There are not wanting signs that the native labourers on the rubber plantations of the Federated Malay States are getting somewhat out of hand, says the " Daily Telegraph." Quite recently an English assistant named Bowen murdered by a coolie near Malacca, and a correspondent, in a letter just received from Singapore, gives an account of the opening of an inquiry into the murder of Mr. J. P. Mackay, who was killed by Javanese on July 3.
"There has never been so much interest taken in a case out here," he writes, "'since the Proudlock trial. When last Saturday (July 20), the inquiry opened, there were no fewer than forty-nine Javanese coolies charged with being concerned with beating poor Mackay to death, Subsequently the charge was withdrawn against ten of the accused, some of whom, it is expected, will turn King's evidence.
"The facts, as revealed by the evidence already heard, show that a whole crowd of these coolies set on Mackay, who was a the Tumang Estate, Johore Rubber Lands, and beat him so that he i Mackay was a quiet man, very popular with the natives, to whom he was generally kind, and we are at a loss to understand the motive for the crime. It would appear that there was some sort of @ conspiracy about the affair, for at the time of the assault one of the other assistants was away, while the second, Mr. I. 8. Mackay—no relation of the murdered man— was engaged in a factory, and was, as the natives well knew, quite out of hearing.
"The murder took place in the coolie lines, just after the Javancee tappers returned to quarters, According to the evidence given by some of the prisoners, Mr. Mackay complained that some of the tappers were in the habit of retaining scrap,' and he went, on the morning in question, into their rooms and ordered them to give up any scrap which they might have. One of the boys, Sadnam bin Ramastan, said that the "'tuan' asked him for his scrap, and on his giving it up Mr. Mackay struck him and moved into the room of Dahlan, another tapper- Dahlan said that he had no scrap, and that thereupon Mr. Mackay struck him, and ther started to search his room, throw-is things about. It is scarcely ivable, however, that Mackay, who had had a long experience,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.