detected or suspected burglars and robbers; in vain have all sorts of stratagems
been adopted by travellers as precautions against thieves; and in vain have the
families of convicted men been punished for the deeds of their relations.
Nothing, apparently, can stamp out the instinct which prompts high and low, rich
and poor, to take possession of any property belonging to someone else
whenever the opportunity offers. Men with flocks and herds, and pâdi swamps,
and fruit orchards, steal if they get the chance just as much as does the indigent
peasant who has sold his last child into slavery for three dollars in cash. Most of
the great chiefs of the country do not steal in person, but they keep bands of paid
ruffians who do that work for them, in return for their protection, and a share of
the takings. The skill with which some Kĕlantan Malays pick a pocket, and the
ingenuity displayed in their burglaries, would not discredit a pupil of Fagin the
Jew; and robbery with violence is almost equally common. Their favourite
weapon is an uncanny looking instrument called pârang jĕngok—or the 'peeping'
knife—which is armed with a sharp peak at the tip, standing out almost at right
angles to the rest of the blade. Armed with this, on a dark night, the robber walks
down a street, and just as he passes a man, he strikes back over his left shoulder,
so that the peak catches his victim in the back of the head, and knocks him
endways. He can then be robbed with ease and comfort, and, whether he
recovers from the blow or dies from its effects is his own affair, and concerns the
thief not at all. It is not very long ago since two men were found lying senseless
in the streets of Kôta Bharu, each having put the other hors de combat with a
pârang jĕngok, striking at the same moment, in the same way, and with the same
amiable intention. To save further trouble they each had their hands cut off, as
soon as they came round, by the Sultân's order. This, when you come to think of
it, was a sound course for the Sultân to pursue.
The women of Kĕlantan are, many of them, well favoured enough. They are, for
the most part, fine upstanding wenches, somewhat more largely built than most
Malay women, and they appear more in public than is usual in the Peninsula. At
Kôta Bharu, women, both young and old, crowd the markets at all hours of the
day, and do most of the selling and buying. They converse freely with strangers,
go about unveiled, and shew no signs of that affected bashfulness, which cloaks
the very indifferent morals of the average Malay woman, but which it is a point
of honour with her to assume when in the presence of men.
In Kĕlantan, both men and women dress differently from Malays in other States.
The men wear neither coats nor trousers, but they bind a sârong and three or four
sashes about their waists. The sârong generally comes down to the knee, and,