Page 112 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES
on the coast are
Villages Malay nearly always
situated on the bank of a river ; the sea is full
of fish and the men of a coast village are mostly
fishermen. If the village is of any size and the
industry of any importance, the catching of fish is
and
supplemented by curing that is, salting drying
them.
The whereabouts of a village of this kind may be
recognised by the traveller on sea or land when he
is yet a great way off. Probably for that reason,
and because the cleaning of thousands of fish loads
the water with food of a kind that is specially
attractive to the saurian, the immediate neighbour-
hood of a fishing village is the favourite resort of
the crocodile.
At the mouth of a wide river on the Perak coast
such a It is and as
there is just village. thriving,
there are a number of Chinese as well as Malay
it boasts a The houses
fishermen, police-station.
are built for the most part on piles ; at high water
the sea washes under them, and the means of inter-
communication are wooden stagings from house to
house. At low water there is mud, great stretches
of mud, running from the edge of the mangrove
swamp which backs the village far out to the west
and the waters of the Straits of Malacca.
96