The Portland daily press., 1892-01-21

SsssssssslesssY 80 on the seashore,
m>cs MN we found that he
saN & was looked upon
@r with some sus-
picion by his
brother Moslems, as having been guilty
of the alarming heterodoxy OF hav-
ing only one wife instead of four.
Whether he did so from choice, from
the effect of his intimacy with his
English neighbors at Singapore OF
simply because he found even one
wife quite as much as he could
manage, / have never been able to
aad out; but he did his best to make
amends for this anti-Mussulman sole
cisin by keeping the poor Maharanee as
completely secluded as if she had been
an entire harem.
In fact, throughout the whole of the
Malay Archipelago (thanks to the su-
prelnacy of the Moslem creed and its
attendant usages) women are either lap
dogs or wolyes-either the petted, pam
pered. useless toys of a wealthy Blue
beard, or the hardy and weatherbeaten
providers of the forest, hunting, rowing
or marching along with their husbands
or brothers, and very cften even more
cruel and ferocious than they. Of the
first class, the invisible wives Of such
great native princes as the rajahs Of
Deli and Tenom are probably very fair
average specimens; of the second, SAM
pies enough will have been seen by any
man who has penetrated into the Acheen
mountains in Sumatra, or made his way
up any of the great rivers of north
Borneo.
But in some parts Of the latter island
there is kind of intermediate class be-
tween these two extremes, formed by
the native ladies, who are too important
to be allowed to run wild in the jungle
like their humber sisters, and yet not
quite important enough to be immured
for life amid the luxurious idleness OF d
harem. 1t is by no means an uncommon
thing for the wife of some leading Dyak
penghulu Chief to make voyage
'sdown stream" to one of the English
stations, usually in order to reclaim a
runaway female slave VINO has put her
self under British protection. But
whether she gets back her "contrabandN
or not the august visitor generally con-
trives to 's1nake a big thing OF it, by the
presents that she receives from the Eng
lish traders and officials. In this she is
seldom fettered by any absurd scruples.
and does not by any means "beat about
the BUSH for some indirect method OF
asking for any object that may have
taken her fancy. She simply points to
it and says, "Saya NOW ambilitu" q
want to take that), and in almost every
case she does take it, sooner or later.
But as rule such gifts take the form of
all others most acceptable to lady OF
Malay race, viz, tobacco.
Toward the end Of last year two Of
these Malay countesses presented them
selves at the headquarters Of an English
official who was then making a'kind Of
progress" through the interior of north
Borneo. They had come down the river
in a boat in pursuit of an escaped slave
and applied to the 'Kapalla Inggrez"
English head maD to have her given
back to them.
The two proved to be mother and
daughter, the latter being named after
the favorite daughter of Mohammed
himself, Fatmeh, or Fatina "a name
which, for that reason, is as common IN
the east as that of Mary in Christian
lands), while her mamma rejoiced in the
poetical title of Ghulaub (the rose).
The young lady-who was still quite q
girl in ysars-was rather pretty in spite
of her coarse, lank hair and coffee colored
complexion; but the mother had evil
IDENTIFY Qlke Asiatic women In general)
faded as rapidly as she had matured.
The ladies did not succeed in getting
back their fugitive housemaid, but a
few packets of Chinese tobacco bestowed
upon them by the British commissioner
did away with all i'll feeling, and at their
departure they snlilingly pronounced
him to be s'orang bawnia bai'' "a man
who was very good.
But such aristocrats as these are the
exception rather than the rule in that
| dreadful 'sutan" Gungle) which fills up
almost the whole interior of the island
amid the deadly swamps and gloomy
thickets of which the deer, and the ser
pent. and the buffalo, and the fierce,
long armed, tawny ''orang 1tan'' (man
of the woods) may still roam at their
pleasure. The few human tenants of
this kideous region are III perfect keep
ing with the grim solitudes which they
inhabit, and it would be hard for any
outsider, when looking for the first time
at group OF Tingaras or Tunbunwhas.
to decide whether the palm of ugliness
should be awarded to the women or to
| the men.
A few months ago, when the British
governor of ore of the coast settlements
was paying a visit, accompanied by his
wife, to the penghulu of Domingol-a
large Dyak village several days journey
from the sea-a party of Tingaras came
down the Kwarmotch from a region in
which no European has ever set foot,
the navigation Of the higher river being
obstructed by the Malay Niagara, which
has lately been christened Alexandra