The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-01-20

brother MosleIms, as having been guilty
Of the alarming heterodoxy of hay
ing only one wife instead of four
Whether he did so from choice, from
the effect of bis intimacy with his
English neighbors at Singapore or
simply because he found even one
wife quite as much as he could
manage, | have never been able to
find out: but he did his best to make
amends for this anti-Mussulman sole
cis1n 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-
premacy of the Moslem creed and its
attendant usages) women are either lap
dogs or wolves-either the petted, pam
pered, useless toys of wealthy Blue
beard. or the hardy and weatherbesten
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 Teuom are probably very fair
average specimens; of the second, sam
ples enough viii 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 n
hareIn. 1t is by no means an uncommon
thing for the wife of some leading Dyak
penghulu Chief to make voyage
down stream" to one Of the English
stations, usually in order to reclaim
runaway female slave who has put her
self under British protection. But
whether she gets back her ''contraband"
or not the august visitor generally con.
trives to make 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 Eaost acceptable to a 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 boat in pursuit of an escaped slave
and applied to the "Kapalla Inggrez''
English head MANI 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 Fatima "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 a
girl in years-was rather pretty in spite
of her coarse, lan& hair and coffee colored
complexion; but the mother had evi.