Preface
This is not a book of travels, nor is it, in even the smallest sense, the record of a traveller’s experiences in a foreign land. It is a series of sketches of Malay scenery and Malay character drawn by one who has spent the best part of his life in the scenes and amongst the people described.
These pages contain no statistics, no history, no geography, no science, real or spurious, no politics, no moralising, no prophecy,—only an attempt to awaken an interest in an almost undescribed but deeply interesting people, the dwellers in one of the most beautiful and least known countries in the East.
The traveller will come in time, and he will publish his experiences of Malâya and the Malays; but while he may look upon the country with a higher appreciation and paint its features with a more artistic touch, he will see few of those characteristics of the people, none of that inner life which, I make bold to say, is here faithfully portrayed.
FRANK SWETTENHAM.
The Residency,
Perak, 28 March 1895.
“Quel est donc ce pays, disaient-ils l’un a l’autre, inconnu a tout le reste de la terre, et où toute la nature est d’une espèce si différente de la nôtre?”
Voltaire
Imagine yourself transported to a land of eternal summer, to that Golden Peninsula, ’twixt Hindustan and Far Cathay, from whence the early navigators brought back such wondrous stories of adventure. A land where Nature is at her best and richest: where plants and animals, beasts of the forest, birds of the air, and every living thing seem yet inspired with a feverish desire for growth and reproduction, as though they were still in the dawn of Creation.
And Man?
Yes, he is here. Forgotten by the world, passed by in the race for civilisation, here he has remained amongst his own forests, by the banks of his well-loved streams, unseeking and unsought. Whence he came none know and few care, but this is the land that has given to, or taken from, him the name of a Race that has spread over a wider area than any other Eastern people.
Malâya, land of the pirate and the âmok, your secrets have been well guarded, but the enemy has at last passed your gate, and soon the irresistible Juggernaut of Progress will have penetrated to your remotest fastness, slain your beasts, cut down your forests, “civilised” your people, clothed them in strange garments, and stamped them with the seal of a higher morality.
That time of regeneration will come rapidly, but for the moment the Malay of the Peninsula is as he has been these hundreds of years. Education and contact with Western people must produce the inevitable result. Isolated native races whose numbers are few must disappear or conform to the views of a stronger will and a higher intelligence. The Malays of the Peninsula will not disappear, but they will change, and the process of “awakening” has in places already begun.
It might be rash to speculate on the gain which the future has in store for this people, but it is hardly likely to make them more personally interesting to the observer. This is the moment of transition, and these are sketches of the Malay as he is.
Jetons-nous dans cette petite barque, laissons-nous aller au courant: une rivière mène toujours à quelque en droit habité; si nous ne trouvons pas des choses agréables, nous trouverons du moins des choses nouvelles
“‘Allons,’ dit Candide, ‘recommandons-nous à la Providence’”
Voltaire