The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-01-22

brother Moslems, us 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 his 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
lind out; but he did his best to make
amends for this i-Mussulman sole
cism by keeping the poor Maharanee as
completely secluded as if she had been
m entire harem.
In fact, throughout the whole of the
Malay Archipelago thanks to the SUI
premacy of the Moslem creed and its
attendant usages) women are either lap
logs or wolves-either the petted, pam
pered, useless toys of wealthy Blue
beard, or the hardy and weatherbeaten
providers of the forest, hunting, rowing
Dr marching along with their husbands
Dr brothers, and very { ten 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 III Sunatra, 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 he 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 a
harem. 1t is by no means an uncommon
thing for the wife of some leading Dyak
penghulu Chief to make a voyag-
down stream to one of the English
stations, usually in order to reclaim a
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
fish 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. Saga NOW ambilitu" q
want to take that, and in almost every
case she does take it, sooner or later
But as IL rule such gifts take the form of
all others most acceptable to a lady of
Malay race, viz, tobacco.
Toward the end of last year two of
these Malay countosses presented them
selves ut 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 IA boat in pursuit Of an escaped slave
and applied to the "Kapalla Inggrez"
English head man) 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 Ia name
which, for that reason. is as common in
the east rs 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 Ill years-was rather pretty in spite
of her coarse, lank hair and coffee cclored
complexion; but the mother had evi-