Two types of career in the tropics: glory, or at least ignominy, or a rough oblong box and no-one to be sorry.

Isabella journeys to Kuala Kangsar to see Hugh Low and finds herself dining alone with apes.

“Mr Maxwell is most abstemious and is energetically at work from an early hour in the morning. There is a perpetual coming and going of Malays and an air of business without fuss.”

Ngah Ibrahim was on his way to become a Sultan of his own Sultanate but somehow things did not quite work out.

After a bit of civil disturbance resulting in the deaths of about five thousand people, Captain Speedy renamed Larut, Tai Ping, Heavenly Peace.

“We saw many Malay Kampongs,” she wrote, “under the palms, each with a fire lighted underneath it, and there were many other fires for the water buffaloes, with groups of these uncouth brutes gathered invariably on the leeward side, glad to be smoked rather than bitten by the mosquitoes.”

Empress good - coolie get money, keep it!

Sultan Abdullah invites in British advisors to Perak. However, there is that awkward problem of him not being the appointed Sultan.

Isabella witnessed Bloomfield Douglas presiding over a court case concerning the murder of Superintendent Lloyd on Pangkor Island by a Chinese gang. Isabella Bird is finding her journey around the "Native States" increasingly alarming. She may continue her cool reporting of events but her dreams, as we shall see later on, are taking an alarming turn.

Bloomfield Douglas was much maligned by Isabella Bird, but surely he cannot have been that bad?

Just when Abdul Samad seem to be reassuring his grip on the situation…

Who's head ended up on the gate? Who's underpants were those?

Selangor is a most wretched place - worse than Klang!

“Klang is a most misthriven, decayed, dejected, miserable looking place,” announced Isabella.