When I first came, a visitor, to the Malay Peninsula, I was struck by the fact that wherever I went I heard stories of tigers. If, in the course of a day’s ride, I stopped at a village to eat my luncheon, the people who pressed round to watch me and have a chat would always tell me a tiger story of local and comparatively recent occurrence. Wherever I encamped for the night, I should be sure of at least one tale of successful attack or successful resistance, where a tiger had filled the principal rôle. When once I understood the little peculiarity, I took it as a matter of course, and at talking time I used to say, “Now tell me about the tiger: what was it he did?” It may have been accident, but it is no exaggeration to say that my question nearly always drew forth a more or less ghastly story.
Now that my visit is nearly over, it occurs to me that, though I have accumulated an almost endless series of more or less interesting tales of the “low, crouching horror with the cruel fangs,” I have not retailed any of them to you. In a certain number of cases I was myself near enough to be able to verify details, and in others I had means of proving main facts. One is almost bound to say that, because tiger-stories, which are worth repeating, are almost always listened to with incredulity, or, what is worse, with that banter which often means, in plain words, “What I have not seen myself I decline to believe.” That is the attitude of England to the Orient in the presence of a tiger-story with which the auditors can claim no connection. I said that the prevalence of these tales struck me on my first arrival. I soon became _blasé_, and for a long time I have had no curiosity on the subject; but I will tell you of two tiger incidents that I personally verified, as far as I was able, and I will make no attempt to paint in the background with local colour, in order to supply you with finished pictures.
There is an island by the western shore of the Straits of Malacca. You would never guess it to be an island, for it is simply a block of mangrove-covered mud, with one side towards the sea, and the other three sides separated from the mainland by deep but narrow lagoons of tidal water. The only inhabitants are a few wood-cutters, Malays and Chinese, who live in huts of mat or bark with palm-leaf roofs, while they are employed cutting mangroves and a hard-wood palm called _Nîbong_. The huts of the Chinese are on the ground, but the Malay dwellings are invariably raised a few feet above the damp soil, and to them entry is obtained by means of a ladder. These hovels are very carelessly built; they are of flimsy materials, only intended to last for a few months, when they are abandoned and rapidly fall to pieces. They serve their purpose. The occupants are out from dawn till afternoon, when they return to cook, eat, and sleep; and so, from day to day, till the job on which they are engaged is completed, and they can return, in the case of the Malays, to their families, while the Chinese are probably moved to another scene of similar labour.