Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/12

 corner of Asia. They are written with a full appreciation of the native point of view, and of a people for whom I entertain much affection and sympathy. Incidentally, however, they will perhaps help to explain why British civil servants in the East occasionally lay themselves open to the charge of being animated by "a hungry acquisitiveness" and a passion for annexing the territory of their native neighbours.

Fate and a rather courageous Colonial Governor ordained that I should be sent on a special mission to the Sultan of Pahang—a large Malayan state on the eastern seaboard of the Peninsula—before I was quite one and twenty years of age. This course was not, at the time, as reckless and desperate as it sounds. I had already more than three years' service and had acquired what was reckoned an unusual acquaintance with the vernacular. The mission would entail a long overland journey and an absence of more than three months' duration. Senior men who possessed the necessary qualifications could not be spared for so protracted a period, and thus the choice fell upon me, to my very great content.

My object was to obtain from the Sultan the promise of a treaty surrendering the management of his foreign relations to the British Government and accepting the appointment of a Political Agent at his court. This I obtained and bore in triumph to Singapore, whence I immediately returned to negotiate the details of the treaty, and subsequently