CHAPTER VII.—AGRICULTURE AND THE RISE OF TOWNSHIPS

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Each to his task of toil—not heavy, though

Needful: the earth is young, and yields us kindly

Her fruit with little labour.

Byron's Cain.

It was natural that in the centre of each group of mines should spring up a town and market. The first of these was Taipeng, originally built in one long street of attap huts, again so rebuilt in 1874- to he twice burnt, down and rebuilt, first in wood and then in brick. From the ruins of the last fire in 1880, has risen the present town with its wide Ansenna-shaded streets, Markets, Railway Station and public building, environed by Barracks, Prisons, Museum, Hospital and all the dwellings of the European community. The site of the town and buildings is on flat land, most of it already mined, eight miles from Port Weld, about thirteen from the sea coast, and a mile from the foot of the Ijau range of hills, which here rises to a height of over 5,000 feet and affords an excellent water supply.

The Town contains 14,000 inhabitants, but, as mining is still going on all round it and within a few feet of some of the roads, the numbers who daily frequent the streets of Taipeng are very much larger than the actual inhabitants.

Kamunting, three miles by road and rail to the North, is a village of the same date as its neighbour. For many years, tin-mining in Perak was practically confined to the neighbourhood of

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these two places. Now the best ground appears to have been worked out, and the superior attractions of Kinta have drawn to that district a great body of the Larut miners.

Had not the Government decided to fix its Head Quarters at Taipeng and erected here its principal buildings, the probability is that the Town would already have sunk into a village of small importance.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Kuala Kangsar, the seat of His Highness the Sultan, there are no mines and though there is a small, neat village built originally as the base of supply for the Salak mines, eight miles distant and across the Perak River, it is the absence of the Chinese element that, with the extreme beauty of the place, makes Kuala Kangsar so attractive. It is the very paradise of Malays; a wide, shallow, clear river with high banks covered for miles with picturesque villages, hidden under a wealth of palms and fruit trees. Behind these villages are rice fields, easily irrigated and annually enriched by the overflow of the great river, while, on either side, a range of hills shuts in the valley. Here the Malay lives under his sireh-vine and durian tree ; from his door he looks out on the river which supplies him with fish, his dug-out is or used, to be, his carriage ; and, where his orchard ends, his rice field begins. The sale of his fruit supplies him with money, and, if he is ambitious, he either opens a plantation of pepper or coffee or acquires a block of mining land and lets it out to Chinese on tribute.

The Salak mines are now almost abandoned, but the new road running Northward, parallel to the Perak River, never more than about three miles from its right, bank, has opened an untried and

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extensive mining field for which Kuala Kangsar, the head quarters of this large district, will furnish the base of supply.

It was at Kuala Kangsar that the Government first began its experimental gardens, to be followed by the Arabian coffee estate on Arang Para (3,200 feet), the tea garden at a lower elevation of the same hill, and a pepper plantation at the foot. Then Waterloo, on the Ijau range, was taken over and has now developed, in the hands of Sir Graeme Elphinstone, into an extensive and flourishing-coffee estate; while, under the auspices of Government, the cultivation of pepper has been introduced and many successful gardens are found all over the Kuala Kangsar District. The road that joins Kuala Kangsar with Ipoh, (the highest point of the Kinta River navigable to cargo boats) passes, the Kamuning estate of Mr. T. H. Hill, the pioneer planter in the Protected States. On the fiat land, between hills of black limestone, there are here about 300 acres of as fine Liberian coffee as can well be seen ; the estate borders the road, is capable of great development, and, when the Kinta Valley railway is completed, will have excellent communication with the Straits Markets.

Ipoh is, in its way, a wonderful instance of the rapid growth of a mining town. Five years ago a small collection of huts,—to-day, it is a town of well built brick houses daily increasing and has a population of at least 5,000 people. As the centre of a rich mining-district, the focus of a number of roads and the present terminus of the Kinta Valley Railway, its importance is second to that of no other town in the State. It is peculiar in one respect—that, while

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the town is essentially a place of Chinese, the other bank of the river is inhabited by Malays, who are almost as keen miners and traders as the men with tails. They do not actually work in the mines, but they prospect, they find the tin, they acquire the land and let it on tribute, while the wealthier of them (and that turn, avis, the wealthy Malay, is found here in quantity) advance to Chinese labourers, build houses and make money by all the means open to them. The largest owner of house property in Ipoh is the Malay Chief of the district.

Along the twelve miles of road that divide Ipoh from Batu Gajah are several mining villages of some importance, each with its Police Station, Market, and Theatre.

Batu Gajah, the official Head Quarters of the district, occupies a small table-land on the right bank of the Kinta River, which it overlooks with a magnificent view of the Valley and the great chain of mountains that divides Perak from Kelantan and Pahang.

Batu Gajah is a very smart little Station with imposing public, offices, Barracks, Hospital, Prison, Roman Catholic Chapel, and the usual neatly kept gardens and dwelling houses, but the native village is a mile away on the river bank. There are mines all round Batu Gajah, but none of them very close.

Gopeng is the only other important town in the Kinta District, twelve miles by road from Ipoh. It is the centre of a group of mining fields, lies on the main road through the State and it is probably here that the first mining was done in Kinta.

Further south again is the Kampar Division, where a French 

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Company is mining. It is believed that Kampar will develop into one of the richest fields in Kinta.

Following the new road which skirts the western base of Bujang Malaka, the last place of any importance on it is Tapah, the head quarters of the Batang Padang District. At present, Tapah is more a Government Station than anything else, for there are no mines in its immediate vicinity, but there is known to be plenty of good land in the neighbourhood. The progress of this district should be materially assisted by the opening of the Railway, with which Tapah is in communication by five miles of road. It is difficult for agriculture to make much headway with such a rival as mining, across the road as it were, but Sumatran Malays have planted a quantity of Liberian coffee in Kinta, and Batang Padang offers great attractions to an agriculturist.

There are only two other townships in Perak that need mention, aid neither of them owes its existence to mining for they are both the centres of agricultural districts—Krian and Lower Perak—and while both Parit Buntar, the Head Quarters of Krian, and Teluk Anson in Lower Perak, have been called into life within the last fifteen years, there is this difference between them that, whereas, in that time, the country for miles round Parit Buntar has been converted from jungle into fields of sugarcane and padi, there was already existing in Lower Perak, though not at Teluk Anson, a considerable resident population of Malays. There is this resemblance between them that they both owe their existance mainly to the energy of one man, Mr. Noel Denison.

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The Perak district of Krian in 1874 was a roadless jungle with a few padi fields and one or two isolated fishing villages on the toast. Now, most of the country between the Krian and Kurau Rivers and even beyond the latter, is an unbroken extent of rice and cane fields, the former cultivated by Malays and Tamils, the latter owned by Chinese and cultivated by their countrymen or by Tamil labourers. There is also in this district the extensive and flourishing Gula Estate belonging to a Shanghai Company, managed by Europeans with Tamil labour. The machinery on this Estate contains the most modern improvements, whilst several of the Chinese owners are not much behindhand.

Parit Buntar village is only a small place, but it is sufficient for the wants of a widely scattered agricultural population, and another village has arisen at Bagan Serai on the Kurau River that, from its central position, may eventually become the principal trading place in Krian. The district is now well roaded and what it wants is irrigation to make the rice-growers independent of drought and flood, and to supply them with a constant supply of good drinking water. A scheme with this object has been prepared. If it can be successfully carried out, the Government of Perak will be able to point to Krian as the greatest agricultural achievement in the Protected States.

Teluk Anson, forty miles from the mouth of the Perak River, here 60 feet deep and about 1.700 feet wide, is built on the left bank of the stream. Until adopted as the site for the port of Lower Perak, the place was a swampy forest. Now, it is a well laid out town of brick and plank houses containing about 6,000 people, besides

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possessing the public buildings necessary for the chief station of a large district. Above and below Teluk Anson, the banks of the river are fringed by Malay villages and padi fields, and Teluk Anson supplies the market where produce is sold and the necessaries and luxuries of life purchased. Up till very recently, the whole of the supplies for the mines of Kinta and Batang Padang have been imported from Penang and Singapore to Teluk Anson by sea. and conveyed up country by boats using the difficult and dangerous rivers leading to these districts. Similarly, all the tin has found its way to Teluk Anson for shipment to the Straits ports. Now, the railway will supersede the river transport and as the carriage will be quicker, safer, and possibly cheaper, trading facilities will be improved and Teluk Anson may be expected to benefit thereby. This place also has suffered from the want of pure drinking water, but extensive works are in course of construction to bring water from a source of supply at Changkat Jong, eight miles distant.

All the land in this neighbourhood is suitable for the cultivation of every form of low-country tropical produce, hut rice, sugar, and coconuts are specially successful. At Setiawan, on the boundary of the Colony's territory at the Dindings, Mr. Denison. in the last few years of his life, succeeded in planting a settlement of foreign Malays which promises, if carefully nursed in the days of its struggling infancy, to grow into another Krian.

Nothing has been said of the nature of land tenure in Perak, because even a brief description would only weary the general reader

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and would not satisfy the intending planter, who can obtain all information he wants by applying to the Government.