Tales of the Malayan Coast
I would set fire to their homes and so deliver the ship from their
clutches. Little did I know then of the acres of bewildering mangrove
swamps filled with the treacherous crocodiles that lie between the
low-water line and the firm ground of the coast.
But always the most striking thing in the little woodcut to me were
the curious, snake-like knives that the naked natives held in their
hands. I had never seen anything like them before. I went to the
encyclopaedia and found that the name of the knife was spelled kris
and pronounced creese.
The day-dreams which seemed impossible in the days of Monteith's
Geography have since been realized. I am living, perhaps, within
sight of the very place where the scene of the picture was laid;
for it was supposed to be illustrative of the Malay Peninsula;
and, as I write, one of those snake-like krises lies on the table
before me. It is a handsomer kris than those used by the actors in
that much-studied picture of my youth. The sheath and handle are of
solid gold--a rich yellow gold, mined at the foot of Mount Ophir,
the very same mountain so famous in Bible history, from which King
Solomon brought "gold, peacocks' feathers, and monkeys." The wavy,
flame-like blade is veined with gold, and its dull silvery surface is
damascened with as much care as was ever taken with the old swords
of Damascus. It is only an inch in width and a foot in length and
does not look half as dangerous as a Turkish cimeter; yet it has a
history that would put that of the tomahawk or the scalping-knife
to shame. Many a fat Chinaman, trading between the Java islands and
Amoy, has felt its keen edge at his throat and seen his rich cargo
of spices and bird's-nests rifled, his beloved Joss thrown overboard,
and his queer old junk burnt before his eyes. Many a Dutch and English
merchantman sailed from Batavia and Bombay in the days of the old East
India Company and has never more been heard of until some mutilated
survivor returned with a harrowing tale of Malay piracy and of the
lightning-like work of the dreaded kris.
I do not know whether my kris has ever taken life or not. Had it done
so, I do not think the Sultan would have given it to me, for a kris
becomes almost priceless after its baptism of blood. It is handed
down from generation to generation, and its sanguine history becomes
a part of the education of the young. Next to his Koran the kris
is the most sacred thing the Malay possesses. He regards it with an
almost superstitious reverence. My kris is dear to me, not from any
superstitious reasons, but because it was given me by his Highness,
the Sultan of Johore, the only independent sovereign on the peninsula,
and because the gold of its sheath came from the jungle-covered slopes
of Mount Ophir.
The maker of the kris is a person of importance among the Malays,
and ofttimes he is made by his grateful Rajah a Dato, or Lord, for
his skill. Like the blades of the sturdy armorers of the Crusades,
his blades are considered, as he fashions them from well-hammered and
well-tempered Celebes iron, works of art and models for futurity. He
is exceedingly punctilious in regard to their shape, size, and general
formation, and the process of giving them their beautiful water lines
is quite a ceremony. First the razor-like edges are covered with a
thin coating of wax to protect them from the action of the acids;
then a mixture of boiled rice, sulphur, and salt is put on the blade
and left for seven days until a film of rust rises to the surface. The
blade is then immersed in the water of a young cocoanut or the juice
of a pineapple and left seven days longer. It is next brushed with
the juice of a lemon until all the rust is cleared away, and then
rubbed with arsenic dissolved in lime-juice and washed with cold
spring water. Finally it is anointed with cocoanut oil, and as a
concluding test of its fineness and temper, it is said that in the
old days its owner would rush out into the kampong, or village,
and stab the first person he met.
The sheath of the kris is generally made of kamooning wood, but often
of ivory, gold, or silver. The handle, while more frequently of wood
or buffalo horn, is sometimes of gold studded with precious stones and
worth more than all the other possessions of its owner put together.
The kris, too, has its etiquette. It is always worn on the left side
stuck into the folds of the sarong, or skirt, the national dress of
the Malay. During an interview it is considered respectful to conceal
it; and its handle is turned with its point close to the body of the
wearer, if the wearer be friendly. If, however, there is ill blood
existing, and the wearer is angry, the kris is exposed, and the point
of the handle turned the reverse way.
The kris as a weapon of offence and defence is now almost a thing
of the past. It is rapidly going the way of the tomahawk and the
boomerang--into the collector's cabinet. There is a law in Singapore
that forbids its being worn, and outside of Johore and the native
states it is seldom seen. It is still used as an executioner's knife
by the protected Sultan of Selangor, its keen point being driven
into the heart of the victim; but in a few years that practice, too,
will be abolished by the humane intervention of the English government.
It is to be hoped that the record of the kris is not as bad as it
has been painted by some, and that at times in its bloody career it
has been on the side of justice and right. The part it took in the
piracy that once made the East Indian seas so famous was not always
done for the sake of gain, but often for revenge and for independence.
THE WHITE RAJAH OF BORNEO
The Founding of Sarawak
In the East Indian seas, by Europeans and natives alike, two names
are revered with a singleness and devotion that place them side by
side with the national heroes of all countries.
The men that bear the names are Englishmen, yet the countless islands
of the vast Malayan archipelago are populated by a hundred European,
African, and Asiatic races.
Sir Stamford Raffles founded the great city of Singapore, and Sir
James Brooke, the "White Rajah," carved out of a tropical wilderness
just across the equator, in Borneo, the kingdom of Sarawak.
There is no one man in all history with whom you may compare Rajah
Brooke. His career was the score of a hero of the footlights or of
the dime novel rather than the life of an actual history-maker in
this prosaic nineteenth century. What is true of him is also true in
a less degree of his famous nephew and successor, Sir Charles Brooke,
G. C. M. C., the present Rajah.
One morning in Singapore, as I sipped my tea and broke open one cool,
delicious mangosteen after another, I was reading in the daily Straits
Times an account of the descent of a band of head-hunting Dyaks from
the jungles of the Rejang River in Borneo on an isolated fishing
kampong, or village,--of how they killed men, women, and children,
and carried their heads back to their strongholds in triumph, and of
how, in the midst of their feasting and ceremonies, Rajah Brooke,
with a little company of fierce native soldiery, had surprised and
exterminated them to the last man; and just then the sound of heavy
cannonading in the harbor below caused me to drop my paper.
In a moment the great guns from Fort Canning answered. I
counted--seventeen--and turned inquiringly to the naked punkah-wallah,
who stood just outside in the shade of the wide veranda, listlessly
pulling the rattan rope that moved the stiff fan above me.
His brown, open palm went respectfully to his forehead.
"His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak," he answered proudly in Malay. "He
come in gunboat Ranee to the Gymkhana races,--bring gold cup for
prizes and fast runners. Come every year, Tuan."
I had forgotten that it was the first day of the long-looked-for
Gymkhana races. A few hours later I met this remarkable man, whose
thrilling exploits had commanded my earliest boyish admiration.
The kindly old Sultan of Johore, the old rebel Sultan of Pahang,
the Sultan of Lingae, in all the finery of their native silks and
jewels, the nobles of their courts, and a dozen other dignitaries,
were on the grandstand and in the paddock as we entered, yet no
one but a modest, gray-haired little man by the side of the English
governor had any place in my thoughts. We knew his history. It was
as romantic as the wild careers of Pizarro and Cortez; as charming
as those of Robinson Crusoe and the dear old Swiss Family Robinson;
as tragic as Captain Kidd's or Morgan's; and withal, it was modelled
after our own Washington. In him I saw the full realization of every
boy's wildest dreams,--a king of a tropical island.
The bell above the judges' pavilion sounded, and a little whirlwind
of running griffins dashed by amid the yells of a thousand natives
in a dozen different tongues. The Rajah leaned out over the gayly
decorated railing with the eagerness of a boy, as he watched his own
colors in the thick of the race.
The surging mass of nakedness below caught sight of him, and another
yell rent the air, quite distinct from the first, for Malayan and
Kling, Tamil and Siamese, Dyak and Javanese, Hindu, Bugis, Burmese,
and Lascar, recognized the famous White Rajah of Borneo, the man who,
all unaided, had broken the power of the savage head-hunting Dyaks,
and driven from the seas the fierce Malayan pirates. The yell was
not a cheer. It was a tribute that a tiger might make to his tamer.
The Rajah understood. He was used to such sinister outbursts of
admiration, for he never took his eyes from the course. He was secure
on his throne now, but I could not but wonder if that yell, which sent
a strange thrill through me, did not bring up recollections of one of
the hundred sanguinary scenes through which he and his great uncle, the
elder Rajah Brooke, had gone when fighting for their lives and kingdom.
The Sultan of Johore's griffin won, and the Rajah stepped back to
congratulate him. I, too, passed over to where he stood, and the
kindly old Sultan took me by the hand.
"I have a very tender spot in my heart for all Americans," the Rajah
replied to his Highness's introduction. "It was your great republic
that first recognized the independence of Sarawak."
As we chatted over the triumph of Gladstone, the silver bill,
the tariff, and a dozen topics of the day, I was thinking of the
head-hunters of whom I had read in the morning paper. I was thinking,
too, of how this man's uncle had, years before, with a boat's crew
of English boys, carved out of an unknown island a principality
larger than the state of New York, reduced its savage population
to orderly tax-paying citizens, cleared the Borneo and Java seas
of their thousands of pirate praus, and in their place built up a
merchant fleet and a commerce of nearly five millions of dollars a
year. The younger Rajah, too, had done his share in the making of
the state. In his light tweed suit and black English derby, he did
not look the strange, impossible hero of romance I had painted him;
but there was something in his quiet, clear, well-bred English accent,
and the strong, deep lines about his eyes and mouth, that impressed
one with a consciousness of tremendous reserve force. He spoke always
slowly, as though wearied by early years of fighting and exposure in
the searching heat of the Bornean sun.
We became better acquainted later at balls and dinners, and he was
never tired of thanking me for my country's kindness.
In 1819, when the English took Malacca and the Malay peninsula from
the Dutch, they agreed to surrender all claims to the islands south
of the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca.
The Dutch, contented with the fabulously rich island of Java and its