river resolved itself into the streets and quays of the little city of Bander
Maharani, the capital of the province of Maur in dominions of his Highness
Abubaker, Sultan of Johore. Above and overshadowing all both in beauty and
historical interest was the famous old mountain where King Solomon sent his
diminutive ships for “gold, silver, peacocks, and apes.”
By the time the ladies were astir, the mists had vanished and Gunong Ladang, or
as it is styled in Holy Writ Mount Ophir, presented to our admiring gaze its
massive outlines, set in a frame of green and blue. The dense jungle crept
halfway up its sides and at the point where the cloud stratum had rested but an
hour before, it merged into a tangled network of vines and shrubs which in their
turn gave place to the black, red rock that shone like burnished brass.
If our minds wandered away from visions of future crocodile-shooting to dreams
of the past wealth that had been taken from the ancient mines that honeycombed
the base of the mountain, it is hardly to be wondered at. If Dato or “Lord”
Garlands told us queer stories of woods and masonry that antedated the written
history of the country, stories of mines and workings that were overgrown with a
jungle that looked as primeval as the mountain itself, he was to be excused on
the plea that we, waiting on a sandy bar with the metallic glare of the sea in our
eyes, were glad of any subject to distract our thoughts.
The Resident’s launch brought out Prince Mat and the Chief Justice, both of
whom spoke English with an easy familiarity. Both had been in Europe and
Prince Mat had dined with Queen Victoria. One night at table he related the
incidents of that dinner with a delightful exactness that might have pleased her
Britannic Majesty could she have listened.
I waited only long enough to see the ladies installed in a suite of rooms in the
Residency, then donned a suit of white duck, stepped into a river launch in
company with Inchi Mohamed, the Chief Justice, and steamed out into the broad
waters of the Maur.
The southernmost kingdom of the great continent of Asia is the little Sultanate of
Johore, ruled over by one of the most enlightened Princes of the East. Fourteen
miles from Singapore, just across the notorious old Straits of Malacca, is his
capital and the palace of the Sultan.