These are enchanted seas--

"Where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly."

It is unseemly that the Abdulsamat should smoke and puff and leave a
foamy wake behind her. "Sails of silk and ropes of sendal," and poetic
noiseless movements only would suit these lovely Malacca Straits. This
is one of the very few days in my life in which I have felt mere living
to be a luxury, and what it is to be akin to seas and breezes, and
birds and insects, and to know why nature sings and smiles.

We had been towing a revenue cutter with stores for a new lighthouse,
and cast her adrift at the point where we anchored, and the Resident
and Mr. Daly went ashore with thirteen policemen, and I had a most
interesting and instructive conversation with Mr. Syers. Afterward we
steamed along the low wooded coast, and then up the Langat river till
we came to Bukit Jugra, an isolated hill covered with jungle. The
landing is up a great face of smooth rock, near the top of which is a
pretty police station, and higher still, nearly concealed by bananas
and cocoa-palms, is the large bungalow of the revenue officer and
police magistrate of Langat. We saw Mr. Ferney, the magistrate, landed
the police guard, and then steamed up here for a council.

Mr. Syers went ashore, and returned with the Sultan's heir, the Rajah
Moussa, a very peculiar-looking Malay, a rigid Mohammedan, who is
known, the Resident says, to have said that when he becomes Sultan he
"will drive the white men into the sea." He works hard, as an example
to his people, and when working dresses like a coolie. He sets his face
against cock-fighting and other Malay sports, is a reformer, and a