
Things at last became so intolerable in Larut, and as a consequence in Pinang, that the Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir A. Clarke, thought it was time to interfere. During these disturbances in Larut, Lower Perak and the Malays generally were living peaceably under Ismail, their elected Sultan.
From the top of the hill you can see ninety miles in the clear atmosphere, far away across the Straits of Perak to the mainland. We could not stay long, and were carried down the hill backwards, as our bearers were afraid of our tumbling out of the chairs if we travelled forwards. The tropical vegetation is even more striking here, but, alas! it is already losing its novelty to us.
It is also evident that they resemble the southern Chinese no more than do the people of Bontoc. Further it is seen that both the Tinguian-Ilocano and the Chinese show greater likeness to the Perak Malay than they do to each other.
The latter is a great curse in Perak, and being a part of "Malay custom" which our treaties bind us to respect, it is very difficult to deal with. In the little States of Sungei Ujong and Selangor, with their handful of Malays, it has been abolished with comparative ease.
It was hard to get off, and the surf broke into the boat; but when we were once through it, the sea was like oil, the oars dripped flame, and, seen from the water, the long line of surf broke on the shore not in snow, but in a long drift of greenish fire. The Kinta is a steam-launch of the Perak Government.
Now we live in these poor jungles of the Upper Pêrak valley, where the yams and roots are less sweet and less plentiful than in our former home, and where the fish-traps are often empty, and the game wild and scarce. Does the Tûan ask why then we quitted the valley of the Plus, and the hills of Lĕgap, where once our camps were pitched?
At this point the Singhalese said that the natives told him that it was possible to ford the Perak, but that the mahout said that the elephant was a "diver," and would probably dive, but that there was no danger to us except of getting very wet.
In 5 degrees 15' N., about the latitude of the northern boundary of Perak, at the sea-level the mean annual temperature is nearly 80 degrees, with a range of 20 degrees; at Malacca in 2 degrees 14' N. it is 80 degrees, with a range of 15 degrees; and at Singapore, in lat. 1 degree 17', it is 82 degrees, with a range of 24 degrees.
I have been interrupted by a visit from two disconsolate-looking Ceylon planters, who have come "prospecting" for coffee. An enterprising son of an Edinburgh "Bailie" has been trying coffee-planting beyond the Perak, but he has got into difficulties with his laborers, and is "getting out of it."
I have pored over blue books long enough to know that this is a place which earned a most unenviable notoriety during the recent troubles, and is described as "a stronghold of piracy, lawlessness, and disaffection." As we were making a diagonal crossing of the Perak, the Singhalese said, "A few months ago they would have been firing at us from both sides of the river."
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