Palong untong

In this article, I would like to draw your attention to the following entry¹ in R. J. Wilkinson's Malay-English dictionary:

ڤالڠ  palong.
A trough such is used for feeding
or watering animals.

Wilkinson's work was published in 1901 and it suggests that palong (as sluice box) entered the popular Malay lexicon only relatively lately. However, the word can be readily found in a vocabulary list compiled by Abraham Hale (b. 1854, d. 1919) in 1885.

Two Chinese are seen washing gold at Columbia River, utilizing a short palong (sluice box) and a dulang (pan) to achieve gravimetric separation of gold from dirt. The scene was painted by a Wenatchee artist named Walter Graham, and it may be seen at the Rocky Reach Discovery Center, Wenatchee, Washington. The Chinese term for palong is 金山溝. To me, the word 金山 is clearly a toponym (either a reference to San Francisco 舊金山 or Victoria 新金山, most likely the former). It is reasonable to posit that the use of palong was memetically transferred from San Francisco to British Malaya.

In p. 615, we were given the word ‘lanchor' and the following technical definition was supplied by Wilkinson: Lanchor is used in a technical sense by alluvial miners to describe the process of empyting the wet tin-bearing earth into the washer in order to separate earth and ore.

New Gold Mountain 新金山 is an Australian miniseries produced by SBS Television (released on 13 October 2021). It recounts a story about Chinese miners in Victoria in 1857.

Earlier, we noted that in his 1877 letter² to Douglas, Yap Ah Loy 葉德來 wrote:

. . . banyak susah karana air tiada hendak lanchor³ (لنچور) . . .

Some associated ‘lanchor' with gravel pump, but this assignment cannot be correct in 1877 since the gravel pump⁴ must be primed with a suitable driver or energy converter (powered by either steam engine, diesel engine or electrical motor, none of these were available to Captain Yap). Therefore, Yap's l-n-ch-o-r لنچور is likely a generic reference to the process of gravimetric separation of tin ore and dirt.

A palong or sluice box for washing gold, built by Michael Davis.

The 6-lane palong at the Rahman Hydraulic Tin Sendirian Berhad site, Kĕlian Intan, Perak

In another letter written by Chin Ah Chan 陳泉生 to Douglas (30 January 1882), the word ‘parit' was used (在呀吃開創港門大小吧咧十五座 a pangkalan was established in Langat, and 15 parits of varying sizes were constructed).

Chin's ‘parit' must be the precursor⁵ to our modern ‘palong' if the term is considered alongside Swettenham's description of the Ulu Selangor mines. My one-liner to link up ‘lanchor' and ‘parit' and ‘palong' is:

To separate tin from dirt, one simply lanchor the paydirt in the and add water.

Over time, ‘parit' may have evolved into gradient-optimized ‘palong' to maximize production yield. I suppose that the earliest ‘palong' is simply a conduit reengineered from water troughs for feeding animals.

The taibakgung deity 大伯公 enshrined at the old Chinese temple in Kampar 金寶古廟 is propitiously decorated with the phrase ڤالڠ انتڠ palong untong 坲㙟穩當 (fatlong wandong in Cantonese or futlong vundong in Huizhou dialect). The production deity was originally worshipped to placeboically ensure site safety and efficiency of tin washing. The tin field tutelary was originally housed in a factory shrine before he was relocated to the Temple. Here palong is a reference to: (a) palong the production line or (b) palong the tin factory. Note the orthographically correct multiplication is 土 × (弗 + 郎) = 坲 + 㙟. The 㙟-glyph is used here because the correct character is not available in the Unicode chinese block so one has to either use 瑯 or 㙟 or ⿰土郎.

Another related Malay word⁶ is ‘paloh', which is simply a hole with stagnant water. And the example (extracted from Hikayat Iskandar Dzu al-Karnain) given by Wilkinson was:

‘Mahu engkau minum air pada paloh bukit ini?'

At this point, one is attempted to propose the following etymological evolution:

paloh (pothole) ▶ palong (in farms) ▶ palong (in tin mines)

1. See R. J. Wilkinson (1901), p. 450.
   According to the list given by Hale in 1885, a palong is a sluice-box made of a tree split in half and hollowed out.
   
   
   
   One about 8 feet long is used in the process called memalong (primary washing of the ores); the other 5 feet long, is used in the process called memandei (final or secondary washing). The Kinta palong, as described by Hale, is apparently a miniature palong and it was probably not aggressively sloped like its optimized descendants.
   
   A. Hale (1885) On mines and miners in Kinta, Perak, JSBRAS 16(2), see p. 317. Hale was the Inspector of Mines in Kinta Valley.
   
   
2. See 1957/0000387W.
   
   
3. Note that unlike Yap Ah Loy (لنچور = l-n-ch-o-r), Wilkinson did not explicitly spell out the wa-phonem (و) in his dictionary (لنچر = l-n-ch-r). The spelling employed by Kamus Dewan is similar to that of Yap Ah Loy (لنچور = l-n-ch-o-r) but modern romanized form of the word (lancur) is used, instead of lanchor.
   
   Hale's list of 1885 contains lanchor's sister-word, but he equated the act of melancut (used by Chinese miners) to mengumbei (used by Malay miners to mean: to stir the dirt in the small race in order to break up lumps and liberate the stones)
   
   
   
   
4. Another example. Lew incorrectly claimed that the gravel pump technology was introduced by the Chinese from China:
   
   19世紀40年代開始，霹靂、雪蘭莪和森美蘭發現大量的錫藏，當地土酋大量雇傭華人採錫，華人也將中國較為先進的砂泵採錫法帶來，為錫礦業的發展奠下牢固的基礎。
   
   See p. 130. Lew Bon Hoi (2025) A history of the Malaysian Chinese, SIRD, Petaling Jaya.
   
   
5. Description of all unit operations (parit 泥溝 , palong 金山溝, etc) in his tin field is carefully detailed by Tan Sri Hew See Tong 邱思東 (b. 1931, d. 2022) in this book. See S. T. Hew (2015) The glittering history of gravel pump mining industry 錫日輝煌– 砂泵採錫工業的歷程與終結, Kinta Tin Mining Museum.
   
   According to Hew, a parit or a sluice line is a channel, typically measuring 4 feet in wide, and 25 feet in length, carved directly into hillside, and water must be induced artificially into the parit from the nearest water source, such as a dam (ampang), to initiate tin production (see p. 38). In p. 42, lanchor was rendered as ‘lanchute' and it was used by Hew to refer to wooden sluice box or palong 木溝 | 金山溝. Hew's orthographic choice shows the word was transmitted verbally to him and the canonically correct spelling of l-n-ch-r (لنچر ) was probably not known to Hew.
   
   In a paper written by J. C. Pasqual in 1895, we were told that the use of mine and parit was interchangable in Perak and Selangor: A miner will refer to his occupation as cho pa-lit 做吧咧 (dig ditch) or siong pa-lit 上吧咧 (go up to a ditch).
   
   J. C. Pasqual (1895) Selangor Journal 3, p. 292 (17 May 1895). Pasqual joined the Land Office in Kuala Lumpur around 1885, and he was the president of the Miner's Association in the FMS in 1902.
   
   
6. See R. J. Wilkinson, p. 450. paloh (ڤاله) A hollow filled with stagnant water; pools of water left below high-water-mark by the receding tide; cavities on the sloping sides of a hill which remain filled with water after heavy rain.

Term	Meaning
Kĕlian	Kĕlian کلين (W, p. 531) is the northern pronunciation of the word galian. The Northern Malays (e.g. Kedah) and Southern Malays (e.g. Johor-Riau) handle the ک-sound differently. Orthographically we have ک for K and ݢ for G, but Siti Hawa Salleh (1970) Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, p. 243. Siti Hawa Salleh (1970) pointed out that ک and ݢ are often interchangeable in Kedah Malay. In older manuscripts, the (ک|گ)-glyph is sometimes used (i.e. G is diacriticalized with a line instead of a dot, e.g. in the letters written by Yap Ah Loy 葉德來). The word is fossilized in placenames such as Kĕlian Bharu 新吉輦 (present-day Kamunting) and Kĕlian Pauh 吉輦包 in Perak. Kĕlian Bahru was the second Larut site and it was dominated by Huizhou 惠州 Hakka tribe (and later by Xinning 新寧 Hakka tribe). The older site, Kĕlian Pauh, was managed by another Hakka tribe from Zengcheng 增城. The Zengcheng Hakka was the first Hakka tribe brought in to work in Larut from Penang by Long Ja‘far, the father of Ngah Ibrahim (d. 1895). Ngah Ibrahim was implicated in the Birch's murder case and he was eventually banished to the Seychelles in 1877. Also, not unlike the Malays, the Koreans handle their ㄱ-phonem differently, depending on the position of the syallable (e.g. in the Netflix series 照明가게, the word 가게 is pronounced Kā-Ge カーゲ).
Parit	In general, a parit ڤارت (W, p. 445) is a trench, a moat, a ditch, a longkang, a race, a sluice line, a canal cut for drainage purposes. In tin production, however, a parit 吧咧 is a production line, cut directly into hillside. This primitive form of production line is constrained by the hill gradient and the location of the nearest ampang (water dam). All the ores washed up out of the parit is the property of the anak kĕlian after they cleared the mining tax or hasil kĕlian. The cut received by the tuan kĕlian (or the owner of the mine) is typically \(\frac{1}{3}\) of the output for hill mining and \(\frac{1}{6}\) for excavated output (H, p. 314, 318). According to Pasqual (1895), the use of mine and parit was interchangable in Perak and Selangor. Hale made a special reference to the Sakais. When referring to tin mines, the term used by the aboriginal people is parit. A chinese miner will refer to his occupation as cho pa-lit 做吧咧 (dig ditch) or siong pa-lit 上吧咧 (go up to a ditch) or naik ke kĕlian (H, p. 316 - 317). The term 吧咧 is likely unfamiliar to Hew since he semantically rendered parit as 泥溝 (mud trench). Note that the Chinese rendered parit as 吧咧 instead of 巴列, For example, 先夫于吉壠埔一埠，始則屢立戰功，廣開地利，繼而竭力維持，招商屯集，阖埠頭家吧咧人等，莫不踐土**懷恩公。同酌，奪每錫一扒抽銀一員。是則兵先之酬，㨿謂非報鴻恩，聊申蟻悃等語 (My late husband, in the town of Kuala Lumpur, initially achieved many military successes and worked extensively to develop the land's potential. Subsequently, he exerted great effort to maintain and promote commerce, gathering resources. Collectively, the towkays and miners in this mining cottage felt grateful to him, and it was decided in a joint discussion that a discretionary tax of one Spanish silver dollar* on every bhara of tin was to be levied, primarily to support administrative expenses). *Tin price was approximately $91 per bhara in 1885. **Jiantu 踐土 was a placename (a city in present-day Henan) in Chunqiu era. It is famous because it was in this city the Treaty of Jiantu was sealed. In the petition to Governor of the Straits Settlements 三省大王, the miners in Kuala Lumpur are referred to as people of the parit 吧咧人. The petition was written by Kok Kang Keow 郭庚嬌, shortly after the death of her husband, the wealthiest tuan kĕlian in Kuala Lumpur, Yap Ah Loy. Kok was eventually told, via J. P. Rodger 緞啰㘃大王, who was the acting Selangor Resident, that Cecil Clementi Smith was ‘unable to entertain her prayer', although Kok later downplayed her husband's fame as: merely empty name propagated vainly, with little actual accomplishment, and merely a jester in the theater of colonial politics 不過徒傳虛名，實無多業，溯自小丑跳梁. Smith was the acting governor when Frederick A. Weld was away in England. The orthographically correct way to mark or indicate words of foreign origin is to multiply them phonems with the mouth-radical: 口 × (巴 + 列) = 吧 + 咧. This practice, regrettably, is no longer strictly followed by the Chinese. The convention is now used only by chemical engineer like me to transliterate the names of cyclic compounds like 噻吩 thiophene (口 × 塞 + 口 × 分), 嘌呤 purine (口 × 票 + 口 × 令), 吡啶 pyridine (口 × 比 + 口 × 定), etc. Here the mouth-radical indicates both the ring structure and that the word is a loan word.