I bought all sorts of common curiosities,
little articles of everyday life, some of which will be sure to amuse
and interest my English friends. Among my purchases were a wooden
pillow, some joss candles, a two-stringed fiddle, and a few preserved
eggs, which they say are over a hundred years old. The eggs are
certainly nasty enough for anything; still it seems strange that so
thrifty a people as the Chinese should allow so much capital to lie
dormant--literally buried in the earth.
At half-past nine o'clock the Maharajah, with the Governor and all his
guests, came on board. His Highness inspected the yacht with the
utmost minuteness and interest, though his Mohammedan ideas about
women were considerably troubled when he was told that I had had a
great deal to do with the designing and arrangement of the interior.
At half-past eleven the party left, and an hour afterwards we went to
make our adieux to the Maharajah.
On our departure the Maharajah ordered twenty coolies to accompany
us, laden with fragrant tropical plants. He also gave me some splendid
Malay silk sarongs, grown, made, and woven in his kingdom, a pair of
tusks of an elephant shot within a mile of the house, besides a live
little beast, not an alligator, and not an armadillo or a lizard; in
fact I do not know what it is; it clings round my arm just like a
bracelet, and it was sent as a present by the ex-Sultan of Johore.
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