Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/345

arrogant are the men of Pahang." By far the most. salient qualities of the people of Trengganu, however, are their profound love of peace, their devotion to their religion and to study, and their skill both as artisans and as traders. On the lawless East Coast thirty years ago men who did not love fighting for fighting's sake were regarded by their neighbours as an anomaly, as something almost monstrous; and the mild temperament of the natives of Trengganu, coupled with their extraordinary business aptitude, brought them in those days contempt and wealth in more or less equal measure. Their religious fer- vour is in part due to the existence among them of an hereditary line of saints-the Saiyids of Pâloh-who have succeeded one another from father to son for several generations, and have attained to an extraor- dinary reputation for piety by an ostentations display of virtue, by public preachings, and by the occasional performance of minor miracles. For the rest, the people of Trengganu excel as craftsmen, and they are accustomed to flood the native markets with all manner of spurious imitations of goods of bigh repute. The dyes which they use are never fast. The gold-threaded turban cloths, which their pilgrims carry to Mecca and dispose of there as articles of genuine Arab manufacture, wear out with surprising rapidity; and the unabashed eloquence with which a Trengganu trader will discourse con- cerning the antiquity of some object which he has fashioned with his own hands, and the calm with which he regards detection, have won for his people