The Crowning of a Malayan Prince
Tunku Ibrahim was just past seventeen when his father, the Sultan Abubaker,
chose to recognize him as his heir and Crown Prince of Johore.
From the day when the little prince had been deemed old enough to leave his
mother and the women’s palace until the day he had entered the native artillery
as a lieutenant, he had been schooled and trained by the English missionaries and
the Tuan Kadi, or Mohammedan high priest, as becomes a son of so illustrious a
father.
Tunku Ibrahim had made one trip to England when he was fifteen years old, and
with his little cousin, the Tunku, or Prince, Othman, had dined with the Queen at
Windsor.
So, when the Sultan returned from a long stay at Carlsbad and found that the
Sultana was dead and that Ibrahim had shot up into a man, he said:—
“I am getting to be an old man and may die at any time. I will call all my nobles
and people to the palace, and they shall see me place the crown on Ibrahim’s
head. Then if I die, he will rule, and the British will not take his country from
him as long as he is wise and kingly.”
Whereupon his Highness sent out invitations to the Governor and all the foreign
consuls in Singapore to be his guests and witness the crowning of his son.
We started in quaint little box-like carriages, called gharries, long before the
fierce Malayan sun had risen above the palms, accomplishing the fourteen miles
across the beautiful island in little over an hour.
The diminutive Deli ponies, not larger than Newfoundland dogs, broke into a run
the moment we closed the lattice doors, and it was all their half-naked drivers