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Updated: June 8, 2025
Äbdulrahman's manner, and the words he spoke, were at once so rough and defiant that the Pĕnghûlu saw that he must choose between a scuffle, which would mean bloodshed, and a hasty retreat. He was a mild old man, and he drew a monthly salary from the Pêrak Government.
Moreover, he knew that the white men, who guided the destinies of Pêrak, were averse to bloodshed and homicide, even if the person slain was a wizard, or the son of a wizard. Therefore he decided upon retreat. As they clambered down the steps of the door-ladder, Mat Tahir, one of the Pĕnghûlu's men, plucked him by the sleeve, and pointed to a spot beneath the house.
Slavery and debt bondage, which, as hitherto practiced in Perak, have involved evils and cruelties which are unknown to any but those who have actually lived in the State, will, it is hoped, be abolished by equitable arrangement in 1883.
In these kampongs the people have music, singing, story-telling, games, and religious ceremonies, perhaps the most important of all. I have not heard that the Perak Malays differ in their religious observances from the other Malays of the Peninsula. It seems that before "a parish" can be formed there must be forty-four houses.
Din Ding, or Ding Ding as sailors, by a system of alliteration, very fashionable amongst themselves render it, lies at the mouth of the Perak river. On landing we struck at once into the jungle, under tall palms, with their great ripening fruit, and other tropic vegetation.
A boat now and then crosses from the Perak side, a sauntering Malay occasionally joins the squatting group, a fishing hawk now and then swoops down upon a fish, a policeman occasionally rouses up the wretch in the cage, and so the torrid hours pass. I take this up again as the dew falls, and the sea takes on the coloring of a dying dolphin.
The great artery of the country is the Perak river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth, and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther.
Stories of amok running, "piracies," treachery, revenge, poisoned krises, and assassinations, have been made very much of, and any crime or slight disturbance in the native States throws the Settlements into a panic. It must have been under the influence of one of these that such a large sea and land force was sent to Perak three years ago.
It is not, perhaps, generally known that, as late as 1826, Pêrak was in the habit of sending a similar gift to Siam, and that the British Government bound itself not to restrain the Sultân of Pĕrak from continuing this practice if he had a mind to do so.
All these things the Malays know have happened, and are happening to-day, in the land in which they live, and with these plain evidences before their eyes, the empty assurances of the enlightened European that Were-Tigers do not, and never did exist, excite derision not unmingled with contempt. The Slim Valley lies across the hills which divide Pahang from Pêrak.
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