by Pat Barr
When they stopped for refreshment, Maxwell left Isabella, with the assurance that it was quite safe for her to continue her journey alone. And this she fully believed, ‘any doubts as to my safety,’ she explained, ‘being closely connected with my future steed’. In due course the ‘steed’ arrived, as had been arranged, and Isabella takes up the story: ‘Before I came I dreamt of howdahs and cloth of gold trappings, but my elephant had neither. In fact there was nothing grand about him but his ugliness. His back was covered with a piece of raw hide, over which were several mats, and on either side of the ridgy backbone a shallow basket, filled with fresh leaves and twigs, and held in place by ropes of rattan. I dropped into one of these baskets from the porch, a young Malay lad into the other, and my bag was tied on behind with rattan. A noose of the same with a stirrup served for the driver to mount. He was a Malay, wearing only a handkerchief and sarong, a gossiping careless fellow, who jumped off whenever he had a chance of a talk, and left us to ourselves. He drove with a stick with a curved spike at the end of it, which, when the elephant was bad, was hooked into the membraneous “flapper” always evoking the uprearing and brandishing of the proboscis, and a sound of ungentle expostulation, which could be heard a mile off. He sat on the head of the beast, sometimes cross-legged and sometimes with his legs behind the huge flapping ear-covers. … This mode of riding is not comfortable. One sits facing forwards with the feet dangling over the edge of the basket. This edge soon produces a sharp ache or cramp, and when one tries to get relief by leaning back on anything, the awkward, rolling motion is so painful, that one reverts to the former position till it again becomes intolerable. Then the elephant had not been loaded “with brains” and his pack was as troublesome as the straw shoes of the Japanese horses. It was always slipping forwards or backwards, and as I was heavier than the Malay lad, I was always slipping down and trying to wriggle myself up on the great ridge which was the creature’s backbone, and always failing, and the mahout [driver] was always stopping and pulling the rattan ropes which bound the whole arrangement together, but never succeeding in improving it.
‘Before we had travelled two hours, the great bulk of the elephant without any warning gently subsided behind, and then as gently in front, the huge, ugly legs being extended in front of him, and the man signed to me to get off, which I did by getting on his head and letting myself down by a rattan rope upon the driver, who made a step of his back, for even when “kneeling” as this queer attitude is called, a good ladder is needed for comfortable getting off and on.’
While the travelling-baskets were being ‘re-rigged’, Isabella clambered up a ladder into a villager’s house, a dwelling typical of its kind and perfectly attuned to its surroundings. It was raised on posts, with a steep palm-thatch roof, sides of split reed, bamboo rafters, the whole lashed together with the inevitable rattan. Inside it was as shady as grass under a tree, and filtered shadows fluttered across its simple furnishings – reed mats, circular bolsters, a spear, a few iron pots, fishing-rods. Black mynah birds, green pigeons, blue love-birds chattered inside cages swinging from the rafters. The natives snared them with horsehair nooses, tamed them fondly and taught them to ‘speak’; a principal occupation of the household’s round brown youngsters tumbling on the floor was the catching of grasshoppers to feed to them. The villagers seemed mild, lackadaisical, hospitable; one man sent an ape up a palm to fetch Isabella a coconut, others offered her bananas and buffalo milk.
At noon, when the sun’s rays were streaming down from a too-blue sky, Isabella remounted her elephant by being hauled up over its head and ‘the fearful joy’ of the ride continued. Quite soon however, ‘the driver jumped off for a gossip and a smoke, leaving the elephant to “gang his ain gates” for a mile or more, and he turned into the jungle, where he began to rend and tear the trees, and then going to a mud-hole he drew all the water out of it, squirted it with a loud noise over himself and his riders, soaking my clothes with it, and when he turned back to the road again, he several times stopped and seemed to stand on his head by stiffening his proboscis and leaning upon it, and when I hit him with my umbrella he uttered the loudest roar I ever heard. My Malay fellow-rider jumped off and ran back for the driver, on which the panniers came altogether down on my side, and I hung on with difficulty, wondering what other possible contingencies could occur, always expecting that the beast, which was flourishing his proboscis, would lift me off with it and deposit me in a mud-hole.
‘On the driver’s return I had to dismount again and this time the elephant was allowed to go and take a proper bath in a river. He threw quantities of water over himself, and took up plenty more with which to cool his sides as he went along. Thick as the wrinkled hide of an elephant looks, a very small insect can draw blood from it, and when left to himself he sagaciously plasters himself with mud to protect himself, like the water buffalo. Mounting again, I rode for two hours, but he crawled about a mile an hour and seemed to have a steady purpose to lie down. He roared whenever he was asked to go faster, sometimes with a roar of rage, sometimes in angry and sometimes in plaintive remonstrance. The driver got off and walked behind him, and then he stopped altogether. Then the man tried to pull him along by putting a hooked stick in his huge “flapper” but this produced no other effect than a series of howls; then he got on his head again, after which the brute made a succession of huge stumbles, each one of which threatened to be a fall, and then the driver with a look of despair got off again. Then I made signs that I would get off, but the elephant refused to lie down, and I let myself down his unshapely shoulders by a rattan rope till I could use the mahout’s shoulders as steps. The baskets were taken off and left at a house, the elephant was turned loose in the jungle; I walked the remaining miles to Kuala Kangsa, and the driver carried my portmanteau!’
That ride, which Isabella quoted ever afterwards as being one of the most ludicrous of her entire life, was surely enough for one day. But not in Perak, where, as she said, circumstances had become quite singular and where it was immediately followed by the most astounding and hilarious repast she ever enjoyed. Mr Hugh Low, the Resident, was, as Isabella knew, away from Kuala Kangsa for a few days, and in his absence she was received at the Residency by a ‘magnificent Oriental butler named Assam’. He showed her to her room, arranged for her bath and then informed her that dinner (or ‘breakfast’ as he chose to call it) was served.
‘The word “served” was strictly applicable, for linen, china, crystal, flowers, cooking were all alike exquisite. Assam, the Madrassee, is handsomer and statelier than Babu at Malacca; a smart Malay lad helps him, and a Chinaman sits on the steps and pulls the punkah. All things were harmonious, the glorious coco-palms, the bright green slopes, the sunset gold on the lake-like river, the ranges of forest-covered mountains etherealising in the purple light, the swarthy faces and scarlet uniforms of the Sikh guard, and rich and luscious odours, floated in on balmy airs, glories of the burning tropics, untellable and incommunicable’…
‘My valise had not arrived, and I had been obliged to re-dress myself in my mud-splashed tweed dress, therefore I was much annoyed to find the table set for three, and I hung about unwillingly in the verandah fully expecting two Government clerks in faultless evening dress to appear, and I was vexed to think that my dream of solitude was not to be realised, when Assam more emphatically assured me that the meal was “served”, and I sat down, much mystified, at the well-appointed table, when he led in a large ape, and the Malay lad brought in a small one, and a Sikh brought in a large retriever and tied him to my chair! This was all done with the most profound solemnity. The circle being then complete, dinner proceeded with great stateliness. The apes had their curry, chutney, pineapple, eggs and bananas on porcelain plates, and so had I. The chief difference was that, whereas I waited to be helped, the big ape was impolite enough occasionally to snatch something from a dish as the butler passed round the table, and that the small one before very long migrated from his chair to the table, and, sitting by
my plate, helped himself daintily from it. What a grotesque dinner party! What a delightful one! My “next of kin” were so reasonably silent; they required no conversational efforts; they were most interesting companions. “Silence is golden,” I felt; shall I ever enjoy a dinner party so much again?’
Isabella’s dining companions were Eblis (the devil) and Mahmoud. The former was about twenty-one inches high with a winsome, ancient face and baby-like hands and was much bullied by Mahmoud, who was about four feet high, very strong and lively and with a solemn hairy visage that distinctly reminded Isabella of a leading church dignitary in distant Edinburgh. On her very first day she saw Eblis being beaten with a stout Malacca cane by the vengeful Mahmoud and rescued the victim just in time. From then on, Eblis clung to her as to a saviour. Sometimes he took her pen daintily from her hand and tried to write with it, or he lay on her lap, murmuring ‘ouf ouf’ in loving tones, or, in a mood of self-advancement, he took from their envelopes all the Resident’s official letters, held them up as if reading them, folded them and put them back.
It was like living in a zany zoo. She found two lizards nestling in her black silk dress and a snake under the counterpane; in addition to Eblis and Mahmoud, the placid retriever loped around the verandah, four elephants in red and gold regalia plodded about in front of the bungalow, tigers snarled from the jungle at night and an untamed gibbon that lived on the roof would suddenly come plunging down into the drawing-room for a game. Describing a typical morning scene, Isabella says that Eblis was crouching on the table ‘reading’ one of her letters, the gibbon ‘has jumped like a demon on the retriever’s back and, riding astride, is beating him with a ruler; and jolly, wicked Mahmoud, having taken the cushions out of the chairs, has laid them in a row, has pulled a tablecover off the table, and having rolled it up for a pillow, is now lying down in an easy, careless attitude, occasionally helping himself to a piece of pineapple.’
One of the elephants-in-attendance was Perak’s Royal Elephant, colossal even by elephant standards, docile and noble, and Isabella was offered a ride on him to atone for earlier mishaps. The Royal Elephant was trained to grasp and peel a banana as skilfully as a monkey, to carefully clear the path of fallen tree-trunks, to carry his passengers sedately over both land and water. And so, at one stage of the ride, when they came to the broad river Perak, Isabella and the elephant went down a steep bank and ‘putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the air, and so we went for some distance up the clear, shining river, with the tropic sun blazing down upon it, with everything that could rejoice the eye upon its shores, with little beaches of golden sand, and above the forest the mountains with varying shades of indigo colouring.’
Then she continues, ‘There would have been nothing left to wish for if you had been there to see, though you would have tried to look as if you saw an elephant moving submerged along a tropical river every day, with people of three races on his back!’ Suddenly, even there, came the desire for pale quiet Hennie, so out of context among all that riotous life, extravagant colour, gay freedom. She wanted to startle, to make Hennie see her for a moment at her very best, doing the sort of thing she was really good at. And yet, with the same thought, she knew the desire was hollow. For if Hennie, on some wing of enchantment, had been wafted to watch her elder sister floating down the River Perak on an elephant’s back, she would have evinced no undue surprise, no unladylike agitation, she would, in fact, have cut the daring adventurer down to size with one unruffled glance. Hennie was so sane; she did not need to travel – and should not travel, for if she had, Isabella could not have written such vivid letters home.
Isabella’s delightful interlude as Assistant Keeper of the Kuala Kangsa menagerie ended the next morning when a solitary bugle-blast from the jungle announced the return of the Resident – at which momentous note the bewitching Eblis flew from her shoulder to that of its true master. The man, Hugh Low, who stepped upon the verandah a minute later and disentangled himself from the hairy arms of his welcoming pets just sufficiently to shake hands, was in his fifties when Isabella met him, dark-bearded and with patient, slightly distant eyes. He had trained as a botanist, and plants were his first love, animals his second, people, on the whole, a rather poor third. He had been the Perak Resident for about two years and was well qualified for the post, having fluent Malay and a sympathetic understanding of the customs of the country. Before that, he had languished for nearly thirty years on the island of Labuan off the north-west coast of Borneo. In that dismal, flaccid backwater he had been jack of all trades that were thankless and routine – Treasurer, Police Magistrate, three times Acting Governor – and had been unfortunate enough to incur the enmity of the ebullient, brilliant James Pope-Hennessy, who, when Governor of Labuan, had married and carried away Low’s only daughter, Kitty (his wife had died there years before). One way and another, Low’s career had been hampered by the family bitterness which this union aroused, and by his withdrawn, rather gruff manner that did not facilitate his acquaintance with the right people back home. The appointment to Perak had been overdue recognition of Low’s undoubted potential, and he was now getting into his stride, determined to show the Colonia Office what he could do when, at last, he was given the chance.
‘He is working fourteen hours out of the twenty-four,’ Isabella records. ‘I think that work is his passion, and a change of work his sole recreation. He devotes himself to the promotion of the interests of the State and his evident desire is to train the native rajahs to rule equitably.’ And so, nearly every day while Isabella was there, and before she had come and after she left, Hugh Low sat at a table on the verandah in the solitary bungalow with Eblis at his side ‘like a familiar spirit’, and the devoted dog at his feet; ‘tiffin and dinner are silently served at long intervals; the sentries at the door are so silently changed that one fancies that the motionless blue turbans and scarlet coats contain always the same man; in the foreground the river flows silently, and the soft airs which alternate are too feeble to stir the over-shadowing palm-fronds or rustle the attap of the roof. It is hot, silent, tropical.’ And from that calm, modest centre radiated a disciplined alien energy that changed the face of the land.
Low introduced stability where there had been continuous dissolution, a system of public revenue where there had been only extortion and piracy; eventually he brought freedom where there had been slavery. Industrious though he was, documents accumulated in his pigeon-holes: a letter from the Chinese fishermen at Tanjong Piandang asking to be relieved a tenth of the duty on their fish catches; a report from the Chief of Police on an outbreak of dysentery in the local gaol; explanatory diagrams for a new type of centrifugal pump that might be used to work the tin-mine sluices; a request from the overseer of the Kuala Kangsa road-gang for an extra horse; a petition from three slave-women seeking release from their debt-bondage. People came in person, not trusting the written word. ‘Capitans China’ called to tell him about increasing outbreaks of beri-beri among the miners, to settle a dispute over water-rights, to complain that a business-man who held the monopoly for selling opium in the area was making extortionate profits, to tender quantities of broken stones from the mines for the building of roads. (These had a high priority on Low’s list, for the present ‘roads’ were mostly elephant tracks, and, as it was the immutable custom of elephants to plonk their massive feet in the holes gouged by their predecessors, the ‘roads’ were, as Isabella noted, ‘a series of deep pits filled with mud and water’.) Malay chiefs came to Low, sprawled for hours on the mats and were offered tea and sweetmeats. They told him that a tiger had just killed every duck in the village, t
hey asked him to settle a boundary dispute over their farming land, they offered buffaloes for sale to pull the carts loaded with road-building materials, they complained that two bond-slaves had escaped and the District Magistrate wasn’t exerting himself to recapture them.
Occasionally, a solitary white man in a topee and duck suit found his way to Low’s verandah – an aspiring planter from Ceylon perhaps, come to estimate the chances of growing coffee in Perak; a tough optimistic prospector from Australia seeking a mining concession, hoping to break the Chinese monopoly and make a Patino-size fortune; an agricultural surveyor from Singapore sent to assess land-values in the vicinity so that a fair system of land-renting could be established; or a wandering naturalist, a man after Low’s own heart, with wine-red and silver-speckled butterflies eternally impaled, jars containing blotchy-yellow snakes curled in formalin, specimens of the rare scarlet-eared Barbet, an iridescent-emerald Javanese peafowl, a dusky pied hornbill tame in a cage and living on cake-crumbs and plantains.
One of the most frequent visitors to Low’s verandah was the Regent of Perak, Raja Yusuf, a cruel and unscrupulous man by most accounts, though no one doubted his loyalty to the British, who supported him. When Isabella met him, she disliked his look of coarse and sensuous brutality, and the way he accepted a fan from her without a glance of acknowledgement, as if she were a slave. Apropos of which, she relates one of the current anecdotes illustrating his character: that he once punished a recaptured female slave for absconding by pouring boiling water down her back and then setting a red ants’ nest upon it. Hugh Low, nevertheless, had managed to gain this man’s confidence and respect, partly by his creation of a State Council made up of Yusuf, himself, Maxwell and leading members of the Malay and Chinese communities. The Council was concerned with law enforcement and administration; local headmen were encouraged to ‘join the establishment’ as it were by being appointed as policemen and revenue-collectors; courts of justice functioned along more coherent lines than those in neighbouring States; and, by curtailing the depredations of pirates and carefully husbanding revenue obtained from new methods of tax-collection and custom duties, Low was in the process of making Perak economically viable.
