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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 273
thoroughly that he was more Scot than anything else by the time his education was finished and he had (almost regretfully) to return to the East! I asked him where he learned to play the pipes. "Oh," he replied, "I was so good at them that they made me Pipe-Major of the Academy pipe-band!" And then we sat down to birds'-nest soup and to eat rice and chicken with chopsticks ! On leaving the palace Ling Sing slapped me on the back and remarked, in impeccable Scottish accent, "Well, well, Harry, guid nicht an' joy be wi' ye ! It's been like a breath o' the purple heather to hae ye here. Hastye back again, laddie! Here's to us! Wha's like us ? Damn the yin !" So saying he handed me a Deoch-an-Doris, took one himself, and Harry Lauder and Ling Sing, grand Scots both, parted the best of friends and cronies.
Afterwards, down to the Federated Malay States, perhaps the richest country on the face of the globe. They tell me that there is sufficient wealth in the Straits Settlements to pay the British National Debt twice over. In fact I heard so much of the actual and potential wealth of places like Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Port Swettenham, and Singapore that I had serious thoughts of disbanding my company and i starting in on my own in an effort to get a bit before it was ah1 gone ! But I found so many Scotsmen scattered over the place that I decided the task would be stiffer than it looked on th;e surface! You may be pretty sure that if there are Kemps, and Symes, and McNeills, and Carmichaels, and Forbes, a.nd McLarens in the Malay States they are not going to let a newcomer butt in without making him scratch hard for his whack! Again I listened to what some people think the most fascinating of human stories — the tales of poor men who strtttck the country in past years and got away with colossal fortunes. The history of the rubber and tin industries of Malay is^ full of romance — and, of course, of tragedy. Take the case of the young Glasgow man who