koi_,[5] the sugar-cane, coffee,
pepper, tea, the banana, the ananas, indigo, sago, tapioca, gambier,
various sorts of rubber, gigantic trees for shipbuilding, and so on.

The Para Rubber, from which is extracted our gutta percha grows
marvellously well in the Malay soil and requires very little attention
or expense.

There is the _ramie_ whose fibres will by degrees supplant the silk we
get from cocoons, or mixed together will form an excellent quality of
stuff. It is a herb with long, fibrous stems which when well beaten out
and bleached become like a soft mass of wool. After being carded it can
be spun into the finest threads as shiny and pliant as silk itself.

[Illustration: The Durian.

_p._ 65.]

This plant flourishes to a great extent in Perak and its stems may be
cut off twice a year. It only needs to be cultivated, for industry to be
provided with a new and precious element. In fact there are few who do
not know that the greater part of Chinese silk stuffs are woven with the
_ramie_ fibres, but its utility might have a much larger extension if it
were made an object of study by those capable of drawing from it
profitable results.

Very few lands, I think, have been so favoured by capricious Nature as
the Malay Peninsula where she seems to have taken delight in bestowing
her treasures of flora and fauna as well as underground ones, for
several gold and tin mines are being worked, whilst lead, copper, zinc,
antimony, arsenic and many other metals are constantly being found,
besides some rich veins of wolfram, although a real bed of the latter
ore has not yet been discovered.

If once the still lazy but honest forces of the Sakais could be utilized
by turning them towards agriculture, all this natural wealth might be
sent to the World's markets and a sparse but good people, susceptible of
great progress, would be gradually civilized.

* * * * *

The Para Rubber, referred to above, constitutes one of the greatest
riches of the Malay agricultural industry.

Both soil and climate are very favourable for its cultivation in the
Peninsula, so much so that a tree attains the maturity necessary for the
production of this valuable article in four years, if special care and
attention is given it, or in five or six if left to its natural growth
(as in Ceylon), whilst in other places it takes eight and even ten
years.

Not many years ago the British Government had a limited space