Page 83 - Malay sketches

LATAH
inquiry appeared to be the perpetrators, had been
executed Sultan his own kris for the
(the lending
"
ceremony), I was sent to see that these boyish
as His
amusements," Highness called them, were
not repeated. The place where the Sultan then
lived was hardly a desirable residence, even from
a Malay point of view, and it has for years now
been almost deserted. Bandar Tfrmdsa, as it was
was a collection of huts on a
grandiloquently styled,
mud flat enclosed between the Langat and Jugra
rivers. It was only seven miles from the sea, and
at high tide most of the place was under water.
With me there went twenty-five Malay police
from Malacca, and we lived all together in an old
stockade on the bank of the Langat river. Whether
it was the mosquitoes, which for numbers and
venom could not be matched, or whether it was the
of the
evil reputation place for deeds of violence is
needless to inquire, but the police were seized with
and had to be
panic replaced by another batch from
Singapore, selected not so much on account of their
virtues as their so-called vices. The exchange was
satisfactory, for whatever sins they committed they
showed no signs of panic.
Later on I was encouraged by the statement that
Bandar Termasa, for all its unpromising appearance,
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