This is not a book of travels, nor is it, in even the smallest sense, the record of a traveller’s experiences in a foreign land. It is a series of sketches of Malay scenery and Malay character drawn by one who has spent the best part of his life in the scenes and amongst the people described.
These pages contain no statistics, no history, no geography, no science, real or spurious, no politics, no moralising, no prophecy,—only an attempt to awaken an interest in an almost undescribed but deeply interesting people, the dwellers in one of the most beautiful and least known countries in the East.
The traveller will come in time, and he will publish his experiences of Malâya and the Malays; but while he may look upon the country with a higher appreciation and paint its features with a more artistic touch, he will see few of those characteristics of the people, none of that inner life which, I make bold to say, is here faithfully portrayed.
FRANK SWETTENHAM.
The Residency,
Perak, 28 March 1895.