alay, and
she has provided him with a soil which returns a maximum of food for a
minimum of grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call aloud to
all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant shade during the
parching hours of mid-day, and the Malay has caught the spirit of his
surroundings, and is very much what Nature has seen fit to make him.

Some five-and-thirty years ago, when Che' Wan Ahmad, now better known as
Sultan Ahmad Maatham Shah, was collecting his forces in Dungun,
preparatory to making his last and successful descent into the Tembeling
valley, whence to overrun and conquer Pahang, the night was closing in
at Ranggul. A large house stood, at that time, in a somewhat isolated
position, within a thickly-planted compound, at one extremity of the
village. In this house, on the night of which I write, seven men and two
women were at work on the evening meal. The men sat in the centre of the
floor, on a white mat made from the plaited leaves of the _mengkuang_
palm, with a plate piled with rice before each of them, and a brass
tray, holding various little china bowls of curry, placed where all
could reach it. They sat cross-legged, with bowed backs, supporting
themselves on their left arms, the left hand lying flat on the mat, and
being so turned that the outspread fingers pointed inwards. With the
fingers of their right hands they messed the rice, mixing the curry well
into it, and then swiftly carried a large handful to their mouths,
skilfully, without dropping a grain. The women sat demurely, in a half
kneeling position, with their feet tucked away under them, and
ministered to the wants of the men. They said never a word, save an
occasional exclamation, when they drove away a lean cat that crept too
near to the food, and the men also held their peace. There was no sound
to be heard, save the hum of the insects out of doors, the deep note of
the bull-frogs in the rice swamps, and the unnecessarily loud noise of
mastication made by the men as they ate.

When the meal was over the women carried what was left to a corner near
the fireplace, and there fell to on such of the viands as their lords
had not consumed. If you had looked carefully, however, you would have
seen that the cooking-pots, over which the women ruled, still held a
secret store for their own consumption, and that the quality of the food
in this _cache_ was by no means inferior to that which had been allotted
to the men. In a land wher