gate of the royal enclosure. This affords them the abundant leisure which Malays so dearly love, and hey while away the time by loafing and gossiping, by playing games of chance, by betting on the spinning of tops, on the number of seeds in a mangosteen, or on the power of resistance possessed by rival nuts of the kind called bûah kras; they sing a little, sleep a good deal, conceal their own, and speculate luridly upon their neighbours' private intimacies, and for the rest, are quite idle, dissolute, and happy. It is unnecessary to add that they are greatly feared by the peasants and immensely admired by the generality of the female population, for they are as reckless, as unscrupulous, as immoral, and withal as gayly dressed and as well born a gang of young truculents as ever preyed upon a defenceless people, or made open love to their wives and daughters.
More or less insecurely imprisoned within the palace precinets there abides also yet another set of bûdak râja—"a monstrous regiment of women"—some of whom are the concubines, permanent or occasional, of the king, while the remainder are the companions, attendants, and serving-girls of the more directly favoured ladies. All of them, however, without distinction, are vowed to the royal service, and are supposed to lead a celibate existence. Now, according to the vernacular proverb, the desires of Malay women are as disproportionate as those of the sandfly, the minute insect which is said to have a standing wager that he will swallow a man whole; and, as yet another Malayan proverb has it, "the
