Life in the forests of the Far East (vol. 2 of 2)

by Sir Spenser St. John

My cook Ahtan, who was very much annoyed last night by having to set before me so poor a dinner as stale bread and salt fish, determined, as he had a long afternoon before him, to devote it to cooking, particularly as I always divided it into two portions, one for him, and one for myself. The curry he produced was admirable, and having secured a cucumber last night, he was enabled to add what the Malays call a sambal, of which there are many kinds; the one he made was of the sliced cucumber, and green and red chillies cut into fine threads; others are of dried salt fish finely powdered, or fish roes, or hard-boiled eggs, or the tender shoots of the bamboo, but with all, or nearly all, red or green chillies are added. The most delicious I have ever seen put on table was made of prawns about an inch long, partly boiled, then seasoned with freshly prepared curry mixture, and at last slightly moved over the fire in a frying-pan, taking care not to burn it; if chillies are added judiciously, so as not to render it too fiery, it causes a keen appetite to all but a confirmed invalid.

Malay cookery is sometimes very tasty; I remember spending a fortnight in the Sultan’s palace, and we were fed daily from his kitchen; sometimes the stewed fowls were admirable, and there was a particular kind of rice-cake sent in very hot, which was delicious. But the triumph of Malay cookery is to send in the sambals in perfection, particularly the one called blachang; the best is composed of the very finest prawns, caught, I imagine, soon after the little ones have burst from their eggs, and pounded up with red chillies, and a little ginger. Coarser kinds are made from the larger prawn, or even from the smallest fish caught on the river’s banks. Sometimes the material is first exposed to the sun in order to be completely dried, or it would not keep or mix very well, though it is often soaked till nearly decomposed, and that is perhaps the favourite way when it emits a rather powerful scent, but it is very tasty. Prawns and fish are cooked in a great variety of ways, but roasting them over a fire as abobs, is an excellent fashion, if you first sprinkle them with curry mixture.

I have mentioned the admirable curry which Ahtan put before me; perhaps I ought to explain how we make that dish in the Far East; it appears a very different thing from what I have tasted in England under the name of curry: a fowl is cut up into small pieces, and four dried and two green onions, five chillies, half a turmeric, one teaspoonful of coriander seed, one of white cumin, and one of sweet cumin are provided. You must well pound the seeds, turmeric and chillies, and slice the onions fine; then take the saucepan, and after buttering it, slightly brown the onions, then add the pounded ingredients with just sufficient water to reduce them to a paste, and throw in the fowl and well mix them up, till the meat has a yellow tint, and lastly, add the cocoa-nut milk, and boil till the curry be thoroughly cooked. I hope my teaching is sufficiently clear to be understood, but I must add, the cocoa-nut milk is made by scraping the meat of half of an old nut very fine, then soaking it in warm water, and after squeezing out the milk, throw the fibre away. I watched the whole process of cooking with great interest, and almost fancy I could make a curry myself.

After dark, while the men were sitting in their tents, I had a talk with the Orang Kaya Upit about the treatment of the aborigines. Now that we are away from the influence of the rajahs, he will speak out, and tell me anecdotes that otherwise would never reach my ears: they are admirably illustrative of the present method of governing this country. A few years ago, a Murut of the Limpasong village killed a tax-gatherer. There was little doubt that the Murut could only excuse himself by urging oppression; and that had he been seized and executed, nothing could very well be said on the subject; but the present Sultan thought differently: instead of killing the offending Murut, he determined to destroy the village of about two hundred souls. He collected a force of Malays to attack the houses from the river, and promised the Muruts the heads, slaves, and plunder, if they attacked by land. The Limpasong people surrounded by a couple of thousand men had no chance; they made a slight resistance, then fled. The Muruts in the woods fell upon them, killed about fifty, and took about the same number of women and children prisoners; the rest escaped. The Orang Kaya thought nothing of this; but the grievance was that the Sultan took away all the prisoners as his slaves, and likewise defrauded the Muruts of the most valuable plunder.

Again, in 1850, the nephew of the late Sultan was dunning a Bisaya for an imaginary debt; the man, to escape annoyance, tried to jump out of the verandah, when a follower of the noble wounded him with a sharp stick. This roused his friends, and they killed the whole party. Directly they had done so, they remembered the gravity of the act, and formed a league with the neighbouring villages to resist the force that was sure to attack them from the capital. They erected a stockade, and a few of their bravest men defended it for a short time: there was much firing and great beating of gongs, but little damage. The noise, however, frightened the Bisayas and Muruts, and they fled; but as they left the stockade, Orang Kaya Upit fired his musket, and killed a Bornean. This was enough to prevent all idea of pursuit.

Now was the time for the wily Makota to settle matters: he sent a flag of truce, and after some discussion, it was agreed that four persons should be given up to suffer death in satisfaction for those who were killed with the Sultan’s nephew. Now comes the infamous part of the story. The aborigines gave up a stranger, who had married in the country, and who had had nothing whatever to do with the original murders: they gave him up, with his wife, his grandfather, and grandmother, and his two children—the last were kept as slaves by Makota, the other four executed.

I mentioned the Sultan’s nephew was dunning for an imaginary debt: I must explain this. There is a system in this country called “serra,” or “serra dagang,” or forced trade, which I have before referred to, but it is carried on in the neighbourhood of the capital to an extent unknown elsewhere. Every noble of any influence that thinks proper goes to a tribe with some cloth, and calling the chief, orders him to divide it among his tribe; he then demands as its price from twenty to a hundred times its value. He does not expect to get the whole at once, but it enables him to dun the tribe for years after. Not content with taking their goods for these imaginary debts, they constantly seize their young children and carry them off as slaves. The tribe who killed the Sultan’s nephew had actually paid their serra to thirty-three different nobles that year, and had been literally stripped of all their food, before giving way to passion, they destroyed the whole party above referred to.

Makota was enabled to settle the matter quickly, because without the food they get from Limbang, the capital would starve. I little thought that within three months of my writing the above lines, Makota would likewise have lost his life by his infamous oppressions.

A system very much encouraged by the Borneans is to induce the Orang Kayas to sell as slaves all the orphans of a tribe, or the children of any poor Murut who cannot pay his debts: they are systematically corrupting the tribes. In hearing these stories of the Sultan and his nobles, which, I may add, I have no doubt are quite correctly and fairly told by the Muruts, as I have often heard the same or similar ones from the Borneans, I was reminded of the old Malay saying of the four qualities which a ruler should possess. The Borneans, though they know the words, have forgotten the spirit: a sovereign should be brave, just, patient, and yet possess the power of being angry.

Old Japer makes me long to visit the great mountain of Tilong. I asked him to give me some idea of it; he answered, “Imagine the flat summit of Kina Balu carried higher till it ended in a peak;” it is occasionally white at the top, but rarely remains so for many hours after sunrise, so it does not reach the regions of perpetual snow. I should like to organize an expedition to explore it; he says it is quite practicable. I may even see the great diamond now in the hands of a Malau chief, who would even give it me if I would help him to destroy a Malay noble who attacked his house in order to get possession of this famous stone: the Malay was driven off, not however before he had lodged a ball in the jaw of the Malau chief. “To avenge this wound he would give you anything.” I told him I would go to see the mountain and the diamond, if he would take me; but he says he hopes to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca towards the end of the year, if I will assist him. He wants to see the land that “God made holy, and where He performed so many wonderful works.” He fears that, as now he is an old man, he may die without fulfilling the desire of his life.