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agreement of the Company with the Sultan, dated May 28, 1905, is to be cancelled on December 31, 1912, and the Company will also surrender to the Government its existing agreements of lease over the area of 50,000 acres of agricultural land which it now holds. In consideration of this renunciation, a new agreement is to be entered into by the Sultan, by the terms of which he will pay the Company £300,000 and grant it valuable privileges. Amongst the concessions is the sole right to select blocks of land for agricultural purposes up to 50,000 acres, the right of selection "to continue for a period of twelve months after a plan showing the definite route of the proposed railway through Kelantan shall have been handed by the Government to the company." Other concessions are the sole prospecting rights for minerals over the whole area of the original concession, approximately 2,500 square miles, for a period of three years from January 1, 1913, with the additional right of selecting specified areas to be acquired on mining leases (rent free) at the termination of that period. Special prospecting rights are also conferred in the Sokor district, in which the Company has already disclosed large and valuable ore deposits, and all the river-dredging rights which the Company has hitherto exercised are continued. In effect, the Duff Development Company, under this new agreement, drops into the position of an exclusively mercantile organisation. That its field of activity, even in its restricted capacity, is an ample one will be made evident when we come to deal with the Protected States in detail.

Taking all the circumstances into account, we may write as a motto for this chapter, "All's well that ends well." The desired goal has been reached, though by devious and somewhat perilous ways. A little more indecision on the part of our authorities, a little less enterprise on the side

of the public, and we might have had to lament the creation of foreign interests in the Malay Peninsula which would have been utterly fatal to our sovereignty in that important quarter. As things are, it rests entirely with ourselves to say how the destinies of the Peninsula shall shape themselves. There may, and possibly will be, some local trouble, but the spectre of foreign interference is laid for ever.

CHAPTER XI

THE NON-FEDERATED STATES

The unfederated area largely a terra incognita-Kelantan-Physical characteristics-The inhabitants-Their love of sport-The ruling prince-Trengganu-Physical characteristics-Native manufactures-Agriculture and mining-The fishing industry -The Baginda or Conqueror-His evil influence-Dantesque horrors-The reigning Sultan-Kedah-Its trade-Native irrigation system-Rubber development and regulations-Mining -Constitution-Debt bondage-The reigning Sultan-PerlisJohore-Physical characteristics-Planting development-Sultan Ibrahim, K.C.M.G.

IN taking under its expansive wing the four States whose suzerainty Siam relinquished in the circumstances already narrated, Great Britain made another advance towards the goal of an all-British Malay Peninsula. At the moment, the outside world does not realise the immense importance of the move, but it is morally certain that as the years go by there will be an increasing appreciation of the AngloSiamese agreement as an instrument of Imperial expansion and consolidation.

Individually, the quartette of Malay States are of little account either commercially or politically. Isolated by the combined effects of Siamese jealousy and the suspiciousness of Malay rulers, they have remained, as it were, in a back-water while the tide of healthy commercialism has swept in full flood over the other parts of the Peninsula. To a remarkable extent they were until

quite recently a terra incognita to the European. Those who ventured into the interior took their lives in their hands. As a natural consequence, few did make the attempt, and those for the most part never got far away from well-beaten native tracks. Actually the known records of thoroughgoing exploration do not go farther back than 1884-5, in which years Sir Frank Swettenham, Captain Giles, R.A., and the Hon. Martin Lister crossed the Peninsula from the west coast to the east coast, traversing in the latter part of the journey the State of Pahang. About the same period, Mr. William Cameron travelled from Kinta in Perak to the mouth of the Pahang River. Two years later, Sir Hugh Clifford made the same journey from west to east that had been accomplished by Sir Frank Swettenham's party. In 1895, Mr. H. M. Becher, a mining engineer, lost his life whilst attempting the ascent of Gunong Tahan, in the course of a prospecting trip in the interior. An Italian traveller named Bozzolo, more fortunate, was able to penetrate into Kelantan at about this period. He is reputed to have been the first white man who ever set foot in the remoter parts of that State, but this view takes no account of the possibility of early exploration in the period in the seventeenth century when Patani was a great resort of European traders, and both English and Dutch had factories there. The country, however, was sufficiently unknown to give an air of adventure to a journey which Sir Henry Norman undertook in 1899 when he travelled overland from Perak to Kelantan, proceeding by raft down the Kelantan River to Kota Bahru, the capital of the State. His experiences were at points decidedly exciting, and the whole episode supplies material for not the least interesting chapter in that popular writer's work, "The Peoples and Politics of that Far East." In a different

category to these individual efforts stands the expedition conducted by Sir Hugh Clifford in 1895 against the Pahang Rebels. This well-organised enterprise not only greatly extended the knowledge of Trengganu and Kelantan, but, as has been shown in the preceding chapter, was the indirect cause of the trade development in the latter State which was the leading factor in the Anglo-Siamese agreement of 1909. Another official venture which tended to lighten the dense darkness of the interior was the expedition which in 1899-1900 was led by Mr. Skeat, with a view mainly to ethnological objects. The trained scientific observations then made are amongst the most valuable records we have of the conditions prevailing in the less-known parts of the Peninsula.

Even at the present day, however, the knowledge of many considerable areas is so superficial as to leave room for interesting speculation as to their possibilities in a commercial sense. Arguing from their broad physical characteristics and their geological relationship to other portions of Malaya which have proved their productivity, there are great potentialities in the region when the country has been properly surveyed and the civilising influences of British protection have had time to develop fully on the lines which have so marvellously increased the wealth of the Federated area.

First in importance politically and in point of population, though not of area, for Trengganu is the largest of the four States, Kelantan illustrates to a peculiar extent the characteristic qualities of the Protected territories. Situated at the extreme north-eastern end of the Peninsula, between latitudes 4:45° and 625° North, and between longitudes 101 30° and 102'40° East, and with a coast-line of 60 miles' length on the China Sea, it embraces an area of from 5,000 to 5,500 square miles, the vast proportion of

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