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The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither by Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy) Bird
page 137 of 382 (35%)
and comparatively cleared spot appears, with a crowded cluster of
graves, with a pawn-shaped stone at the head of each, and the beautiful
Frangipani,* the "Temple Flower" of Singhalese Buddhism, but the "Grave
Flower" of Malay Mohammedanism, sheds its ethereal fragrance among the
tombs. The dead lie lonely in the forest shade, under the feathery
palm-fronds, but the living are not far to seek.
[*Plumieria sp.]

It is strange that I should have written thus far and have said nothing
at all about the people from whom this Peninsula derives its name, who
have cost us not a little blood and some treasure, with whom our
relations are by no means well defined or satisfactory, and who, though
not the actual aborigines of the country, have at least that claim to
be considered its rightful owners which comes from long centuries of
possession. In truth, between English rule, the solid tokens of Dutch
possession, the quiet and indolent Portuguese, the splendid memories of
Francis Xavier, and the numerical preponderance, success, and wealth of
the Chinese, I had absolutely forgotten the Malays, even though a dark-
skinned military policeman, with a gliding, snake-like step, whom I
know to be a Malay, brings my afternoon tea to the Stadthaus! Of them I
may write more hereafter. They are symbolized to people's minds in
general by the dagger called a kris, and by the peculiar form of frenzy
which has given rise to the phrase "running amuck."

The great cocoa groves are by no means solitary, for they contain the
kampongs, or small raised villages of the Malays. Though the Malay
builds his dismal little mosques on the outskirts of Malacca, he shuns
the town, and prefers a life of freedom in his native jungles, or on
the mysterious rivers which lose themselves among the mangrove swamps.
So in the neighborhood of Malacca these kampongs are scattered through
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