Buffalo Fights and Cock Fights
“The Malays are passionately addicted to buffalo and cock fighting. Whole
poems are devoted to enthusiastic descriptions of these ‘sports of princes,’ and
laws laid down for the latter as minute as those of the Hoyleian code.”^155
“The bulls have been trained and medicined for months beforehand, with much
careful tending, many strength-giving potions, and volumes of the old-world
charms, which put valour and courage into a beast. They stand at each end of a
piece of grassy lawn, with their knots of admirers around them, descanting on
their various points, and with the proud trainer, who is at once keeper and
medicine-man, holding them by the cord which is passed through their nose-
rings. Until you have seen the water-buffalo stripped for the fight, it is
impossible to conceive how handsome the ugly brute can look. One has been
accustomed to see him with his neck bowed to the yoke he hates, and breaks
whenever the opportunity offers; or else in the pâdi fields. In the former case he
looks out of place,—an anachronism belonging to a prehistoric period, drawing a
cart which seems also to date back to the days before the Deluge. In the fields
the buffalo has usually a complete suit of grey mud, and during the quiet evening
hour goggles at you through the clouds of flies which surround his flapping ears
and brutal nose, the only parts that can be seen of him above the surface of the
mud-hole or the running water of the river. In both cases he is unlovely, but in
the bull-ring he has something magnificent about him. His black coat has a gloss
upon it which would not disgrace a London carriage horse, and which shows him
to be in tip-top condition. His neck seems thicker and more powerful than that of
any other animal, and it glistens with the chili water, which has been poured over
it in order to increase his excitement. His resolute shoulders, his straining