Up to the steps of the throne came the young prince, dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant of artillery, with the royal order of Darjah Krabat ablaze with jewels on his breast. He was slightly taller than his father, the Sultan, straight, graceful, and handsome, with big, brown eyes and strongly marked features. He was nervous and agitated, and his lips trembled as he bent on one knee and kissed his Highness's hand.
Above our heads in the gilded walls, behind a grated opening, were Inche Kitega, the Sultan's beautiful Circassian wife, and the women of the court. We could see their black eyes as they peered curiously down. It was only when the Dato Mentri, or Prime Minister, stood up and asked his people if they wished the young Tunku to be their future lord that we could hear their shrill voices mingling with the "Suku, suku" ("We wish it, we wish it"), of the men.
It is only the wives of the nobles that are secluded in the istana isaras, or women palaces, according to Mohammedan law; the women of the poor are as free as the more civilized countries of Europe. They bask in the sun with their brown babies on their laps, or wander among the cocoanuts that always surround their palm-thatched homes, happy and contented, with no thought for the morrow. The trees furnish them their food, and a few hours before their looms of dark kamooning wood each week keep them supplied with their one article of dress--the sarong. They never heard of the Bible, but they are very religious, and at sunrise and sunset, at the deep-toned boom of the hollow log that hangs before their little thatched mosques, they fall on their faces and pray to "Allah, the All Merciful and Loving Kind."
When the Crown Prince had stepped modestly back among his brothers and cousins, a holy man in green robes and turban came forward and read an address in Arabic. He recited the glories of the Prophet, the promises of the Koran, and then told of the ancient greatness of Johore,--how it once ruled the great peninsula that forever points like a lean, disjointed finger down into the heart of the greatest archipelago of the world,--how its ruler was looked up to and made treaties with, by the kings of Europe,--of the coming of the thieving Portuguese and the brutal Dutch,--of the dark, bloody years when the deposed descendants of the once proud Emperors of Johore turned to piracy,--of the new days that commenced when that great Englishman, Sir Stamford Raffles, founded Singapore,--down to the glorious reign of the present just ruler, Abubaker.