THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE AND THE WAY THITHER

BY ISABELLA L. BIRD (Mrs. Bishop)

PREFACE

In presenting to the public the last installment of my travels in the
Far East, in 1879, I desire to offer, both to my readers and critics, my
grateful acknowledgments for the kindness with which my letters from
Japan were received, and to ask for an equally kind and lenient estimate
of my present volume, which has been prepared for publication under the
heavy shadow of the loss of the beloved and only sister to whom the
letters of which it consists were written, and whose able and careful
criticism, as well as loving interest, accompanied my former volumes
through the press.

It is by her wish that this book has received the title of the "Golden
Chersonese," a slightly ambitious one; and I must at once explain that
my letters treat of only its western portion, for the very sufficient
reason that the interior is unexplored by Europeans, half of it being
actually so little known that the latest map gives only the position of
its coast-line. I hope, however, that my book will be accepted as an
honest attempt to make a popular contribution to the sum of knowledge of
a beautiful and little-traveled region, with which the majority of
educated people are so little acquainted that it is constantly
confounded with the Malay Archipelago, but which is practically under
British rule, and is probable destined to afford increasing employment
to British capital and enterprise.

The introductory chapter, and the explanatory chapters on Sungei Ujong,
Selangor and Perak, contain information of a rather more solid character
than is given in my sketches of travel, and are intended to make the
letters more intelligible and useful.* The map by Mr. Daly is the result
of the most recent surveys, and is published here by permission of the
Royal Geographical Society. 
[*These chapters are based upon sundry reports and other official
papers, and I have largely drawn upon those storehouses of accurate and
valuable information, Newbold's "British Settlements in Malacca," and
Crawfurd's "Dictionary of the Indian Islands."]

As I traveled under official auspices, and was entertained at the houses
of officials everywhere, I feel it to be due to my entertainers to say
that I have carefully abstained from giving their views on any subjects
on which they may have uttered them in the ease of friendly intercourse,
except in two or three trivial instances, in which I have quoted them as
my authorities. The opinions expressed are wholly my own, whether right
or wrong, and I accept the fullest responsibility for them.

For the sketchy personal descriptions which are here and there given, I
am sure of genial forgiveness from my friends in the Malay Peninsula,
and from them also I doubt not that I shall receive the most kindly
allowance, if, in spite of carefulness, I have fallen into mistakes.

In writing to my sister my first aim was accuracy, and my next to make
her see what I saw; but beside the remarkably contradictory statements
of the few resident Europeans and my own observations, I had little to
help me, and realized every day how much truth there is in the dictum of
Socrates--"The body is a hindrance to acquiring knowledge, and sight and
hearing are not to be trusted."* 
[*Phaedo of Plato. Chapter x.]

This volume is mainly composed of my actual letters, unaltered, except
by various omissions and some corrections as to matters of fact. The
interest of my visits to the prison and execution ground of Canton, and
of my glimpses of Anamese villages, may, I hope, be in some degree
communicated to my readers, even though Canton and Saigon are on the
beaten track of travelers.

I am quite aware that "Letters" which have not received any literary
dress are not altogether satisfactory either to author or reader, for
the author sacrifices artistic arrangement and literary merit, and the
reader is apt to find himself involved among repetitions, and a
multiplicity of minor details, treated in a fashion which he is inclined
to term "slipshod;" but, on the whole, I think that descriptions written
on the spot, even with their disadvantages, are the best mode of making
the reader travel with the traveler, and share his first impressions in
their original vividness. With these explanatory remarks I add my little
volume to the ever-growing library of the literature of travel.

I. L. B.
FEBRUARY, 1883

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

The Aurea Chersonesus--The Conquest of Malacca--The Straits 
Settlements--The Configuration of the Peninsula--A Terra Incognita--
The Monsoons--Products of the Peninsula--The Great Vampire--Beasts 
and Reptiles--Malignant and Harmless Insects--Land and Water Birds--
Traditions of Malay Immigration--Wild and Civilized Races--Kafirs--
The Samangs and Orang-outang--Characteristics of the Jakuns--
Babas and Sinkehs--The Malay Physiognomy--Language andLiterature--
Malay Poetry and Music--Malay Astronomy--Education and Law--Malay 
Sports--Domestic Habits--Weapons--Slavery and Debt Bondage--
Government--"No Information"


Canton and Saigon, and whatever else is comprised in the second half of
my title, are on one of the best beaten tracks of travelers, and need
no introductory remarks.

But the Golden Chersonese is still somewhat of a terra incognita; there
is no point on its mainland at which European steamers call, and the
usual conception of it is as a vast and malarious equatorial jungle,
sparsely peopled by a race of semi-civilized and treacherous
Mohammedans. In fact, it is as little known to most people as it was to
myself before I visited it; and as reliable information concerning it
exists mainly in valuable volumes now out of print, or scattered
through blue books and the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of
Singapore, I make no apology for prefacing my letters from the Malay
Peninsula with as many brief preliminary statements as shall serve to
make them intelligible, requesting those of my readers who are familiar
with the subject to skip this chapter altogether.

The Aurea Chersonesus of Ptolemy, the "Golden Chersonese" of Milton,
the Malay Peninsula of our day, has no legitimate claim to an ancient
history. The controversy respecting the identity of its Mount Ophir
with the Ophir of Solomon has been "threshed out" without much result,
and the supposed allusion to the Malacca Straits by Pliny is too vague
to be interesting.

The region may be said to have been rediscovered in 1513 by the
Portuguese, and the first definite statement concerning it appears to
be in a letter from Emanuel, King of Portugal, to the Pope. In the
antique and exaggerated language of the day, he relates that his
general, the famous Albuquerque, after surprising conquests in India,
had sailed to the Aurea Chersonesus, called by its inhabitants Malacca.
He had captured the city of Malacca, sacked it, slaughtered the Moors
(Mohammedans) who defended it, destroyed its twenty-five thousand
houses abounding in gold, pearls, precious stones, and spices, and on
its site had built a fortress with walls fifteen feet thick, out of the
ruins of its mosques.  The king, who fought upon an elephant, was badly
wounded and fled. Further, on hearing of the victory, the King of Siam,
from whom Malacca had been "usurped by the Moors," sent to the
conqueror a cup of gold, a carbuncle, and a sword inlaid with gold.
This conquest was vaunted of as a great triumph of the Cross over the
Crescent, and as its result, by the year 1600 nearly the whole commerce
of the Straits had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese.

Of the remaining "Moorish", or Malay kingdoms, Acheen, in Sumatra, was
the most powerful, so powerful, indeed, that its king was able to
besiege the great stronghold of Malacca more than once with a fleet,
according to the annalist, of "more than five hundred sail, one hundred
of which were of greater size than any then constructed in Europe, and
the warriors or mariners that it bore amounted to sixty thousand,
commanded by the king in person." The first mention of Johore, or Jhor,
and Perak occurs about the same time, Perak being represented as a very
powerful and wealthy State.

The Portuguese, by their persevering and relentless religious crusade
against the Mohammedans, converted all the States which were adjacent
to their conquests into enemies, and by 1641 their empire in the
Straits was seized upon by the Dutch, who, not being troubled by much
religious earnestness, got on very well with the Malay Princes, and
succeeded in making advantageous commercial treaties with them.

A curious but fairly accurate map of the coasts of the Peninsula was
prepared in Paris in 1668 to accompany the narrative of the French
envoy to the Court of Siam, but neither the mainland nor the adjacent
islands attracted any interest in this country till the East India
Company acquired Pinang in 1775, Province Wellesley in 1798, Singapore
in 1823, and Malacca in 1824. These small but important colonies were
consolidated in 1867 into one Government under the Crown, and are now
known as the Straits Settlements, and prized as among the most valuable
of our possessions in the Far East. Though these settlements are merely
small islands or narrow strips of territory on the coast, their
population, by the census of 1881, exceeded four hundred and twenty-two
thousand souls, and in 1880 their exports and imports amounted to
32,353,000 pounds!

Besides these little bits of British territory scattered along a
coast-line nearly four hundred miles in length, there are, on the west
side of the Peninsula, the native States of Kedah, Perak, Selangor, and
Sungei Ujong, the last three of which are under British "protection;"
and on the east are Patani, Kelantan, Tringganu, and Pahang; the
southern extremity being occupied by the State of Johore.  The
interior, which is scarcely at all known, contains toward its centre
the Negri Sembilan, a confederation of eight (formerly nine) small
States. The population of the native States of the Peninsula is not
accurately known, but, inclusive of a few wild tribes and the Chinese
immigrants, it is estimated at three hundred and ten thousand; which
gives under nine inhabitants to the square mile, the population of the
British settlements being about four hundred and twenty to the square
mile.

The total length of the Peninsula is eight hundred miles, and its
breadth varies from sixty to one hundred and fifty miles. It runs down
from lat. 13 degrees 50' N. to 1 degree 41' N. The northern part,
forming the Isthmus of Kraw, which it is proposed to pierce for a ship
canal, runs nearly due north and south for one hundred and forty miles,
and is inhabited by a mixed race, mainly Siamese, called by the Malays
Sansam. This Isthmus is under the rule of Siam, which is its northern
boundary; and the northern and eastern States of Kedah, Patani,
Kelantan, Pahang, and Tringganu, are more or less tributary to this
ambitious empire, which at intervals has exacted a golden rose, the
token of vassalage, from every State in the Peninsula.  Except at the
point where the Isthmus of Kraw joins Siam, the Peninsula is surrounded
by the sea to the east by the China Sea and the Gulf of Siam, and to
the south and west by the Straits of Malacca and the Bay of Bengal. The
area of the mainland is conjectured to be the same as that of Britain,
but the region occupied by the Malays does not exceed sixty-one
thousand one hundred and fifty square miles, and is about half the size
of Java.

Its configuration is not very well known, but a granitic mountain
chain, rising in Perak to ascertained heights of eight thousand feet,
runs down its whole length near the centre, with extensive outlying
spurs, and alluvial plains on both sides densely covered with jungle,
as are also the mountains. There are no traces of volcanic formation,
though thermal springs exist in Malacca. The rivers are numerous, but
with one exception small, and are seldom navigable beyond the reach of
the tides, except by flat-bottomed boats. It is believed that there are
scarcely any lakes.

The general formation is granitic, overlaid by sandstone, laterite or
clay ironstone, and to the north by limestone.  Iron ores are found
everywhere, and are so little regarded for their metallic contents
that, though containing, according to Mr. Logan, a skillful geologist,
sixty percent of pure metal, they are used in Singapore for
macadamizing the roads! Gold has been obtained in all ages, and
formerly in considerable quantities, but the annual yield does not now
exceed nineteen thousand ounces. The vastest tin fields in the world
are found in the western Malay States, and hitherto the produce has
been "stream tin" only, the metal not having been traced to its veins
in the rock.

The map, the result of recent surveys by Mr. Daly, and published in
1882 by the Royal Geographical Society, shows that there is a vast
extent, more than half of the Malay Peninsula, unexplored. Its most
laborious explorer confesses that "of the internal government,
geography, mineral products, and geology of these regions, we do not
know anything," and, he adds, that "even in this nineteenth century, a
country rich in its resources, and important through its contiguity to
our British possessions, is still a closed volume." "If we let the
needle in, the thread is sure to follow" (meaning that if they let an
Englishman pass through their territories, British annexation would be
the natural sequence), was the reason given to Mr. Daly for turning him
back from the States of the Negri Sembilan.

The climate is singularly healthy for Europeans as well as natives,
although both hot and moist, as may be expected from being so close to
the equator. Besides, the Peninsula is very nearly an insular region;
it is densely covered with evergreen forests, and few parts of it are
more than fifty miles from the sea. There are no diseases of climate
except marsh fevers, which assail Europeans if they camp out at night
on low, swampy grounds.

In 5 degrees 15' N., about the latitude of the northern boundary of
Perak, at the sea-level the mean annual temperature is nearly 80
degrees, with a range of 20 degrees; at Malacca in 2 degrees 14' N. it
is 80 degrees, with a range of 15 degrees; and at Singapore, in lat. 1
degree 17', it is 82 degrees, with a range of 24 degrees.  Though the
climate is undeniably a "hot" one, the heat, tempered by alternating
land and sea breezes, is seldom oppressive except just before rain, and
the thermometer never attains anything approaching those torrid
temperatures which are registered in India, Japan, the United States,
and other parts of the temperate zones.

The rainfall is not excessive, averaging about one hundred and ten
inches annually, and there is no regular rainy season. In fact it rains
in moderation all the year round.  Three days seldom pass without
refreshing showers, and if there are ten rainless days together, a rare
phenomenon, people begin to talk of "the drought." Practically the year
is divided into two parts by the "monsoons."* The monsoon is not a
storm, as many people suppose, from a vague association of the word
"typhoon," but a steady wind blowing, in the case of the Malay
Peninsula, for six months from the north-east, bringing down the
Chinamen in their junks, and for six months from the southwest,
bringing traders from Arabia and India. The climate is the pleasantest
during the north-east monsoon, which lasts from October to April. It is
during the south-west monsoon that the heavier rains, accompanied by
electrical disturbances, occur. The central mountain range protects the
Peninsula alternately from both monsoons, the high Sumatran mountains
protecting its west side from the south-west winds. The east side is
exposed for six months to a modified north-east monsoon. Everywhere
else throughout the almost changeless year, steadily alternating land
and sea breezes with gentle variable winds and calms prevail,
interrupted occasionally on the west coast during the "summer" by
squalls from the south-west, which last for one or two hours, and are
known as "Sumatrans." Hurricanes and earthquakes are unknown. Drenching
dews fall on clear nights.  
[*This word is recognized as a corruption by Portuguese and British
tongues of the Arabic word "musim," "season."]

The Peninsula is a gorgeous tropic land, and, with its bounteous
rainfall and sunshine, brings forth many of the most highly prized
productions of the tropics, with some that are peculiar to itself. Its
botany is as yet very imperfectly known. Some of its forest trees are
very valuable as timber, and others produce hard-veined woods which
take a high polish. Rattans, Malacca canes, and gutta are well known as
among its forest products; gutta, with its extensive economical uses,
having been used only for Malay horsewhips and knife-handles previous
to 1843. The wild nutmeg is indigenous, and the nutmeg of commerce and
the clove have been introduced and thrive. Pepper and some other spices
flourish, and the soil with but a little cultivation produces rice wet
and dry, tapioca, gambier, sugar-cane, coffee, yams, sweet potatoes,
cocoa, sago, cotton, tea, cinchona, india rubber, and indigo. Still it
is doubtful whether a soil can be called fertile which is incapable of
producing the best kinds of cereals. European vegetables are on the
whole a dismal failure. Conservatism in diet must be given up by
Europeans; the yam, edible arum, and sweet potato must take the place
of the "Irish potato," and water-melons and cucumbers that of our peas,
beans, artichokes, cabbages, and broccoli. The Chinese raise coarse
radishes and lettuce, and possibly the higher grounds may some day be
turned into market gardens. The fruits, however, are innumerable, as
well as wholesome and delicious. Among them the durion is the most
esteemed by the natives, and the mangosteen by Europeans.

The fauna of the Peninsula is most remarkable and abundant; indeed,
much of its forest-covered interior is inhabited by wild beasts alone,
and gigantic pachyderms, looking like monsters of an earlier age, roam
unmolested over vast tracts of country. Among this thick-skinned family
are the elephant, the one-horned rhinoceros, the Malayan tapir, and the
wild hog; the last held in abomination by the Malays, but constituting
the chief animal food of some of the wild tribes.

A small bear with a wistful face represents the Plantigrade family. The
Quadrumana are very numerous. There are nine monkeys, one, if not two
apes, and a lemur or sloth, which screens its eyes from the light.

Of the Digitigrada there are the otter or water-dog, the musang and
climbing musang, the civet cat, the royal tiger, the spotted black
tiger, in whose glossy raven-black coat the characteristic markings are
seen in certain lights; the tiger cat, the leopard, the Java cat, and
four or five others. Many of these feline animals abound.

Among the ruminants are four species of deer, two smaller than a hare,
and one as large as an elk; a wild goat similar to the Sumatran
antelope; the domestic goat, a mean little beast; the buffalo, a great,
nearly hairless, gray or pink beast, bigger than the buffalo of China
and India; a short-legged domestic ox, and two wild oxen or bisons,
which are rare.

The bat family is not numerous. The vampire flies high, in great
flocks, and is very destructive to fruit. This frugiverous bat, known
popularly as the "flying fox," is a very interesting-looking animal,
and is actually eaten by the people of Ternate. At the height of the
fruit season, thousands of these creatures cross from Sumatra to the
mainland, a distance never less than forty miles. Their strength of
wing is enormous. I saw one captured in the steamer Nevada, forty-five
miles from the Navigators, with wings measuring, when extended, nearly
five feet across.  These are formed of a jet black membrane, and have a
highly polished claw at the extremity of each. The feet consist of five
polished black claws, with which the bat hangs on, head downward, to
the forest trees. His body is about twice the size of that of a very
large rat, black and furry underneath, and with red foxy fur on the
head and neck. He has a pointed face, a very black nose, and prominent
black eyes, with a remorseless expression in them. An edible bat of
vagrant habits is also found.

Ponies are imported from Sumatra, and a few horses from Australia, but
the latter do not thrive.

The domestic cat always looks as if half his tail had been taken off in
a trap. The domestic dog is the Asiatic, not the European dog, a leggy,
ugly, vagrant, uncared-for fellow, furnishing a useful simile and
little more.

Weasels, squirrels, polecats, porcupines, and other small animals exist
in numbers, and the mermaid, of the genus Halicore, connects the
inhabitants of the land and water.  This Duyong, described as a
creature seven or eight feet long, with a head like that of an elephant
deprived of its proboscis, and the body and tail of a fish, frequents
the Sumatran and Malayan shores, and its flesh is held in great
estimation at the tables of sultans and rajahs. Besides these (and the
list is long enough) there are many small beasts.

The reptiles are unhappily very numerous. Crawfurd mentions forty
species of snakes, including the python and the cobra. Alligators in
great numbers infest the tidal waters of the rivers. Iguanas and
lizards of several species, marsh-frogs, and green tree-frogs abound.
The land-leeches are a great pest. Scorpions and centipedes are
abundant.  There are many varieties of ants, among them a formidable-
looking black creature nearly two inches long, a large red ant, whose
bite is like a bad pinch from forceps, and which is the chief source of
formic acid, and the termes, or white ant, most destructive to timber.

The carpenter beetle is also found, an industrious insect, which
riddles the timber of any building in which he effects a lodgment, and
is as destructive as dry rot. There are bees and wasps, and hornets of
large size, and a much-dreaded insect, possibly not yet classified,
said to be peculiar to the Peninsula, which inflicts so severe a wound
as to make a strong man utter a cry of agony. But of all the pests the
mosquitoes are the worst. A resident may spend some time in the country
and know nothing from experience of scorpions, centipedes,
land-leeches, and soldier ants, but he cannot escape from the mosquito,
the curse of these well-watered tropic regions. In addition to the
night mosquito, there is a striped variety of large size, known as the
"tiger mosquito," much to be feared, for it pursues its bloodthirsty
work in the daytime.

Among the harmless insects may be mentioned the cicada, which fills the
forest with its cheery din, the green grasshopper, spiders, and flies
of several species, dragon-flies of large size and brilliant coloring,
and butterflies and moths of surpassing beauty, which delight in the
hot, moist, jungle openings, and even surpass the flowers in the glory
and variety of their hues. Among them the atlas moth is found,
measuring from eight to ten inches across its wings. The leaf insects
are also fascinating, and the fire-flies in a mangrove swamp on a
dark, still night, moving in gentle undulations, or flashing into
coruscations after brief intervals of quiescence, are inconceivably
beautiful.

The birds of the Peninsula are many and beautiful. Sun-birds rival the
flashing colors of the humming-birds in the jungle openings;
king-fishers of large size and brilliant blue plumage make the river
banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender
green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed hornbills
hop cumbrously from branch to branch, rivaling in their awkward gait
the rhinoceros hornbills; the Javanese peacock, with its gorgeous tail
and neck covered with iridescent green feathers instead of blue ones,
moves majestically along the jungle tracks, together with the ocellated
pheasant, the handsome and high-couraged jungle cock, and the glorious
Argus pheasant, a bird of twilight and night, with "a hundred eyes" on
each feather of its stately tail.

According to Mr. Newbold, two birds of paradise (Paradisea regia and
Paradisea gularis) are natives of the Peninsula,* and among other
bright-winged creatures are the glorious crimson-feathered pergam, the
penciled pheasant, the peacock pheasant, the blue pheasant partridge,
the mina, and the dial bird, with an endless variety of parrots,
lories, green-feathered pigeons of various sizes, and wood-peckers.
Besides these there are falcons, owls, or "spectre birds," sweet-voiced
butcher birds, storks, fly-catchers, and doves, and the swallow which
builds the gelatinous edible nest, which is the foundation of the
expensive luxury "Bird's Nest Soup," frequents the verdant islands on
the coast.  
[*Mr. Newbold is ordinarily so careful and accurate that it is almost
presumptuous to hint that in this particular case he may not have been
able to verify the statements of the natives by actual observation.]

Nor are our own water birds wanting. There are bitterns, rails,
wild-duck, teal, snipes; the common, gray, and whistling plover; green,
black, and red quails; and the sport on the plains and reedy marshes,
and along the banks of rivers, is most excellent.

Turtles abound off the coast, and tortoises, one variety with a hard
shell, and the other with a soft one and a rapid movement, are found in
swampy places. The river fish are neither abundant nor much esteemed;
but the sea furnishes much of the food of both Malays and Chinese, and
the dried and salted fish prepared on the coast is considered very
good.

At European tables in the settlements the red mullet, a highly prized
fish, the pomfret, considered more delicious than the turbot, and the
tungeree, with cray-fish, crabs, prawns, and shrimps, are usually seen.
The tongue-fish, something like a sole, the gray mullet, the
hammer-headed shark, and various fish, with vivid scarlet and yellow
stripes alternating with black, are eaten, along with cockles, "razor
shells," and king-crabs. The lover of fishy beauty is abundantly
gratified by the multitudes of fish of brilliant colors, together with
large medusae, which dart or glide through the sunlit waters among the
coral-groves, where every coral spray is gemmed with zoophytes, whose
rainbow-tinted arms sway with the undulations of the water, and where
sea-snakes writhe themselves away into the recesses of coral caves.

Nature is so imposing, so magnificent, and so prolific on the Malay
Peninsula, that one naturally gives man the secondary place which I
have assigned to him in this chapter. The whole population of the
Golden Chersonese, a region as large as Great Britain, is not more than
three-quarters of a million, and less than a half of this is Malay.
Neither great wars, nor an ancient history, nor a valuable literature,
nor stately ruins, nor barbaric splendors, attract scholars or
sight-seers to the Peninsula.

The Malays are not the Aborigines of this singular spit of land, and,
they are its colonists rather than its conquerors. Their histories,
which are chiefly traditional, state that the extremity of the
Peninsula was peopled by a Malay emigration from Sumatra about the
middle of the twelfth century, and that the descendants of these
colonists settled Malacca and other places on the coast about a century
later. Tradition refers the peopling of the interior States to another
and later migration from Sumatra, with a chief at its head, who, with
all his followers, married Aboriginal wives; the Aboriginal tribes
retreating into the jungles and mountains as the Malays spread
themselves over the region now known as the States of the Negri
Sembilan. The conquest or colonization of the Malay Peninsula by the
Malays is not, however, properly speaking, matter of history, and the
origin of the Malay race and its early history are only matters of more
or less reasonable hypothesis. It is fair, however, to presume that
Sumatra was the ancient seat of the race, and the wonderful valley of
Menangkabau, surrounded by mountains ten thousand feet in height, that
of its earliest civilization. The only Malay "colonial" kingdoms on the
Peninsula which ever attained any importance were those of Malacca and
Johore, and even their reliable history begins with the arrival of the
Portuguese. The conversion of the Sumatra Malays to Mohammedanism arose
mainly out of their commercial intercourse with Arabia; it was slow,
not violent, and is supposed to have begun in the thirteenth century.

A population of "Wild Tribes," variously estimated at from eight
thousand to eleven thousand souls, is still found in the Peninsula, and
even if research should eventually prove them not to be its Aborigines,
they are, without doubt, the same races which were found inhabiting it
by the earliest Malay colonists.

These are frequently called by the Malays "Orang Benua," or "men of the
country," but they are likewise called "Orang-outang," the name which
we apply to the big ape of Borneo.  The accompanying engraving
represents very faithfully the "Orang-outang" of the interior. The few
accounts given of the wild tribes vary considerably, but apparently
they may be divided into two classes, the Samangs, or Oriental Negroes
or Negritos and the Orang Benua, frequently called Jakuns, and in Perak
Sakei. By the Malays they are called indiscriminately Kafirs or
infidels, and are interesting to them only in so far as they can use
them for bearing burdens, clearing jungle, procuring gutta, and in
child-stealing, an abominable Malay custom, which, it is hoped, has
received its death-blow in Perak at least.

The Samangs are about the same height as the Malays, but their hair,
instead of being lank and straight like theirs, is short and curly,
though not woolly like that of the African negro, and their
complexions, or rather skins, are of a dark brown, nearly black. Their
noses, it is said, incline to be flat, their foreheads recede, and
their lips are thick. They live in rude and easily removable huts made
of leaves and branches, subsist on jungle birds, beasts, roots, and
fruits, and wear a scanty covering made from the inner bark of a
species of Artocarpus. They are expert hunters, and have most ingenious
methods of capturing both the elephant and the "recluse rhinoceros."
They are divided into tribes, which are ruled by chiefs on the
patriarchal system. Of their customs and beliefs, if they have any,
almost nothing is known. They are singularly shy, and shun intercourse
with men of other races. It has been supposed that they worship the
sun.

The Orang Benua or Orang-outang, frequently called Sakeis or Jakuns,
consist of various tribes with different names, thinly scattered among
the forests of the chain of mountains which runs down the middle of the
Peninsula from Kedah to Point Romania.* In appearance and color they
greatly resemble the Malays, and there is a very strong general
resemblance between their dialects and pure Malayan. They have
remarkably bright and expressive eyes, with nothing Mongolian about
their internal angles, and the forehead is low rather than receding.
The mouth is wide and the lips are large, the lower part of the face
projects, the nose is small, the nostrils are divergent, and the cheek
bones are prominent. The hair is black, but it often looks rusty or
tawny from exposure to the sun, against which it is their only
protection. It is very abundant and long, and usually matted and curly,
but not woolly. They have broad chests and very sturdy muscular limbs.
They are, however, much shorter in stature than the Malays, the men in
some of the tribes rarely exceeding four feet eight inches in height,
and the women four feet four. Their clothing consists of a bark cloth
waist-cloth. Some of the tribes live in huts of the most primitive
description supported on posts, while others, often spoken of as the
"tree people," build wigwams on platforms, mainly supported by the
forking branches of trees, at a height of from twenty to thirty feet.
These wild people, says Mr. Daly, lead a gregarious life, rarely
remaining long in one place for fear of their wives and children being
kidnapped by the Malays. They fly at the approach of strangers. As a
rule, their life is nomadic, and they live by hunting, fishing, and on
jungle fruits. They are divided into tribes governed by elders. They
reverence the sun, but have no form of worship, and are believed to be
destitute of even the most rudimentary ideas of religion. Their weapon
is the sumpitan, a blow-gun, from which poisoned arrows are expelled.
They have no ceremonies at birth, marriage, or death. They are
monogamists, and, according to Mr. Syers, extremely affectionate. One
of their strongest emotions is fear, and their timidity is so great
that they frequently leave the gutta which they have collected at the
foot of the tree, not daring to encounter the trader from whom they
expect some articles in exchange; while the fear of ridicule, according
to Mr. Maxwell, keeps them far from the haunts of the Malays.  
[*I was so fortunate as to see two adult male Jakuns and one female, but
my information respecting them is derived chiefly from Mr. Syers,
Superintendent of Police in Selangor, and from Mr. Maxwell, the
Assistant-Resident in Perak.]

The Rayet, or Orang Laut, "subjects," or men of the sea, inhabit the
coast and the small islets off the coast, erecting temporary sheds when
they go ashore to build boats, mend nets, or collect gum dammar and
wood oil, but usually living in their boats. They differ little from
the Malays, who, however, they look down upon as an inferior race,
except that they are darker and more uncouth looking.  They have no
religious (!) beliefs but in the influence of evil spirits, to whom at
times they perform a few propitiatory rites. Many of them become
Mohammedans. They live almost entirely upon fish. They are altogether
restless and impatient of control, but, unlike some savages, are
passionately fond of music, and are most ingenious in handicrafts,
specially in boat-building.

The Chinese in the Peninsula and on the small islands of Singapore and
Pinang are estimated at two hundred and forty thousand, and their
numbers are rapidly increasing, owing to direct immigration from China.
It is by their capital, industry, and enterprise that the resources of
the Peninsula are being developed. The date of their arrival is
unknown, but the Portuguese found them at Malacca more than three
centuries ago. They have been settled in Pinang and Singapore for
ninety-three and sixty-three years respectively; but except that they
have given up the barbarous custom of crushing the feet of girls, they
are, in customs, dress, and habits, the exact counterparts of the
Chinese of Canton or Amoy. Many of them have become converts to
Christianity, but this has not led to the discarding of their queues or
national costume. The Chinese who are born in the Straits are called
Babas. The immigrant Chinese, who are called Sinkehs, are much despised
by the Babas, who glory specially in being British-born subjects.  The
Chinese promise to be in some sort the commercial rulers of the
Straits.

The Malays proper inhabit the Malay Peninsula, and almost all the coast
regions of Borneo and Sumatra. They all speak more or less purely the
Malay language; they are all Mohammedans, and they all write in the
Arabic character.  Their color is a lightish, olive-tinted, reddish
brown.  Their hair is invariably black, straight, and coarse, and their
faces and bodies are nearly hairless. They have broad and slightly flat
faces, with high cheek bones; wide mouths, with broad and shapely lips,
well formed chins, low foreheads, black eyes, oblique, but not nearly
so much so as those of the Chinese, and smallish noses, with broad and
very open nostrils. They vary little in their height, which is below
that of the average European. Their frames are lithe and robust, their
chests are broad, their hands are small and refined, and their feet are
thick and short. The men are not handsome, and the women are decidedly
ugly.  Both sexes look old very early.

The Malays undoubtedly must be numbered among civilized peoples. They
live in houses which are more or less tasteful and secluded. They are
well clothed in garments of both native and foreign manufacture; they
are a settled and agricultural people; they are skilful in some of the
arts, specially in the working of gold and the damascening of krises;
the upper classes are to some extent educated; they have a literature,
even though it be an imported one, and they have possessed for
centuries systems of government and codes of land and maritime laws
which, in theory at least, show a considerable degree of enlightenment.

Their religion, laws, customs, and morals are bound up together. They
are strict Mussulmen, but among the uneducated especially they mix up
their own traditions and superstitions with the Koran. The pilgrimage
to Mecca is the universal object of Malay ambition. They practice relic
worship, keep the fast of Ramadhan, wear rosaries of beads, observe the
hours of prayer with their foreheads on the earth, provide for the
"religious welfare" of their villages, circumcise their children, offer
buffaloes in sacrifice at the religious ceremonies connected with
births and marriages, build mosques everywhere, regard Mecca as the
holy city, and the Koran, as expounded by Arab teachers, as the rule of
faith and practice.

Much learning has been expended upon the origin of Malayan, but it has
not been reliably traced beyond the ancient empire of Menangkabau in
Sumatra. Mohammedanism undoubtedly brought with it a large introduction
of Arabic words, and the language itself is written in the Arabic
character. It has been estimated by that most painstaking and learned
scholar, Mr. Crawfurd, that one hundred parts of modern Malayan are
composed of twenty-seven parts of primitive Malayan, fifty of
Polynesian, sixteen of Sanskrit, five of Arabic, and two of
adventitious words, the Arabic predominating in all literature relating
to religion. Malay is the lingua franca of the Straits Settlements, and
in the seaports a number of Portuguese and Dutch words have been
incorporated with it.

The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it
is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic
is their sacred language.  They have, however, a celebrated historic
Malay romance called the Hang Tuah, parts of which are frequently
recited in their villages after sunset prayers by their village
raconteurs, and some Arabic and Hindu romances stand high in popular
favor. Their historians all wrote after the Mohammedan era, and their
histories are said to contain little that is trustworthy; each State
also has a local history preserved with superstitious care and kept
from common eyes, but these contain little but the genealogies of their
chiefs. They have one Malay historical composition, dated 1021 A.H.,
which treats of the founding of the Malay empire of Menangkabau in
Sumatra, and comes down to the founding of the empire of Johore and the
conquest of Malacca by Albuquerque in 1511. This has been thought
worthy of translation by Dr. Leyden.

Their ethical books consist mainly of axioms principally derived from
Arabic and Persian sources. Their religious works are borrowed from the
Arabs. The Koran, of course, stands first, then comes a collection of
prayers, and next a guide to the religious duties required from
Mussulmen.  Then there are books containing selections from Arabic
religious works, with learned commentaries upon them by a Malay Hadji.
It is to be noticed that the Malays present a compact front against
Christianity, and have successfully resisted all missionary enterprise.

They have a good deal of poetry, principally of an amorous kind,
characterized, it is said, by great simplicity, natural and pleasing
metaphor, and extremely soft and melodious rhyme. They sing their poems
to certain popular airs, which are committed to memory. Malay music,
though plaintive and less excruciating than Chinese and Japanese, is
very monotonous and dirge-like, and not pleasing to a European ear. The
pentatonic scale is employed. The violin stands first among musical
instruments in their estimation.  They have also the guitar, the
flageolet, the aeolian flute, a bamboo in which holes are cut, which
produce musical sounds when acted upon by the wind, and both metallic
and wooden gongs.

They have no written system of common arithmetic, and are totally
unacquainted with its higher branches. Their numerals above one
thousand are borrowed from the Hindus, and their manner of counting is
the same as that of the Ainos of Yezo.

Their theory of medicine is derived from Arabia, and abounds in mystery
and superstition. They regard man as composed of four elements and four
essences, and assimilate his constitution and passions to the twelve
signs of the zodiac, the seven planets, etc., exaggerating the
mysterious sympathy between man and external nature. The successful
practice of the hakim or doctor must be based on the principle of
"preserving the balance of power" among the four elements, which is
chiefly effected by moderation in eating.

They know nothing of astronomy, except of some meagre ideas derived
through the Arabs from the Ptolemaic system, and Mr. Newbold, after
most painstaking research, failed to discover any regular treatise on
astronomy, though Arabic and Hindu tracts on interpretations of dreams,
horoscopes, spells, propitious and unpropitious moments, auguries,
talismans, love philters, medicinal magic and recipes for the
destruction of people at a distance, are numerous. They acknowledge the
solar year, but adopt the lunar, and reckon the months in three
different ways, dividing them, however, into weeks of seven days,
marking them by the return of the Mohammedan Sabbath. They suppose the
world to be an oval body revolving on its axis four times within a
year, with the sun, a circular body of fire, moving round it. The
majority of the people still believe that eclipses are caused by the
sun or moon being devoured by a serpent, and they lament loudly during
their continuance. The popular modes of measuring distance are
ingenious, but, to a stranger at least, misleading. Thus Mr. Daly, in
attempting to reach the interior States, received these replies to his
inquiries about distance--"As far as a gunshot may be heard from this
particular hill;" "If you wash your head before starting it will not be
dry before you reach the place," etc. They also measure distances by
the day's walk, and by the number of times it is necessary to chew
betel between two places. The hours are denoted by terms not literally
accurate. Cockcrowing is daybreak, 1 P.M., and midnight; 9 A.M., Lepas
Baja, is the time when the buffaloes, which cannot work when the sun is
high, are relieved from the plough; Tetabawe is 6 P.M., the word
signifying the cry of a bird which is silent till after sunset. The
Malay day begins at sunset.

They are still maritime in their habits, and very competent practical
sailors and boat-builders; but though for centuries they divided with
the Arabs the carrying trade between Eastern and Western Asia, and
though a mongrel Malay is the nautical language of nearly all the
peoples from New Guinea to the Tenasserim coast, the Malays knew little
of the science of navigation. They timed their voyages by the constant
monsoons, and in sailing from island to island coasted the Asiatic
shores, trusting, when for a short time out of sight of land, not to
the compass, though they were acquainted with it, but to known rocks,
glimpses of headlands, the direction of the wind, and their observation
of the Pleiades.

They have no knowledge of geography, architecture, painting, sculpture,
or even mechanics; they no longer make translations from the Arabic or
create fiction, and the old translations of works on law, ethics, and
science are now scarcely studied. Education among them is at a very low
ebb; but the State of Kedah is beginning to awake to its advantages.
Where schools exist the instruction consists mainly in teaching the
children to repeat, in a tongue which they do not understand, certain
passages from the Koran and some set prayers.

As to law, Sir Stamford Raffles observed in a formal despatch, "Nothing
has tended more decidedly to the deterioration of the Malay character
than the want of a well-defined and generally acknowledged system of
law." There are numerous legal compilations, however, and nearly every
State has a code of its own to a certain extent; there are maritime and
land codes, besides "customs" bad and good, which override the written
law; while in Perak, Selangor, and Sungei Ujong an ill understood
adaptation of some portions of British law further complicates matters.
"The glorious uncertainty" of law is nowhere more fully exemplified
than on this Peninsula. It is from the Golden Island, the parent Empire
of Menangkabau, that the Malays profess to derive both their criminal
and civil law, their tribal system, their rules for the division of
land by boundary marks, and the manner of government as adapted for
sovereigns and their ministers. The existence of the various legal
compilations has led to much controversy and even bloodshed between
zealots for the letter of the Koran on one side, and the advocates of
ancient custom on the other. Among the reasons which have led to the
migration of Malays from the native states into the Straits
Settlements, not the least powerful is the equality of rights before
English law, and the security given by it to property of every kind. In
the Malay country itself, occupied by Malays and the Chinese associated
with them, there are four Malays to the square mile, whilst under the
British flag some one hundred and twenty-five Malays to the square mile
have taken refuge and sought protection for their industry under our
law!

Cock-fighting, which has attained to the dignity of a literature of its
own, is the popular Malay sport; but the grand sport is a tiger and
buffalo fight, reserved for rare occasions, however, on account of its
expense.  Cock-fighting is a source of gigantic gambling and desperate
feuds. The birds, which fight in full feather and with sharpened steel
spurs, are very courageous, and die rather than give in. Wrestling
among young men and tossing the wicker ball, are favorite amusements.
There are professional dancing girls, but dancing as a social amusement
is naturally regarded with disfavor. Children have various games
peculiar to themselves, which are abandoned as childish things at a
given age. Riddles and enigmas occupy a good deal of time among the
higher classes. Chess also occupies much time, but it is much to be
feared that the vice of gambling stimulated by the Chinese, who have
introduced both cards and dice, is taking the place of more innocent
pastimes.

The Malays, like other Mohammedans, practice polygamy. They are very
jealous, and their women are veiled and to a certain extent secluded;
but they are affectionate, and among the lower classes there is a good
deal of domesticity.  Their houses are described in the following
letters. The food of the poorer classes consists mainly of rice and
salt-fish, curries of both, maize, sugar-cane, bananas, and jungle
fruits, cocoa-nut milk being used in the preparation of food as well as
for a beverage. As luxuries they chew betelnut and smoke tobacco, and
although intoxicants are forbidden, they tap the toddy palm and drink
of its easily fermented juice. Where metal finds its way into domestic
utensils it is usually in the form of tin water-bottles and ewers.
Every native possesses a sweeping broom, sleeping mats, coarse or fine,
and bamboo or grass baskets. Most families use an iron pan for cooking,
with a half cocoa-nut shell for a ladle. A large nut shell filled with
palm-oil, and containing a pith wick, is the ordinary Malay lamp. Among
the poor, fresh leaves serve as plates and dishes, but the chiefs
possess china.

The Malay weapons consist of the celebrated kris, with its flame-shaped
wavy blade; the sword, regarded, however, more as an ornament; the
parang, which is both knife and weapon; the steel-headed spear, which
cost us so many lives in the Perak war; matchlocks, blunderbusses, and
lelahs, long heavy brass guns used for the defense of the stockades
behind which the Malays usually fight. They make their own gunpowder,
and use cartridges made of cane.

The Malays, like the Japanese, have a most rigid epistolary etiquette,
and set forms for letter writing. Letters must consist of six parts,
and are so highly elaborate that the scribes who indite them are almost
looked upon as litterateurs. There is an etiquette of envelopes and
wafers, the number and color of which vary with the relative positions
of the correspondents, and any error in these details is regarded as an
insult. Etiquette in general is elaborate and rigid, and ignorant
breaches of it on the part of Europeans have occasionally cost them
their lives.

The systems of government in the Malay States vary in detail, but on
the whole may be regarded as absolute despotisms, modified by certain
rights, of which no rulers in a Mohammedan country can absolutely
deprive the ruled, and by the assertion of the individual rights of
chiefs.  Sultans, rajahs, maharajahs, datus, etc., under ordinary
circumstances have been and still are in most of the unprotected States
unable to control the chiefs under them, who have independently levied
taxes and blackmail till the harassed cultivators came scarcely to care
to possess property which might at any time be seized. Forced labor for
a quarter of the laboring year was obligatory on all males, besides
military service when called upon.

Slavery and debt bondage exist in all the native States; except in
Selangor and Sungei Ujong, where it has recently been abolished, as it
is hoped it will be in Perak. The slaves of the reigning princes were
very easily acquired, for a prince had only to send a messenger bearing
a sword or kris to a house, and the parents were obliged to give up any
one of their children without delay or question. In debt slavery, which
prevails more or less among all classes, and has done a great deal to
degrade the women of the Peninsula, a man owing a trifling debt
incurred through extravagance, misfortune or gambling, can be seized by
his creditor; when he, his wife, and children, including those who may
afterwards be born, and probably their descendants, become slaves.

In most of the States the reigning prince has regular officers under
him, chief among whom are the Bandahara or treasurer, who is the first
minister, chief executive officer, and ruler over the peasantry, and
the Tumongong or chief magistrate. Usually the throne is hereditary,
but while the succession in some States is in the male line, in others
it is in the female, a sister's son being the heir; and there are
instances in which the chiefs have elected a sultan or rajah. The
_theory_ of government does not contain anything inherently vicious,
and is well adapted to Malay circumstances. Whatever is evil in
practice is rather contrary to the theory than in accordance with it.
The States undoubtedly have fallen, in many ways, into evil case; the
privileged few, consisting of rajahs and their numerous kindred and
children, oppressing the unprivileged many, living in idleness on what
is wrung from their toil.  The Malay sovereigns in most cases have come
to be little more than the feudal heads of bodies of insubordinate
chiefs, while even the headmen of the villages take upon themselves to
levy taxes and administer a sort of justice. Nomadic cultivation,
dislike of systematic labor, and general insecurity as to the
boundaries and tenure of land, have further impoverished the common
people, while Islamism exercises its usual freezing and retarding
influence, producing the fatal isolation which to weak peoples is slow
decay.

When Sir A. Clarke was appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements in
1873 he went to the Curator of the Geographical Society's library in
quest of maps and information of any kind about the country to which he
was going, but was told by that courteous functionary that there was
absolutely no information of the slightest value in their archives.
Since then the protectorate which we have acquired over three of the
native States and the war in Perak have mended matters somewhat; but
Mr. Daly, on appearing in May last before the same Society with the map
which is the result of his partial survey, regrets that we have of half
of the Peninsula "only the position of the coast-line!" Of the States
washed by the China Sea scarcely anything is known, and the eastern and
central interior offer a wide field for the explorer.

The letters which follow those written from China and Saigon relate to
the British settlements in the Straits of Malacca, and to the native
States of Perak, Selangor, and Sungei Ujong, which, since 1874, have
passed. under British "protection." The preceding brief sketch is
necessarily a very imperfect one, as to most of my questions addressed
on the spot and since to the best informed people, the answer has been,
"No information." The only satisfaction that I have in these
preliminary pages is, that they place the reader in a better position
than I was in when I landed at Malacca. To a part of this beautiful but
little known region I propose to conduct my readers, venturing to hope
for their patient interest in my journeyings over the bright waters of
the Malacca Straits and in the jungles of the Golden Chersonese.

I. L. B.



LETTER I

The Steamer Volga--Days of Darkness--First View of Hong Kong--Hong Kong
on Fire--Apathy of the Houseless--The Fire Breaks Out Again--An Eclipse
of Gayety


S.S. "VOLGA," CHINA SEA, Christmas Eve, 1878.

The snowy dome of Fujisan, reddening in the sunrise, rose above the
violet woodlands of Mississippi Bay as we steamed out of Yokohama
harbor on the 19th, and three days later I saw the last of Japan--a
rugged coast, lashed by a wintry sea.


THE PALACE, VICTORIA, HONG KONG, December 27.

Of the voyage to Hong Kong little need be said. The Volga is a
miserable steamer, with no place to sit in, and nothing to sit on but
the benches by the dinner-table in the dismal saloon. The master, a
worthy man, so far as I ever saw of him, was Goth, Vandal, Hun,
Visigoth, all in one. The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold.
She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because
of a smoky chimney. There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were
obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving
inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the
table-linen frowsy.  There were four French and two Japanese male
passengers, who sat at meals in top-coats, comforters, and hats. I had
a large cabin, the salon des dames, and the undivided attention of a
very competent, but completely desponding stewardess. Being debarred
from the deck by incessant showers of spray, sleet, and snow, and the
cold of mid-winter being unbearable in the dark, damp saloon, I went
to bed at four for the first two days. On the third it blew half a
gale, with a short violent sea, and this heavy weather lasted till we
reached Hong Kong, five days afterward. During those cold, dark, noisy
days, when even the stewards could scarcely keep their feet, I suffered
so much in my spine from the violent movements of the ship that I did
not leave my cabin; and besides being unable to read, write, or work,
owing to the darkness, I was obliged to hold on by day and night to
avoid being much hurt by the rolling, my berth being athwart ships;
consequently, that week, which I had relied upon for "overtaking" large
arrears of writing and sewing, was so much lost out of
life--irrecoverably and shamefully lost, I felt--as each dismal day,
dawned and died without sunrise or sunset, on the dark and stormy
Pacific. No one, it seemed, knew any more English than "Yes" and "No;"
and as the ship knocked French out of my memory, I had not even the
resource of talking with the stewardess, who told me on the last day of
our imprisonment that she was "triste, triste," and "one mass of
bruises!"

In this same gale, but on a dry day, we came close up with the mainland
of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint.  This one exceeded all my
expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious
continent which has been my dream from childhood--bare, lofty, rocky,
basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic,
perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy
sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese
high-sterned fishing-boats with treble-reefed, three-cornered brown
sails, appearing on the tops of surges, at once to vanish.  Soon we
were among mountainous islands; and then, by a narrow and picturesque
channel, entered the outer harbor, with the scorched and arid peaks of
Hong Kong on one side; and on the other the yet redder and rockier
mainland, without a tree or trace of cultivation, or even of
habitation, except here and there a few stone huts clustering round
inlets, in which boats were lying. We were within the tropic of Cancer,
but still the cold, coarse bluster continued, so that it was barely
possible to see China except in snatches from behind the deck-house.

Turning through another channel, we abruptly entered the inner harbor,
and sailed into the summer, blue sky, blue water, a summer sun, and a
cool breeze, while a tender veil of blue haze softened the outlines of
the flushed mountains. Victoria, which is the capital of the British
colony of the island of Hong Kong, and which colloquially is called
Hong Kong, looked magnificent, suggesting Gibraltar, but far, far
finer, its peak eighteen hundred feet in height--a giant among lesser
peaks, rising abruptly from the sea above the great granite city which
clusters upon its lower declivities, looking out from dense greenery
and tropical gardens, and the deep shade of palms and bananas, the
lines of many of its streets traced in foliage, all contrasting with
the scorched red soil and barren crags which were its universal aspect
before we acquired it in 1843. A forest of masts above the town betoken
its commercial importance, and "P. and O." and Messageries Maritimes
steamers, ships of war of all nations, low-hulled, big-masted clippers,
store and hospital ships, and a great fishing fleet lay at anchor in
the harbor. The English and Romish cathedrals, the Episcopal Palace,
with St. Paul's College, great high blocks of commercial buildings,
huge sugar factories, great barracks in terraces, battery above
battery, Government House, and massive stone wharves, came rapidly into
view, and over all, its rich folds spreading out fully on the breeze,
floated the English flag.

But dense volumes of smoke rolling and eddying, and covering with their
black folds the lower slopes and the town itself made a surprising
spectacle, and even as we anchored came off the rapid tolling of bells,
the roll of drums, and the murmur of a "city at unrest." No one met me.
A few Chinese boats came off, and then a steam launch with the M. M.
agent in an obvious flurry. I asked him how to get ashore, and he
replied, "It's no use going ashore, the town's half burned, and burning
still; there's not a bed at any hotel for love or money, and we are
going to make up beds here." However, through the politeness of the
mail agent, I did go ashore in the launch, but we had to climb through
and over at least eight tiers of boats, crammed with refugees, mainly
women and children, and piled up with all sorts of household goods,
whole and broken, which had been thrown into them promiscuously to save
them. "The palace of the English bishop," they said, was still
untouched; so, escaping from an indescribable hubbub, I got into a
bamboo chair, with two long poles which rested on the shoulders of two
lean coolies, who carried me to my destination at a swinging pace
through streets as steep as those of Varenna. Streets choked up with
household goods and the costly contents of shops, treasured books and
nick-nacks lying on the dusty pavements, with beds, pictures,
clothing, mirrors, goods of all sorts; Chinamen dragging their
possessions to the hills; Chinawomen, some of them with hoofs rather
than feet, carrying their children on their backs and under their arms;
officers, black with smoke, working at the hose like firemen; parties
of troops marching as steadily as on parade, or keeping guard in
perilous places; Mr. Pope Henessey, the Governor, ubiquitous in a chair
with four scarlet bearers; men belonging to the insurance companies
running about with drawn swords; the miscellaneous population running
hither and thither; loud and frequent explosions; heavy crashes as of
tottering walls, and, above all, the loud bell of the Romish cathedral
tolling rapidly, calling to work or prayer, made a scene of intense
excitement; while utterly unmoved, in grand Oriental calm (or apathy),
with the waves of tumult breaking round their feet, stood Sikh
sentries, majestic men, with swarthy faces and great, crimson turbans.
Through the encumbered streets and up grand flights of stairs my
bearers brought me to these picturesque grounds, which were covered
over with furniture and goods of all descriptions brought hither for
safety, and Chinese families camping out among them. Indeed, the Bishop
and Mrs. Burdon had not only thrown open their beautiful grounds to
these poor people, but had accommodated some Chinese families in rooms
in the palace under their own. The apathy or calm of the Chinese women
as they sat houseless amidst their possessions was very striking. In
the broad, covered corridor which runs round the palace everything the
Burdons most value was lying ready for instantaneous removal, and I was
warned not to unpack or take off my traveling dress. The Bishop and I
at once went down to the fire, which was got under, and saw the wreck
of the city and the houseless people camping out among the things they
had saved. Fire was still burning or smouldering everywhere, high walls
were falling, hose were playing on mountains of smouldering timber,
whole streets were blocked with masses of fallen brick and stone,
charred telegraph poles and fused wires were lying about, with half
burned ledgers and half burned everything. The colored population
exceeds one hundred and fifty-two thousand souls, and only those who
know the Babel which an eastern crowd is capable of making under
ordinary circumstances can imagine what the deafening din of human
tongues was under these very extraordinary ones. In the prison, which
was threatened by the flames, were over eight hundred ruffians of all
nations, and it was held by one hundred soldiers with ten rounds of
ammunition each, prepared to convey the criminals to a place of safety
and to shoot any who attempted to escape. The dread of these
miscreants, which was everywhere expressed, is not unreasonable, for
the position of Victoria, and the freedom and protection afforded by
our laws, together with the present Governor's known sympathies with
colored people, have attracted here thousands of the scum of Canton and
other Chinese cities, to say nothing of a mass of European and Asiatic
ruffianism, much of which is at all times percolating through the
magnificent Victoria prison.

On returning, I was just beginning to unpack when the flames burst out
again. It was luridly grand in the twilight, the tongues of flame
lapping up house after house, the jets of flame loaded with blazing
fragments, the explosions, each one succeeded by a burst of flame,
carrying high into the air all sorts of projectiles, beams and rafters
paraffine soaked, strewing them over the doomed city, the leaping
flames coming nearer and nearer, the great volumes of smoke,
spark-laden, rolling toward us, all mingling with a din indescribable.
Burning fragments shortly fell on the window-sills, and as the wind was
very strong and setting this way, there seemed so little prospect of
the palace being saved that important papers were sent to the cathedral
and several of the refugees fled with their things to the hills. At
that moment the wind changed, and the great drift of flame and smoke
was carried in a comparatively harmless direction, the fire was got
well in hand the second time, the official quarter was saved, and
before 10 P.M. we were able for the first time since my arrival at
mid-day to sit down to food.

Most people seem much upset as well from personal peril as from
sympathy, and all parties and picnics for two days were given up. Even
the newspapers did not come out this morning, the types of one of them
being in this garden. The city is now patrolled night and day by strong
parties of marines and Sikhs, for both the disposition to loot and the
facilities for looting are very great.

I. L. B.



LETTER II

A Delightful Climate--Imprisoned Fever Germs--"Pidjun" English--Hong
Kong Harbor--Prosperity of Hong Kong--Rampageous Criminal
Classes--Circumspice!


THE PALACE, VICTORIA, December 29.


I like and admire Victoria. It is so pleasant to come in from the dark,
misty, coarse, loud-tongued Pacific, and the December colorlessness of
Japan to bright blue waters crisped by a perpetual north wind--to the
flaming hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early
morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious
sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening
into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which
is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars.
Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here
many things that I love,--bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns,
dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan,
date, sago, and traveler's palms, and numberless other trees and
shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered
and tended, but exotics after all.

It is a most delightful winter climate. There has not been any rain for
three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless,
the air dry and very bracing.  It is cold enough at night for fires,
and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is
bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees,
and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable
height, the lowest temperature is 40 degrees. It is impossible to
praise the climate too highly, with its bright sky, cool dry air, and
five months of rainlessness; but I should write very differently if I
came here four months later, when the mercury ranges from 80 degrees to
90 degrees both by day and night, and the cloudy sky rests ever on the
summits of the island peaks, and everything is moist, and the rain
comes down continually in torrents, rising in hot vapors when the sun
shines, and people become limp and miserable, and their possessions
limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a
vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who
live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing
in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its
maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in
some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations,
or is disturbed in any way, fever immediately breaks out.

Victoria is a beautiful city. It reminds me of Genoa, but that most of
its streets are so steep as to be impassable for wheeled vehicles, and
some of them are merely grand flights of stairs, arched over by dense
foliaged trees, so as to look like some tropical, colored, deep
colonnades. It has covered green balconies with festoons of creepers,
lofty houses, streets narrow enough to exclude much of the sun, people
and costumes of all nations, processions of Portuguese priests and
nuns; and all its many-colored life is seen to full advantage under
this blue sky and brilliant sun.

This house is magnificently situated, and very large and airy. Part is
the Episcopal Palace, and the rest St. Paul's College, of which Bishop
Burdon is warden. The mountainous grounds are beautiful, and the
entrance blazes with poinsettias. There are no female servants, but
Chinese men perform all the domestic service satisfactorily. I learn
that for a Chinese servant to appear without his skull-cap is rude, but
to appear with his pig-tail wound round his head instead of pendent, is
a gross insult! The "Pidjun English" is revolting, and the most
dignified persons demean themselves by speaking it. The word "pidjun"
appears to refer generally to business. "My pidjun" is undoubtedly "my
work." How the whole English-speaking community, without distinction of
rank, has come to communicate with the Chinese in this baby talk is
extraordinary.

If you order a fire you say something like this: "Fire makee, chop,
chop, here, makee fire number one," chop being quick, and number one
good, or "first-class." If a servant tells you that some one has called
he says, "One piecey manee here speak missey," and if one asks who he
is, he very likely answers, "No sabe," or else, "Number one, tink," by
which he implies that the visitor is, in his opinion, a gentleman.
After the courteous, kindly Japanese, the Chinese seem indifferent,
rough and disagreeable, except the well-to-do merchants in the shops,
who are bland, complacent, and courteous. Their rude stare and the way
they hustle you in the streets and shout their "pidjun" English at you
is not attractive. Then they have an ugly habit of speaking of us as
barbarian or foreign devils.  Since I knew the word I have heard it
several times in the streets, and Bishop Burdon says that before his
servants found out that he knew Chinese, they were always speaking of
him and Mrs. Burdon by this very ugly name.

[Victoria is, or should be, well known, so I will not describe its
cliques, its boundless hospitalities, its extravagances in living, its
quarrels, its gayeties, its picnics, balls, regattas, races, dinner
parties, lawn tennis parties, amateur theatricals, afternoon teas, and
all its other modes of creating a whirl which passes for pleasure or
occupation. Rather, I would write of some of the facts concerning this
very remarkable settlement, which is on its way to being the most
important British colony in the Far East.

Moored to England by the electric cable, and replete with all the
magnificent enterprises and luxuries of English civilization, with a
population of one hundred and sixty thousand, of which only seven
thousand, including soldiers and sailors, are white, and possessing the
most imposing city of the East on its shores, the colony is only forty
years old; the island of Hong Kong having been ceded to England in
1841, while its charter only bears the date of 1843. The island, which
is about eleven miles long, from two to five broad, and with an area of
about twenty-nine square miles, is one of a number situated off the
south-eastern coast of China at the mouth of the Canton river, ninety
miles from Canton. It is one of the many "thieves' islands," and one of
the first necessities of the administration was to clear out the hordes
of sea and river pirates which infested its very intricate
neighborhood. It lies just within the tropic of Cancer in lat. 22
degrees N.  and long. 114 degrees E. The Ly-ee-moon Pass, the narrow
strait which separates it from the Chinese mainland, is only half a
mile wide. Kowloon, on the mainland, an arid peninsula, on which some
of the Hong Kongese have been attempting to create a suburb, was ceded
to England in 1861. The whole island of Hong Kong is picturesque. The
magnificent harbor, which has an area of ten square miles, is
surrounded by fantastic, broken mountains from three thousand to four
thousand feet high, and the magnificent city of Victoria extends for
four miles along its southern shore, with its six thousand houses of
stone and brick and the princely mansions and roomy bungalows of its
merchants and officials scrambling up the steep sides of the Peak, the
highest point of the island, carrying verdure and shade with them. Damp
as its summer is, the average rainfall scarcely exceeds seventy-eight
inches, but it is hotter than Singapore in the hot season, though the
latter is under eighty miles from the Equator.

The causes by which this little island, which produces nothing, has
risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria,
with its magnificent harbor, is a factory for our Chinese commerce and
offers unrivaled facilities for the military and naval forces which are
necessary for the protection not only of that commerce but of our
interests in the far East. It is hardly too much to say that it is the
naval and commercial terminus of the Suez Canal. Will it be believed
that the amount of British and foreign tonnage annually entering and
leaving the port averages two millions of tons? and that the number of
native vessels trading to it is about fifty-two thousand, raising the
total ascertained tonnage to upward of three millions and a half, or
half a million tons in excess of Singapore? To this must be added
thousands of smaller native boats of every build and rig trading to
Hong Kong, not only from the Chinese coasts and rivers, but from Siam,
Japan, and Cochin China. Besides the "P. and O.," the Messageries
Maritimes, the Pacific Mail Company, the Eastern and Australian Mail
Company, the Japanese "Mitsu Bichi" Mail Company, etc., all regular
mail lines, it has a number of lines of steamers trading to England,
America, and Germany, with local lines both Chinese and English, and
lines of fine sailing clippers, which, however, are gradually falling
into disuse, owing to the dangerous navigation of the China seas, and
the increasing demand for speed.

Victorian firms have almost the entire control of the tea and silk
trade, and Victoria is the centre of the trade in opium, sugar, flour,
salt, earthenware, oil, amber, cotton, and cotton goods, sandal-wood,
ivory, betel, vegetables, live stock, granite, and much else. The much
abused term "emporium of commerce" may most correctly be applied to it.

It has five docks, three slips, and every requisite for making
extensive repairs for ships of war and merchantmen.

It has telegraphic communication with the whole civilized world, and
its trade is kept thereby in a continual fever.

It has a large garrison, for which it pays to England 20,000 pounds a
year. Were it not for this force, its six hundred and fifty policemen,
of whom only one hundred and ten are Europeans, might not be able to
overawe even as much as they do the rowdy and ruffianly elements of its
heterogeneous population. As it is, the wealthier foreign residents,
for the security of their property, are obliged to supplement the
services of the public caretakers by employing private watchmen, who
patrol their grounds at night. It must be admitted that the criminal
classes are very rampageous in Victoria, whether from undue and unwise
leniency in the treatment of crime, or whether from the extraordinary
mass of criminals to which our flag affords security is not for a
stranger to say, though the general clamor raised when I visited the
great Chinese prison in Canton, "I wish I were in your prison in Hong
Kong," and my own visit to the Victoria prison, render the former
suspicion at least permissible.

Hong Kong possesses the usual establishment of a Crown Colony, and the
government is administered by a Governor, aided by a Legislative
Council, of which he is the President, and which is composed of the
Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the
Treasurer, and four unofficial members, nominated by the Crown on the
Governor's recommendation.

The enormous preponderance of the mixed Oriental population is a source
of some difficulty, and it is not easy by our laws to punish and
destroy a peculiarly hateful form of slavery which is recognized by
Chinese custom, and which has attained gigantic proportions in
Victoria. There is an immense preponderance of the masculine element,
nearly six to one among the Europeans, and among the Orientals the men
are nearly two and a half times as numerous as the women.

As Victoria is a free port, it is impossible to estimate the value of
its imports and exports, but its harbor, full of huge merchantmen, and
craft of all nations, its busy wharves, its crowd of lighters loading
and unloading by day and night, its thronged streets and handsome
shops, its huge warehouses, packed with tea, silk, and all the costly
products of the East, and its hillsides terraced with the luxurious
houses of its merchants, all say, "Circumspice, these are better than
statistics!"]

I. L. B.



LETTER III

The S.S. Kin Kiang--First View of Canton--The Island of
Shameen--England in Canton--The Tartar City--Drains and
Barricades--Canton at Night--Street Picturesqueness--Ghastly
Gifts--Oriental Enchantments--The Examination Hall


S.S. "KIN KIANG," December 30.

You will remember that it is not very long since a piratical party of
Chinese, shipping as steerage passengers on board one of these Hong
Kong river steamers, massacred the officers and captured the boat. On
board this great, white, deck-above-deck American steamer there is but
one European passenger beside myself, but there are four hundred and
fifty second-class passengers, Chinamen, with the exception of a few
Parsees, all handsomely dressed, nearly all smoking, and sitting or
lying over the saloon deck up to the saloon doors. In the steerage
there are fifteen hundred Chinese steerage passengers, all men. The
Chinese are a noisy people, their language is inharmonious, and the
lower class male voices, at least, are harsh and coarse. The fifteen
hundred men seem to be all shouting at once, and the din which comes up
through the hatchways is fearful. This noisy mass of humanity is
practically imprisoned below, for there is a heavy iron grating
securely padlocked over each exit, and a European, "armed to the
teeth," stands by each, ready to shoot the first man who attempts to
force it. In this saloon there is a stand of six rifles with bayonets,
and four revolvers, and, as we started, a man carefully took the
sheaths off the bayonets, and loaded the firearms with ball cartridge.


Canton, January 1, 1879.--The Canton river for the ninety miles up here
has nothing interesting about it. Soon after leaving Hong Kong the
country becomes nearly a dead level, mainly rice-swamps varied by
patches of bananas, with their great fronds torn to tatters by the
prevailing strong breeze. A very high pagoda marks Whampoa, once a
prosperous port, but now, like Macao, nearly deserted. An hour after
disgorging three boat loads of Chinamen at Whampoa, we arrived at the
beginning of Canton, but it took more than half an hour of cautious
threading of our way among junks, sampans, house-boats, and
slipper-boats, before we moored to the crowded and shabby wharf. If my
expectations of Canton had been much raised they would certainly have
been disappointed, for the city stands on a perfectly level site, and
has no marked features within or around it except the broad and
bridgeless tidal river which sweeps through it at a rapid rate. In the
distance are the White-Cloud hills, which were painted softly in
amethyst on a tender green sky, and nearer are some rocky hills, which
are red at all hours of daylight. Boats and masts conceal the view of
the city from the river to a great extent, but even when from a vantage
ground it is seen spread out below, it is so densely packed, its
streets are so narrow, and its open spaces so few, that one almost
doubts whether the million and a half of people attributed to it are
really crowded within the narrow area. From the river, and indeed from
any point of view, Canton is less imposing even than Tokiyo.  Few
objects rise above the monotonous level, and the few are unimpressive.
There are two or three pagodas looking like shot towers. There is a
double-towered Romish cathedral of great size, not yet finished. There
is the "Nine-storied pagoda." But in truth the most prominent objects
from the river are the "godowns" of the pawnbrokers, lofty, square
towers of gray brick which dominate the city, play a very important
part in its social economy, and are very far removed from those
establishments with the trinity of gilded balls, which hide themselves
shamefacedly away in our English by-streets. At one part of the
riverside there are some substantial looking foreign houses among
trees, on the site of the foreign factories of former days, but they
and indeed all else are hidden by a crowd of boats, a town of boats, a
floating suburb. Indeed, boats are my earliest and strongest
impressions of what on my arrival I was hasty enough to think a mean
city. It is not only along the sides of the broad Pearl river, but
along the network of innumerable canals and creeks which communicate
with it, that they are found.

These boats, the first marvel of a marvelous city, have come between me
and my landing. When the steamer had disgorged her two thousand
passengers, Mr. Mackrill Smith, whose guest I am, brought me in a
bamboo chair, carried by two coolies, through a covered and crowded
street of merchandise six feet wide, to Shameen, the island in the
river on which the foreigners reside; most of the missionary community,
however, living in the buildings on the site of the old factory farther
down.

I am now domiciled on Shameen, a reclaimed mud flat, in the beautiful
house belonging to the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co. This island,
which has on the one side the swift flowing Canton river, with its ever
shifting life, has on the other a canal, on which an enormous
population lives in house boats, moored stem and stern, without any
space between them. A stone bridge with an iron gate gives access into
one of the best parts of Canton, commercially speaking; but all the
business connected with tea, silk, and other productions, which is
carried on by such renowned firms as Jardine, Matheson & Co., the
Dents, the Deacons, and others, is transacted in these handsome
dwellings of stone or brick, each standing in its tropical garden, with
a wall or ornamental railing or bamboo hedge surrounding it, but
without any outward sign of commerce at all. The settlement, insular
and exclusive, hears little and knows less of the crowded Chinese city
at its gates. It reproduces English life as far as possible, and adds a
boundless hospitality of its own, receiving all strangers who are in
any way accredited, and many who are not. A high sea-wall with a broad
concrete walk, shaded by banyan trees, runs round it, a distance of a
mile and a quarter. It is quite flat and covered with carefully kept
grass, intersected with concrete walks and banyan avenues, the tropical
gardens of the rich merchants giving variety and color.

The community at present consists of forty-five people--English,
French, and German. The establishment of the electric telegraph has not
only favored business, but has enabled some of the senior partners of
the old firms to return home, leaving very junior partners or senior
clerks here, who receive their instructions from England.
Consequently, in some of these large family dwellings there are only
young men "keeping bach." There are a pretty English church, a club
bungalow, a book club, lawn tennis and croquet grounds, and a small
hall used for dancing, lectures and amateur theatricals. No wheeled
vehicle larger than a perambulator ever disturbs the quiet. People who
go into the city are carried in chairs, or drop down the river in their
luxurious covered boats, but for exercise they mostly walk on the bund,
and play croquet or lawn tennis.  In this glorious weather the island
is very charming. It is possible to spend the whole year here, as the
tidal breezes modify the moist heat of summer; but the English children
look pale and languid even now.

Canton, January 4.--If I were to describe Canton, and had time for it,
my letters would soon swell to the size of Archdeacon Gray's quaint and
fascinating book, "Walks in Canton;" but I have no time, and must
content myself with brief sketches of two or three things which have
greatly interested me, and of the arrangement and management of the
city; putting the last first, if I am able "to make head or tail of
it," and to cram its leading features into a letter.

Viewing Canton from the "five-storied pagoda," or from the dignified
elevation of a pawn tower, it is apparent that it is surrounded by a
high wall, beyond which here and there are suburban villages, some
wealthy and wood-embosomed, others mean and mangy. The river divides it
from a very populous and important suburb. Within the city lies the
kernel of the whole, the Tartar city, occupied by the garrison and a
military colony numbering about twenty thousand persons. This
interesting area is walled round, and contains the residence of the
Tartar General, and the consulates of the great European Powers. It is
well wooded and less closely built than the rest of Canton. Descending
from any elevation one finds oneself at once involved at any and every
point in a maze of narrow, crowded streets of high brick and stone
houses, mostly from five to eight feet wide. These streets are covered
in at the height of the house roofs by screens of canvas matting, or
thin boards, which afford a pleasant shade, and at the same time let
the sunbeams glance and trickle among the long, pendent signboards and
banners which swing aloft, and upon the busy, many-colored, jostling
throng below.

Every street is paved with large slabs of granite, and under each of
the massive foot-ways (for carriage-ways there are none) there is a
drain for carrying off the rain-water, which is then conveyed into six
large culverts, from them into four creeks which intersect the city,
and thence into the river. These large drains are supervised by the
"prefect," who is bound by an ancient law to have them thoroughly
cleansed every autumn, while each of the small drains is cleansed by
the orders and at the expense of the "vestry" of the street under which
it passes. This ancient sanitary law, like many other of the admirable
laws of this empire, is said to be by no means punctiliously carried
out; and that Canton is a very healthy city, and that pestilences of
any kind rarely gain a footing in it, may be attributed rather to the
excellent plan of sending out the garbage of the city daily to
fertilize the gardens and fields of the neighborhood, than to the
vigilance of the municipal authorities.

There are heavy and ancient gates or barricades which enclose each
street, and which are locked at night, only to be opened by favor of
the watchmen who guard them. Their closing brings to an end the busy
street life, and at 10 P.M. Canton, cut up into small sections, barred
out from each other, is like a city of the dead. Each gate watchman is
appointed and paid by the "vestry" of the street in which he keeps
guard. They wear uniform, but are miserable dilapidated-looking
creatures, and I have twice seen one fast asleep. In the principal
streets night watchmen are stationed in watch-towers, which consist of
small mat huts, placed on scaffolds raised far above the house-tops, on
bamboo poles bound together with strong cords. These men are on the
look-out for armed bands of robbers, but specially for fire. They are
provided with tom-toms and small gongs on which to proclaim the hours
of the night, but, should fire arise, a loud, rapid, and incessant
beating of the gong gives the alarm to all the elevated brotherhood in
turn, who at the same time, by concerted signals, inform the citizens
below of the ward and street in which the fire has originated. In each
principal street there is a very large well, covered with granite
slabs, with its exact position denoted on a granite slab on the
adjoining wall. These wells, which are abundant reservoirs, are never
opened except in case of fire.

Besides these watchmen, eleven hundred military constabulary are
answerable for the good order of the "new city" and its suburbs, and a
thousand more, called the Governor's brigade, garrison the outer gates
in the city wall and several interior guard-houses, all the inner gates
being garrisoned by Tartar troops. Canton is divided into thirty-six
wards, under twelve officers in summer, but in winter, as now, when
burglars are supposed to be more on the alert, this number is
increased. Each officer having soldiers under him traverses at
intervals during the night every street under his jurisdiction, and
these armed followers, whether to intimidate criminals or to show their
vigilance, are in the habit of discharging their old-fashioned
matchlocks and gingalls as they patrol. In consequence of so many
precautions, which are carried out very thoroughly, fires and
burglaries are much minimized, and the proverb "as safe as Canton"
appears to have a substantial foundation. The barricaded streets at
night have an eerie solemnity about them. One night, my present
hostess, Mrs. H., and I prowled through some of them quite unattended,
on our way back from a friend's dwelling, roused up the watchmen to
unlock and unbar the gates, saw no other people astir, went down one of
the water streets, hailed a boat, and were deposited close to the door
of our own abode about midnight; such an event being quite of common
occurrence in this quarter.

In the streets the roofs of the houses and shops are rarely, if ever,
regular, nor are the houses themselves arranged in a direct line, This
queer effect results from queer causes. Every Chinese house is built on
the principles of geomancy, which do not admit of straight lines, and
were these to be disregarded the astrologers and soothsayers under
whose auspices all houses are erected, predict fearful evils to the
impious builders. There are few open spaces in Canton, and these are
decorated, not with statues, but with monumental arches of brick, red
sandstone, or gray granite, which are put up as memorials of virtuous
men and women, learned or aged men, and specially dutiful sons or
daughters. Such memorials are erected by citizens, and, in some cases,
by Imperial sanction or decree.

The public buildings and temples, though they bear magnificent names,
are extremely ugly, and are the subjects of slow but manifest decay,
while the streets of shops exceed in picturesqueness everything I have
ever seen. Much of this is given by the perpendicular sign boards,
fixed or hanging, upon which are painted on an appropriate background
immense Chinese characters in gold, vermilion, or black. Two or three
of these belong to each shop, and set forth its name and the nature of
the goods which are to be purchased at it. The effect of these boards
as the sun's rays fall upon them here and there is fascinating. The
interiors of the shops are lofty, glass lamps hang from the ceilings
and large lanterns above every door, and both are painted in bright
colors, with the characters signifying happiness, or with birds,
butterflies, flowers, or landscapes. The shop wall which faces the door
invariably has upon it a gigantic fresco or portrait of the tutelary
god of the building, or a sheet of red paper on which the characters
forming his name are placed, or the character Shan, which implies all
gods, and these and the altars below are seen from the street. There is
a recess outside each shop, and at dusk the joss-sticks burning in
these fill the city with the fragrance of incense.

As there are streets of shops and trades, so there are streets of
dwelling-houses, but even the finest of these present a miserable
appearance to the passers-by, for all one can see is a lofty and
dimly-lighted stone vestibule, furnished with carved ebony chairs with
marble seats and backs, and not infrequently with gigantic coffins
placed on end, the gift of pious juniors to their seniors! A porter
stands in this vestibule ready to open the lofty triple gate which
admits to the courtyard of the interior. Many Chinese mansions contain
six or seven courtyards, each with its colonnade, drawing, dining, and
reception rooms, and at the back of all there is a flower garden
adorned with rockeries, fish-ponds, dwarf trees, and miniature pagodas
and bridges.

The streets in which the poor dwell are formed of low, small, dark, and
dirty houses, of two or three rooms each.  The streets of dwellings are
as mean and ugly as those of shops are brilliant and picturesque.

This is a meagre outline of what may be called the anatomy of this
ancient city, which dates from the fourth century B.C., when it was
walled only by a stockade of bamboo and mud, but was known by the name
of "the martial city of the south," changed later into "the city of
rams." At this date it has probably greater importance than it ever
had, and no city but London impresses me so much with the idea of solid
wealth and increasing prosperity.

My admiration and amazement never cease. I grudge the hours that I am
obliged to spend in sleep; a week has gone like half a day, each hour
heightening my impressions of the fascination and interest of Canton,
and of the singular force and importance of the Chinese. Canton is
intoxicating from its picturesqueness, color, novelty and movement.
to-day I have been carried eighteen miles through and round it,
reveling the whole time in its enchantments, and drinking for the first
time of that water of which it may truly be said that who so drinks
"shall thirst again"--true Orientalism. As we sat at mid-day at the
five-storied pagoda, which from a corner of the outer wall overlooks
the Tartar city, and ever since, through this crowded week, I have
wished that the sun would stand still in the cloudless sky, and let me
dream of gorgeous sunlight, light without heat, of narrow lanes rich in
color, of the glints of sunlight on embroideries and cloth of gold,
resplendent even in the darkness, of hurrying and colored crowds in the
shadow, with the blue sky in narrow strips high above, of gorgeous
marriage processions, and the "voice of the bridegroom and the voice of
the bride," of glittering trains of mandarins, of funeral processions,
with the wail of hired mourners clad in sackcloth and ashes, of the
Tartar city with its pagodas, of the hills of graves, great cities of
the dead outside the walls, fiery-red under the tropic blue, of the
"potter's field" with its pools of blood and sacks of heads, and
crosses for crucifixion, now, as on Calvary, symbolical of shame alone,
of the wonderful river life, and all the busy, crowded, costumed hurry
of the streets, where blue banners hanging here and there show that in
those houses death has stilled some busy brains forevermore. And I
should like to tell you of the Buddhist and Confucian temples; of the
monastery garden, which is the original of the famous "Willow Pattern;"
of the great Free Dispensary which is to rival that of the Medical
Mission; of the asylums for lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and
aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries,
originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into
inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations
of officials; of the "Beggars' Square" and beggars' customs; of the
trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall
with its streets numbering eleven thousand six hundred and
seventy-three cells for the candidates for the literary honors which
are the only road to office and distinction in China, but Canton
deserves a volume, and Archdeacon Gray has written one!

I. L. B.



LETTER IV

"Faithful unto Death"--"Foreign Devils"--Junks and Boats--Chinese
Luxury--Canton Afloat--An Al Fresco Lunch-Light and Color--A Mundane
Disappointment--Street Sights and Sounds--Street Costume--Food and
Restaurants--A Marriage Procession--Temples and Worship--Crippled Feet


REV. B. C. HENRY'S, CANTON, January 6.

In the week in which I have been


 here I have given myself up to
ceaseless sight-seeing. Almost the first sight that I saw on arriving
in this quarter, which is in Canton itself, was a number of Christian
refugees, old men, women, and children, who, having fled from a bloody
persecution which is being waged against Christianity about ninety
miles from Canton, are receiving shelter in the compound of the German
mission. It was late in the evening, and these poor refugees, who had
sacrificed much for their faith and had undergone great terror, were
singing hymns, and reading and worshipping in Chinese. In the place
from which they came a Christian of wealth wished to build a church,
and last week he was proceeding to do so, when the heathen, instigated
by the district mandarin, seized upon him and four other Christians,
and when he would neither say the word nor make the obeisance which is
regarded as equivalent to denying Christ, they wrapped him in cotton
wadding soaked in oil, tied him to a cross, and burned him, no
extremity of torture availing to shake his constancy. They cut off the
arms and legs of the four other persons, tied crosses to the trunks,
and then burned them. This deed, done so near Canton, has caused great
horror among the foreigners both here and at Hong Kong, and the deepest
sympathy is felt both with the converts and the missionary priests. In
the sympathy with the heroism and sufferings of those who have been
"faithful unto death," all the Protestant missionaries join heartily,
as in the belief that these victims are reckoned among "the noble army
of martyrs." It is estimated that there are seven hundred and fifty
thousand Romish Christians in China, many of them of the third or
fourth generation of Christians, and in some places far in the interior
there are whole villages of them. The Portuguese and French missionary
priests who devote themselves for life to this work, dress, eat, and
live as Chinamen, and are credited with great devotion.

It is most interesting to be brought by the spectacle of these poor
refugees so near to the glory and the woe of martyrdom, and to hear
that the martyr spirit can still make men "obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross." A placard was posted up some time ago calling
for a general massacre of the native Christians on Christmas Day.  It
attributes every vice to the "Foreign Devils," and says that, "to
preserve the peace and purity of Chinese Society, those whom they have
corrupted must be cut off." One phrase of this placard is, "The
wickedness of these foreign devils is so great that even pigs and dogs
would refuse to eat their flesh!"

Mr. and Mrs. Henry speak Chinese, and are both fearless, and familiar
with the phases of Canton life. Of all the places I have seen, Canton
is the most overwhelmingly interesting, fascinating, and startling.
"See Canton and die," I would almost say, and yet I can give no idea of
all that has taken such a strong hold of me. I should now be quite
content to see only the manifold street life, with its crowds,
processions, and din, and the strange and ever-shifting water life,
altogether distinct from the land life. The rice-paper pictures give a
very good idea of the forms and colors of the boats, but the thousands
of them, and the rate at which they are propelled, are altogether
indescribable, either by pen or pencil.

There are junks with big eyes on either side of the stem, "without
which they could not see their way,"* and with open bows with two
six-pounders grinning through them.  Along the sides there are ten
guns, and at the lofty, square, quaint, broad, carved stern, two more.
This heavy armament is carried nominally for protection against
pirates, but its chief use is for the production of those stunning
noises which Chinamen delight in on all occasions.  In these helpless
and unwieldy-looking vessels which are sailed with an amount of noise
and apparent confusion which is absolutely shocking to anyone used to
our strict nautical discipline, the rudder projects astern six feet and
more, the masts are single poles, the large sails of fine matting; and
what with their antique shape, rich coloring, lattice work and carving,
they are the most picturesque craft afloat. Then there are "passage
boats" from the whole interior network of rivers and canals, each
district having its special rig and build, recognizable at once by the
initiated. These sail when they can, and when they can't are propelled
by large sweeps, each of which is worked by six men who stand on a
platform outside. These boats are always heavily laden, crowded with
passengers and "armed to the teeth" as a protection against river
pirates, and they carry crews of from thirty-five to fifty men.
[*These eyes are really charms, but the above is the explanation given
to "griffins."]

At some distance below Shameen there are moored tiers of large,
two-storied house boats, with entrance doors seven feet high, always
open, and doorways of rich wood carving, through which the interiors
can be seen with their richly decorated altars, innumerable colored
lamps, chairs, and settees of carved ebony with white marble let into
the seats and backs, embroidered silk hangings, gilded mirrors and
cornices, and all the extravagances of Chinese luxury.  Many of them
have gardens on their roofs. These are called "flower boats," and are
of noisy and evil reputation. Then there are tiers of three-roomed,
comfortable house boats to let to people who make their homes on the
water in summer to avoid the heat. "Marriage boats," green and gold,
with much wood carving and flags, and auspicious emblems of all kinds;
river junks, with their large eyes and carved and castellated sterns
lying moored in treble rows; duck boats, with their noisy inmates;
florists' boats, with platforms of growing plants for sale; two-storied
boats or barges, with glass sides, floating hotels, in which evening
entertainments are given with much light and noise; restaurant boats,
much gilded, from which proceeds an incessant beating of gongs; washing
boats, market boats, floating shops, which supply the floating
population with all marketable commodities; country boats of fantastic
form coming down on every wind and tide; and, queerest of all, "slipper
boats," looking absurdly like big shoes, which are propelled in and out
among all the heavier craft by standing in the stern.

One of the most marvelous features of Canton is the city of house
boats, floating and stationary, in which about a quarter of a million
people live, and it may with truth be added are born and die. This
population is quite distinct in race from the land population of
Canton, which looks down upon it as a pariah and alien caste. These
house boats, some of which have a single bamboo circular roof, others
two roofs of different heights, and which include several thousand of
the marvelous "slipper boats," lie in tiers along the river sides, and
packed closely stem and stern along the canals, forming bustling and
picturesque water streets. Many of the boats moored on the canals are
floating shops, and do a brisk trade, one end of the boat being the
shop, the other the dwelling-house. As the "slipper boats" are only
from fifteen to twenty feet long, it may be imagined, as their breadth
is strictly proportionate, that the accommodation for a family is
rather circumscribed, yet such a boat is not only the home of a married
pair and their children, but of the eldest son with his wife and
children, and not unfrequently of grandparents also! The bamboo roofs
slide in a sort of telescope fashion, and the whole interior space can
be inclosed and divided. The bow of the boat, whether large or small,
is always the family joss house; and the water is starred at night with
the dull, melancholy glimmer, fainter, though redder than a glow-worm's
light, of thousands of burning joss-sticks, making the air heavy with
the odor of incense. Unlike the houses of the poor on shore, the house
boats are models of cleanliness, and space is utilized and economized
by adaptations more ingenious than those of a tiny yacht. These boats,
which form neat rooms with matted seats by day, turn into beds at
night, and the children have separate "rooms." The men go on shore
during the day and do laborer's work, but the women seldom land, are
devoted to "housewifely" duties, and besides are to be seen at all
hours of day and night flying over the water, plying for hire at the
landings, and ferrying goods and passengers, as strong as men, and
clean, comely, and pleasant-looking; one at the stern and one at the
bow, sending the floating home along with skilled and sturdy strokes.
They are splendid boat-women, and not vociferous.  These women don't
bandage their feet.

Their dress is dark brown or blue cotton, and consists of wide trousers
and a short, loose, sleeved upper garment up to the throat. The feet
are big and bare, the hair is neat and drawn back from the face into a
stiff roll or chignon, and they all wear jade-stone earrings. You see a
woman cooking or sewing in most housewifely style in one of these
"slipper boats;" but if you hail it, she is plying the heavy oar in one
moment, and as likely as not with a wise-looking baby on her back,
supported by a square piece of scarlet cloth embroidered in gold and
blue silks. Not one of this river population has yet received
Christianity.  Very little indeed is known about them and their
customs, but it is said that their morals are low, and that when
infanticide was less discouraged than it is now, the river was the
convenient grave of many of their newly-born female children. I spent
most of one afternoon alone in one of these boats, diving into all
canals and traversing water streets, hanging on to junks and "passage
boats," and enjoying the variety of river life to the full.

On another day I was carried eighteen miles through Canton on a chair
by four coolies, Mr. Smith and his brother walking the whole
distance--a great testimony to the invigorating influences of the
winter climate. As to locomotion, one must either walk or be carried. A
human being is not a heavy weight for the coolies, but it is
distressing to see that the shoulders of very many of them are
suffering from bony tumors, arising from the pressure of the poles. We
lunched in the open air upon a stone table under a banyan-tree at the
"Five-storied Pagoda" which forms the north-east corner of the great
wall of Canton, from which we looked down upon the singular vestiges of
the nearly forgotten Tartar conquest, the walled inner city of the
Tartar conquerors, containing the Tartar garrison, the Yamun (official
residence) of the Tartar governor, the houses of the foreign consuls,
and the unmixed Tartar population. The streets of this foreign kernel
of Canton are narrow and dirty, with mean, low houses with tiled roofs
nearly flat, and small courtyards, more like the houses of Western than
Eastern Asia. These Tartars do not differ much in physiognomy from the
Chinese. They are somewhat uglier, their stature is shorter, and the
women always wear three rings in their ears. I saw more women in a
single street in one day in the Tartar city than I have seen altogether
in the rest of Canton.

The view from that corner of the wall (to my thinking) is beautiful,
the flaming red pagoda with its many roofs; the singularly picturesque
ancient gray wall, all ups and downs, watch-towers, and strongholds,
the Tartar city below, with the "flowery pagoda," the mosques, the
bright foliage of the banyan, and the feathery grace of the bamboo;
outside the wall the White-Cloud hills, and nearer ranges burrowed
everywhere for the dead, their red and pink and orange hues harmonized
by a thin blue veil, softening without obscuring, all lying in the
glory of the tropic winter noon-light without heat, color without
glare. Vanish all memories of grays and pale greens before this
vividness, this wealth of light and color! Color is at once music and
vitality, and after long deprivation I revel in it. This wall is a fine
old structure, about twenty feet wide and as many high, with a broad
pavement on which to walk, and a high platform on the outside, with a
battlement pierced for marksmen. It is hardly ever level for ten yards,
but follows the inequalities of the ground, and has picturesque towers
which occur frequently. It is everywhere draped with ferns, which do
not help to keep it in repair.  The "Five-storied Pagoda" which flames
in red at one of its angles, is a striking feature in the view. As we
sat on stone seats by stone tables in what might be called its shadow,
under the cloudless heaven, with the pure Orientalism of the Tartar
city spread out at our feet, that unimaginable Orientalism which takes
one captive at once, and, like the first sight of a palm or a banana,
satisfies a longing of which one had not previously been conscious, a
mundane disappointment was severely felt. We had been, as the Americans
say, "exercising" for five hours in the bracing air, and I had long
been conscious of a craving for solid food which no Orientalism could
satisfy; and our dismay was great not only to find that the cook had
put up lunch for two when there were three hungry persons, but that the
chicken was so underdone that we could not eat it, and as we were not
starving enough to go and feed at a cat and dog or any other Chinese
restaurant, my hosts at least, who had not learned that bananas are
sustenance for men as well as "food for gods," were famished. As we ate
"clem pie" or "dined with Duke Humphrey," two water buffaloes, dark
gray ungainly forms, with little more hair than elephants, recurved
horns, and muzzles like deer, watched us closely, until a Tartar drove
them off. Such beasts, which stand in the water and plaster themselves
with mud like elephants, are the cows and draught oxen of China. Two
nice Chinese boys sat by us, and Mr. Smith practiced Chinese upon them,
till a man came out angrily and took them away, using many words, of
which we only understood "Barbarian Devils." The Cantonese are not
rude, however. A foreign lady can walk alone without being actually
molested, though as a rule Chinese women are not seen in the streets. I
have certainly seen half a million men, and not more than ninety women,
and those only of the poorest class. The middle and upper class women
never go out except in closed palanquins with screened windows, and are
nearly as much secluded as the women of India.

Passing through the Tartar city and some streets of aristocratic
dullness, inhabited by wealthy merchants, we spent some hours in the
mercantile quarter; which is practically one vast market or bazaar,
thronged with masculine humanity from morning till night. Eight feet is
the width of the widest street but one, and between the passers-by, the
loungers, the people standing at stalls eating, or drinking tea, and
the itinerant venders of goods, it is one long push. Then, as you are
elbowing your feeble self among the big men, who are made truly
monstrous by their many wadded garments of silk and brocade, you are
terrified by a loud yell, and being ignominiously hustled out of the
way, you become aware that the crowd has yielded place to a procession,
consisting of several men in red, followed by a handsome closed
palanquin, borne by four, six, or eight bearers in red liveries, in
which reclines a stout, magnificently dressed mandarin, utterly
oblivious of his inferiors, the representative of high caste feeling
all the world over, either reading or absorbed, never taking any notice
of the crowds and glitter which I find so fascinating. More men in red,
and then the crowd closes up again, to be again divided by a plebeian
chair like mine, or by pariahs running with a coffin fifteen feet long,
shaped like the trunk of a tree, or by coolies carrying burdens slung
on bamboo poles, uttering deafening cries, or by a marriage procession
with songs and music, or by a funeral procession with weeping and
wailing, succeeding each other incessantly. All the people in the
streets are shouting at the top of their voices, the chair and baggage
coolies are yelling, and to complete the bewildering din the beggars at
every corner are demanding charity by striking two gongs together.

Color riots in these narrow streets, with their high houses with
projecting upper stories, much carved and gilded, their deeply
projecting roofs or eaves tiled with shells cut into panes, which let
the light softly through, while a sky of deep bright blue fills up the
narrow slit between.  Then in the shadow below, which is fitfully
lighted by the sunbeams, hanging from all the second stories at every
possible interval of height, each house having at least two, are the
richly painted boards of which I wrote before, from six to ten feet
long, some black, some heavily gilded, a few orange, but the majority
red and perfectly plain, except for the characters several inches long
down the middle of each, gold on the red and black, and black on the
gold and orange--these, with banners, festoons, and the bright blue
draperies which for a hundred days indicate mourning in a house, form
together a spectacle of street picturesqueness such as my eyes have
never before beheld.  Then all the crowd is in costume, and such
costume! The prevailing color for the robe is bright blue. Even the
coolies put on such a one when not working, and all above the coolies
wear them in rich, ribbed silk, lined with silk of a darker shade. Over
this a sleeveless jacket of rich dark blue or puce brocade, plain or
quilted, is worn; the trousers, of which little is seen, being of
brocade or satin. The stockings are white, and the shoes, which are on
thick, white, canoe-shaped soles, are of black satin. The cap, which is
always worn, and quite on the back of the head, is of black satin, and
the pigtail, or plait of hair and purse silk mixed, hangs down nearly
to the bottom of the robe. Then the most splendid furs are worn, and
any number of quilted silk and brocade garments, one above another. And
these big, prosperous-looking men, who are so richly dressed, are only
the shopkeepers and the lower class of merchants. The mandarins and the
rich merchants seldom put their feet to the ground.

The shops just now are filled with all sorts of brilliant and enticing
things in anticipation of the great festival of the New Year, which
begins on the 21st. At the New Year they are all closed, and the rich
merchants vie with each other in keeping them so; those whose shops are
closed the longest, sometimes even for two months, gaining a great
reputation for wealth thereby. Streets are given up to shops of one
kind. Thus there is the "Jade-Stone Street," entirely given up to the
making and sale of jade-stone jewelry, which is very costly, a single
bracelet of the finest stone and workmanship costing 600 pounds. There
is a whole street devoted to the sale of coffins; several in which
nothing is sold but furniture, from common folding tables up to the
costliest settees, bedsteads, and chairs of massive ebony carving;
chinaware streets, book and engraving streets, streets of silk shops,
streets of workers in brass, silver, and gold, who perform their
delicate manipulations before your eyes; streets of second-hand
clothing, where gorgeous embroideries in silk and gold can be bought
for almost nothing; and so on, every street blazing with colors,
splendid with costume, and abounding with wealth and variety.

We went to a "dog and cat restaurant," where a number of richly dressed
men were eating of savory dishes made from the flesh of these animals.
There are thousands of butchers' and fishmongers' shops in Canton. At
the former there are always hundreds of split and salted ducks hanging
on lines, and pigs of various sizes roasted whole, or sold in joints
raw; and kids and buffalo beef, and numbers of dogs and cats, which,
though skinned, have the tails on to show what they are. I had some of
the gelatinous "birds'-nest" soup, without knowing what it was. It is
excellent; but as these nests are brought from Sumatra and are very
costly, it is only a luxury of the rich. The fish shops and stalls are
legion, but the fish looks sickening, as it is always cut into slices
and covered with blood. The boiled chrysalis of a species of silkworm
is exposed for sale as a great delicacy, and so are certain kinds of
hairless, fleshy caterpillars.

In our peregrinations we came upon a Yamun, with its vestibule hung
with scarlet, the marriage color as well as the official color. Within
the door the "wedding garments" were hanging for the wedding guests,
scarlet silk crepe, richly embroidered. Some time later the bridal
procession swept through the streets, adding a new glory to the color
and movement. First marched a troop of men in scarlet, carrying scarlet
banners, each one emblazoned with the literary degrees of the bride's
father and grandfather.  Then came ten heavily gilded, carved, and
decorated pavilions, containing the marriage presents, borne on poles
on the shoulders of servants; and after them the bride, carried in a
locked palanquin to the bridegroom's house, completely shrouded, the
palanquin one mass of decoration in gold and blue enamel, the carving
fully six inches deep; and the procession was closed by a crowd of men
in scarlet, carrying the bridegroom's literary degrees, with banners,
and instruments of music. It is the China of a thousand years ago,
unaltered by foreign contact.

There are many beggars, and a "Beggars' Square," and the beggars have a
"king," and a regular guild, with an entrance fee of 1 pound. The
shopkeepers are obliged by law to give them a certain sum, and on the
occasion of a marriage or any other festivity, the giver sends a fee to
the "king," on the understanding that he keeps his lieges from
bothering the guests. They make a fearful noise with their two gongs.
There is one on the Shameen bridge who has a callosity like a horn on
his forehead, with which he strikes the pavement and produces an
audible thump.

After the cleanliness, beauty, and good repair of the Japanese temples,
those of Canton impress me as being very repulsive. In Japan the people
preserve their temples for their exquisite beauty, and there are a
great many sincere Buddhists; but China is irreligious; a nation of
atheists or agnostics, or slaves of impious superstitions. In an
extended tramp among temples I have not seen a single male worshiper or
a thing to please the eye. The Confucian temples, to which mandarinism
resorts on certain days to bow before the Confucian tablets, are now
closed, and their courts are overgrown with weeds. The Buddhist temples
are hideous, both outside and inside, built of a crumbling red brick,
with very dirty brick floors, and the idols are frightful and tawdry.
We went to several which have large monasteries attached to them, with
great untidy gardens, with ponds for sacred fish and sacred tortoises,
and houses for sacred pigs, whose sacredness is shown by their
monstrous obesity. In the garden of the Temple of Longevity, the scene
of the "Willow Pattern," dirty and degraded priests, in spite of a
liberal douceur to one of them, set upon us, clamoring _kum-sha_,
attempting at the same time to shut us in, and the two gentlemen were
obliged to use force for our extrication. In the court of the "Temple
of Horrors," which is surrounded by a number of grated cells containing
life-sized figures of painted wood, undergoing at the hands of other
figures such hell-torments as are decreed for certain offences, there
is perpetually a crowd of fortune-tellers, and numbers of gaming tables
always thronged with men and boys. Each temple has an accretion of
smaller temples or shrines round it, but most, on ordinary occasions,
are deserted, and all are neglected and dirty. Where we saw worshipers
they were always women, some of whom looked very earnest, as they were
worshiping for sick children, or to obtain boys, or to insure the
fidelity of their husbands. "Worship" consists in many prostrations, in
the offering of many joss-sticks, and in burning large squares of
gilded paper, this being supposed to be the only way in which gold can
reach either gods or ancestors. One or two of the smaller temples were
thronged by women of the poorest class, whose earnest faces were very
touching. Idolatry is always pathetic. It is not, however, idol worship
which sits like a nightmare on China, and crushes atheists, agnostics,
and heathens alike, but ancestral worship, and the tyranny of the
astrologers and geomancers.

I like the faces of the lower orders of Chinese women. They are both
strong and kind, and it is pleasant to see women not deformed in any
way, but clothed completely in a dress which allows perfect freedom of
action. The small-footed women are rarely seen out of doors; but the
sewing-woman at Mrs. Smith's has crippled feet, and I have got her
shoes, which are too small for the English baby of four months old! The
butler's little daughter, aged seven, is having her feet "bandaged" for
the first time, and is in torture, but bears it bravely in the hope of
"getting a rich husband." The sole of the shoe of a properly diminished
foot is about two inches and a half long, but the mother of this
suffering infant says, with a quiet air of truth and triumph, that
Chinese women suffer less in the process of being crippled than foreign
women do from wearing corsets!  To these Eastern women the notion of
deforming the figure for the sake of appearance only is unintelligible
and repulsive. The crippling of the feet has another motive.

I. L. B.



LETTER IV (Continued)

Outside the Naam-Hoi Prison--The Punishment of the Cangue--Crime and
Misery--A Birthday Banquet--"Prisoners and Captives"--Prison
Mortality--Cruelties and Iniquities--The Porch of the Mandarin--The
Judgment-Seat--The Precincts of the Judgment-Seat--An Aged
Claimant--Instruments of Punishment--The Question by Torture


Yesterday, after visiting the streets devoted to jade-stone workers,
jewelers, saddlers, dealers in musical instruments, and furriers, we
turned aside from the street called Sze-P'aai-Lau, into a small, dirty
square, on one side of which is a brick wall, with a large composite
quadruped upon it in black paint, and on the other the open entrance
gate of the Yamun, or official residence of the mandarin whose
jurisdiction extends over about half Canton, and who is called the
Naam-Hoi magistrate. Both sides of the road passing through this
square, and especially the open space in front of the gate which leads
into the courtyard of the Yamun, were crowded with unshaven, ragged,
forlorn, dirty wretches, heavily fettered round their ankles, and with
long heavy chains padlocked round their necks, attached, some to large
stones with holes in the centre, others to short thick bars of iron.
Two or three, into whose legs the ankle fetters had cut deep raw
grooves, were lying in a heap on a ragged mat in the corner; some were
sitting on stones, but most were standing or shifting their position
uneasily, dragging their weighty fetters about, making a jarring and
dismal clank with every movement.

These unfortunates are daily exposed thus to the scorn and contempt of
the passers-by as a punishment for small thefts. Of those who were
seated on stones or who were kneeling attempting to support themselves
on their hands, most wore square wooden collars of considerable size,
weighing thirty pounds each, round their necks. These cangues are so
constructed that it is impossible for their wearers to raise their
hands to their mouths for the purpose of feeding themselves, and it
seemed to be a choice pastime for small boys to tantalize these
criminals by placing food tied to the end of sticks just within reach
of their mouths, and then suddenly withdrawing them. Apart from the
weight of their fetters, and of the cangue in which they are thus
pilloried, these men suffer much from hunger and thirst. They are thus
punished for petty larcenies. Surely "the way of transgressors is
hard."

The bearers set me down at the gate of the Yamun among the festering
wretches dragging the heavy weights, the filthy and noisy beggars, the
gamblers, the fortune-tellers, the messengers of justice, and the
countless hangers-on of the prison and judgment-seat of the Naam-Hoi
magistrate, and passing through a part of the courtyard, and down a
short, narrow passage, enclosed by a door of rough wooden uprights,
above which is a tiger's head, with staring eyes and extended jaws, we
reached the inner entrance, close to which is a much blackened altar of
incense foul with the ashes of innumerable joss-sticks, and above it an
equally blackened and much worn figure of a tiger in granite. To this
beast, which is regarded by the Chinese as possessing virtue, and is
the tutelary guardian of Chinese prisons, the jailers offer incense and
worship night and day, with the object of securing its aid and
vigilance on their behalf.

Close to the altar were the jailers' rooms, dark, dirty, and
inconceivably forlorn. Two of the jailers were lying on their beds
smoking opium. There we met the head jailer, of all Chinamen that I
have seen the most repulsive in appearance, manner, and dress; for his
long costume of frayed and patched brown silk looked as if it had not
been taken off for a year; the lean, brown hands which clutched the
prison keys with an instinctive grip were dirty, and the nails long and
hooked like claws, and the face, worse, I thought, than that of any of
the criminal horde, and scored with lines of grip and greed, was
saturated with opium smoke. This wretch pays for his place, and in a
few years will retire with a fortune, gains arising from bribes wrung
from prisoners and their friends by threats and torture, and by
defrauding them daily of a part of their allowance of rice.

The prison, as far as I can learn, consists mainly of six wards, each
with four large apartments, the walls of these wards abutting upon each
other, and forming a parallelogram, outside of which is a narrow, paved
pathway, on which the gates of the wards open, and which has on its
outer side the high boundary wall of the prison. This jailer, this
fiend--made such by the customs of his country--took us down a passage,
and unlocking a wooden grating turned us into one of the aforesaid
"wards," a roughly paved courtyard about fifty feet long by twenty-four
broad, and remained standing in the doorway jangling his keys.

If crime, vice, despair, suffering, filth and cruelty can make a hell
on earth, this is one. Over its dismal gateway may well be written,
"Whoso enters here leaves hope behind."

This ward is divided into four "apartments," each one having a high
wall at the back. The sides next the court are formed of a double row
of strong wooden bars, black from age and dirt, which reach from the
floor to the roof, and let in light and air through the chinks between
them.  The interiors of these cribs or cattle-pens are roughly paved
with slabs of granite, slimy with accumulations of dirt. In the middle
and round the sides are stout platforms of laths, forming a coarse,
black gridiron, on which the prisoners sit and sleep.

In each ward there is a shrine of a deity who is supposed to have the
power of melting the wicked into contrition, and to this accursed
mockery, on his birthday, the prisoners are compelled to give a feast,
which is provided by the jailer out of his peculations from their daily
allowances. No water is allowed for washing, and the tubs containing
the allowance of foul drinking water are placed close to those which
are provided for the accumulation of night soil, etc., the contents of
which are only removed once a fortnight. Two pounds of rice is the
daily allowance of each prisoner, but this is reduced to about one by
the greed of the jailer.

As we entered the yard, fifty or sixty men swarmed out from the dark
doorways which led into their dens, all heavily chained, with long,
coarse, matted hair hanging in wisps, or standing on end round their
death-like faces, in filthy rags, with emaciated forms caked with dirt,
and bearing marks of the torture; and nearly all with sore eyes,
swelled and bleeding lips, skin diseases, and putrefying sores. These
surrounded us closely, and as, not without a shudder, I passed through
them and entered one of their dens, they pressed upon us, blocking out
the light, uttering discordant cries, and clamoring with one voice,
_kum-sha_, i.e., backsheesh, looking more like demons than living men,
as abject and depraved as crime, despair, and cruelty can make them.

Within, the blackness, the filth, the vermin, the stench, overpowering
even in this cool weather, the rubbish of rags and potsherds, cannot be
described. Here in semi-starvation and misery, with nameless cruelties
practised upon them without restraint, festering in one depraved mass,
are the tried and untried, the condemned, the guilty and innocent (?),
the murderer and pirate, the debtor and petty thief, all huddled
together, without hope of exit except to the adjacent judgment-seat,
with its horrors of "the question by torture," or to the "field of
blood" not far away. On earth can there be seen a spectacle more
hideous than these abject wretches, with their heavy fetters eating
into the flesh of their necks and ankles (if on their wasted skeletons,
covered with vermin and running sores, there is any flesh left), their
thick matted, bristly, black hair--contrasting with the shaven heads
of the free--the long, broken claws on their fingers and toes, the
hungry look in their emaciated faces, and their clamorous cry,
_kum-sha!  kum-sha!_ They thronged round us clattering their chains,
one man saying that they had so little rice that they had to "drink the
foul water to fill themselves;" another shrieked, "Would I were in your
prison in Hong Kong," and this was chorused by many voices saying, "In
your prison at Hong Kong they have fish and vegetables, and more rice
than they can eat, and baths, and beds to sleep on; good, good is the
prison of your Queen!" but higher swelled the cry of _kum-sha_, and as
we could not give alms among several hundred, we eluded them, though
with difficulty, and, as we squeezed through the narrow door,
execrations followed us, and high above the heavy clank of the fetters
and the general din rose the cry, "Foreign Devils" (Fan-Kwai), as we
passed out into sunshine and liberty, and the key was turned upon them
and their misery.

We went into three other large wards, foul with horror, and seething
with misery, and into a smaller one, nearly as bad, where fifteen women
were incarcerated, some of them with infants devoured by cutaneous
diseases. Several of them said that they are there for kidnapping, but
others are hostages for criminal relations who have not yet been
captured. This imprisonment of hostages is in accordance with a law
which authorizes the seizure and detention of persons or families
belonging to criminals who have fled or are in concealment. Such are
imprisoned till the guilty relative is brought to justice, for months,
years, or even for a lifetime. Two of these women told us that they had
been there for twenty years.

There are likewise some single cells--hovels clustering under a wall,
in which criminals who can afford to pay the jailer for them may enjoy
the luxury of solitude. In each ward there is a single unfettered
man--always a felon--who by reason either of bribery or good conduct,
is appointed to the place of watchman or spy among his fellows in
crime.  There is a turnkey for each ward, and these men, with the
unchained felons who act as watchmen, torture new arrivals in order to
force money from them, and under this process some die.

In the outer wall of the prison there is a port-hole, just large enough
to allow of a body being pushed through it, for no malefactor's corpse
must be carried through the prison entrance, lest it should defile the
"Gate of Righteousness." There is also a hovel called a deadhouse, into
which these bodies are conveyed till a grave has been dug in some
"accursed place," by members of an "accursed" class.

In addition to the large mortality arising from poor living and its
concomitant diseases, and the exhaustion produced by repeated torture,
epidemics frequently break out in the hot weather in those dark and
fetid dens, and oftentimes nearly clear out the prison. On such
occasions as many as four hundred have succumbed in a month. The number
of criminals who are executed from this prison, either as sentenced to
death, or as unable to bribe the officials any further, is supposed to
be about five hundred annually, and it is further supposed that half
this number die annually from starvation and torture. Sometimes one
hundred criminals are beheaded in an hour, as it is feared may be the
case on the Governor going out of office, when it is not unusual to
make a jail delivery in this fashion.

In numerous cases, when there is a press of business before the
judgment-seat and a dead-lock occurs, accusers and witnesses are
huddled indiscriminately into the Naam-Hoi prison, sometimes for
months; and as the Governor or magistrate takes no measures to provide
for them during the interval, some of the poorer ones who have no
friends to bribe the jailer on their behalf, perish speedily.

At night, in the dens which I have described, the hands of the
prisoners are chained to their necks, and even in the daytime only one
hand is liberated. I thought that many of the faces looked quite
imbecile. The jailer, as we went out, kept holding out his long-clawed,
lean, brown hand, muttering about his promised kum-sha, very fearful
lest the other turnkeys, who were still lying on their beds smoking
opium, should come in for any share of it.

Mr. Henry,* my host and very able cicerone, is an American missionary,
and as such carries with him the gospel of peace on earth and good will
to men. Surely if the knowledge of Him who came "to preach liberty to
the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,"
were diffused and received here, and were spread with no niggard hand,
the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, with its unspeakable horrors,
would go the way of all our dungeons and bedlams.  
[*I cannot forbear adding a note on the extent of Mr.  Henry's work in
1881. He preached 190 times in Chinese, and five times in English; held
fifty-two Bible-class meetings, and thirteen communion services;
baptized forty-five adults and eight children; traveled on mission work
by boat 2,540 miles, by chair, eighty miles, and on foot 670 miles;
visited 280 different towns and villages, and distributed 14,000 books,
receiving assistance in the latter work only on one short journey. His
life is a happy combination of American energy and Christian zeal.]

But this is not all. From the prison it is only a short distance to the
judgment-seat, and passing once more through the "Gate of
Righteousness," we crossed a large court infested by gamblers and
fortune-tellers, and presented ourselves at a porch with great figures
painted on both its doors, and gay with the red insignia of
mandarinism, which is the entrance to the stately residence of the
Naam-Hoi magistrate, one of the subordinate dignitaries of Canton.  In
the porch, as might have been in that of Pilate or Herod, were a number
of official palanquins, and many officials and servants of the mandarin
with red-crowned hats turned up from their faces, and privates of the
city guard, mean and shabby persons. One of these, for a kum-sha of
course, took us, not through the closed and curtained doors, but along
some passages, from which we passed through a circular brickwork tunnel
to the front of the judgment seat at which all the inmates of the
Naam-Hoi prison may expect sooner or later to be tried. My nerves were
rather shaken with what I had seen, and I trembled as a criminal might
on entering this chamber of horror.

In brief, the judgment-seat is a square hall, open at one end, with a
roof supported on three columns. In the plan which I send, No. 1 is the
three pillars; No. 2, the instruments of torture ranged against the
wall; No. 3, four accused men wearing heavy chains, and kneeling with
their foreheads one inch from the ground, but not allowed to touch it.
These men are undergoing the mildest form of torture--protracted
kneeling without support in one position, with coarse sand under the
bare knees. No. 4 is a very old and feeble man, also kneeling, a
claimant in an ancient civil suit. No. 6 indicates a motley group of
notaries, servants, attendants, lictors, alas! The table (No. 5) is of
dark wood, covered with a shabby red cloth.  On it are keys, petitions,
note-books, pens and ink, an official seal, and some small cups
containing tallies, which are thrown down to indicate the number of
blows which a culprit is to receive. This was all.

In a high-backed ebony arm-chair, such as might be seen in any English
hall, sat the man who has the awful power of life and death in his
hands. It is almost needless to say that the judge, who was on the left
of the table, and who never once turned to the accused, or indeed to
anyone, was the only seated person. He was a young man, with fine
features, a good complexion, and a high intellectual brow, and had I
seen him under other circumstances, I should have thought him decidedly
prepossessing looking. He wore a black satin hat, a rich, blue brocade
robe, almost concealing his blue brocade trousers, and over this a
sleeved cloak of dark blue satin, lined with ermine fur. A look of
singular coldness and hauteur sat permanently on his face, over which a
flush of indescribable impatience sometimes passed. He is not of the
people, this lordly magistrate. He is one of the privileged literati.
His literary degrees are high and numerous. He has both place and
power. Little risk does he run of a review of his decisions or of an
appeal to the Emperor at Pekin. He spoke loud and with much rapidity
and emphasis, and often beat impatiently on the floor with his foot. He
used the mandarin tongue, and whether cognizant of the dialect of the
prisoners or not, he put all his questions through an interpreter, who
stood at his left, a handsomely dressed old man, who wore a gold chain
with a dependent ivory comb, with which while he spoke he frequently
combed a small and scanty gray mustache.

Notaries, attendants with scarlet-crowned hats, and a rabble of men and
boys, in front of whom we placed ourselves, stood down each side. The
open hall, though lofty, is shabby and extremely dirty, with an unswept
broken pavement, littered at one side with potsherds, and disfigured by
a number of more or less broken black pots as well as other rubbish,
making it look rather like a shed in an untidy nursery garden than an
imperial judgment-hall. On the pillars there are certain classical
inscriptions, one of which is said to be an exhortation to mercy.
Pieces of bamboo of different sizes are ranged against the south wall.
These are used for the bastinado, and there were various instruments
ranged against the same wall, at which I could only look fitfully and
with a shudder, for they are used in "The Question by Torture," which
rapid method of gaining a desired end appears to be practised on
witnesses as well as criminals.

The yard, or uncovered part of this place, has a pavement in the
middle, and on one side of this the most loathsome trench I ever
beheld, such a one as I think could not be found in the foulest slum of
the dirtiest city in Europe, not only loathsome to the eye, but
emitting a stench which even on that cool day might produce vertigo,
and this under the very eye of the magistrate, and not more than thirty
feet from the judgment-seat.

On the other side by which we entered, and which also has an entrance
direct from the prison, is a slimy, green ditch, at the back of which
some guards were lounging, with a heap of felons in chains attached to
heavy stones at their feet.  Above, the sky was very blue, and the sun
of our Father which is in heaven shone upon "the just and the unjust."

The civil case took a long time, and was adjourned, and the aged
claimant was so exhausted with kneeling before the judge, that he was
obliged to be assisted away by two men.  Then another man knelt and
presented a petition, which was taken to "avizandum." Then a guard led
in by a chain a prisoner, heavily manacled, and with a heavy stone
attached to his neck, who knelt with his forehead touching the ground.
After some speaking, a boy who was standing dangling a number of keys
came forward, and, after much ado, unlocked the rusty padlock which
fastened the chain round the man's neck, and he was led away, dragging
the stone after him with his hands. He had presented a formal petition
for this favor, and I welcomed the granting of it as a solitary gleam
of mercy, but I was informed that the mitigation of the sentence came
about through bribery on the part of the man's relatives, who had to
buy the good-will of four officials before the petition could reach
the magistrate's hands.

More than an hour and a half had passed since we entered, and for two
hours before that the four chained prisoners had been undergoing the
torture of kneeling on a coarsely sanded stone in an immovable and
unsupported position. I was standing so close to them that the dress of
one touched my feet. I could hear their breathing, which had been heavy
at first, become a series of gasps, and cool as the afternoon was, the
sweat of pain fell from their brows upon the dusty floor, and they were
so emaciated that, even through their clothing, I could see the
outlines of their bones. There were no counsel, and no witnesses, and
the judge asked but one question as he beat his foot impatiently on the
floor, "Are you guilty?" They were accused of an aggravated robbery,
and were told to confess, but they said that only two of them were
guilty. They were then sent back to the tender mercies of the
opium-smoking jailer, probably to come back again and again to undergo
the severer forms of torture, till no more money can be squeezed out of
their friends, when they will probably be beheaded, death being the
legal penalty for robbery with aggravations.

There is no regular legal process, no jury, no one admitted to plead
for the accused, and owing to the way in which accusations are made and
the intimate association of trial with bribery, it is as certain that
many innocent persons suffer as it is that many guilty escape. From
such a system one is compelled to fall back upon the righteousness of
the Judge of all the earth; and as I stood in that hideous
judgment-hall beside the tortured wretches, I could not shut out of my
heart a trembling hope that for these and the legion of these, a
worthier than an earthly intercessor pleads before a mightier than an
earthly judge.

It is not clear whether torture is actually recognized by Chinese law,
but it is practised in almost every known form by all Chinese
magistrates, possibly as the most expeditious mode of legal procedure
which is known. It is also undoubtedly the most potent agent in
securing bribes.  The legal instruments of summary punishment which
hang on the wall of the Naam-Hoi judgment-hall consist of three boards
with proper grooves for squeezing the fingers, and the bastinado, which
is inflicted with bamboos of different weights. The illegal modes of
"putting the question," i.e., of extorting a confession of guilt, as
commonly practised are, prolonged kneeling on coarse sand, with the
brow within an inch of the ground; twisting the ears with "roughened
fingers," and keeping them twisted while the prisoner kneels on chains;
beating the lips to a jelly with a thick stick, the result of which was
to be seen in several cases in the prison; suspending the body by the
thumbs; tying the hands to a bar under the knees, so as to bend the
body double during many hours; the thumb-screw; dislocating the arm or
shoulder; kneeling upon pounded glass, salt and sand mixed together,
till the knees are excoriated, and several others, the product of
fiendish ingenuity. Severe flogging with the bamboo, rattan, cudgel,
and knotted whip successively is one of the most usual means of
extorting confession; and when death results from the process, the
magistrate reports that the criminal has died of sickness, and in the
few cases in which there may be reason to dread investigation, the
administration of a bribe to the deceased man's friends insures
silence.

The cangue, if its wearers were properly fed and screened from the sun,
is rather a disgrace than a cruel mode of punishment. Death is said to
be inflicted for aggravated robbery, robbery with murder, highway
robbery, arson, and piracy, even without the form of a trial when the
culprits are caught in flagrante delicto; but though it is a frequent
punishment, it is by no means absolutely certain for what crimes it is
the legal penalty.

We left the judgment-seat as a fresh relay of criminals entered, two of
them with faces atrocious enough for any crime, and passed out of the
courtyard of the Yamun through the "Gate of Righteousness," where the
prisoners, attached to heavy stones, were dragging and clanking their
chains, or lying in the shade full of sores, and though the red sunset
light was transfiguring all things, the glory had faded from Canton and
the air seemed heavy with a curse.



LETTER IV (Continued)

The "Covent Garden" of Canton--Preliminaries of Execution--A Death
Procession--The "Field of Blood"--"The Death of the Cross"--A Fair
Comparison


Although I went to the execution ground two days before my visit to the
prison, the account of it belongs to this place. Passing through the
fruit-market, the "Covent Garden" of Canton, where now and in their
stated seasons are exposed for sale, singly and in fragrant heaps,
among countless other varieties of fruits, the orange, pommeloe, apple,
citron, banana, rose-apple, pine-apple, custard-apple, pear, quince,
guava, carambola, persimmon, loquat, pomegranate, grape, water-melon,
musk-melon, peach, apricot, plum, mango, mulberry, date, cocoa-nut,
olive, walnut, chestnut, lichi, and papaya, through the unsavory
precincts of the "salt-fish market," and along a street the specialty
of which is the manufacture from palm leaves of very serviceable rain
cloaks, we arrived at the Ma T'au, a cul de sac resembling in shape, as
its name imports, a horse's head, with the broad end opening on the
street.  This "field of blood," which counts its slain by tens of
thousands, is also a "potter's field," and is occupied throughout its
whole length by the large earthen pots which the Chinese use instead of
tubs, either in process of manufacture or drying in the sun. This Ma
T'au, the place of execution, on which more than one hundred heads at
times fall in a morning, is simply a pottery yard, and at the hours
when space is required for the executioner's purposes more or fewer
pots are cleared out of the way, according to the number of the
condemned. The spectacle is open to the street and to all passers-by.
Against the south wall are five crosses, which are used for the
crucifixion of malefactors. At the base of the east wall are four large
earthenware vessels full of quicklime, into which heads which are
afterward to be exposed on poles are cast, until the flesh has been
destroyed. From this bald sketch it may be surmised that few
accessories of solemnity or even propriety consecrate the last tragedy
of justice.

In some cases criminals are brought directly from the judgment-seat to
the execution ground on receiving sentence, but as a rule the condemned
persons remain in prison ignorant of the date of their doom, till an
official, carrying a square board with the names of those who are to
die that day pasted upon it, enters and reads the names of the doomed.
Each man on answering is made to sit in something like a dust-basket,
in which he is borne through the gate of the inner prison, at which he
is interrogated and his identity ascertained by an official, who
represents the Viceroy or Governor, into the courtyard of the Yamun,
where he is pinioned. At this stage it is usual for the friends of the
criminal, or the turnkeys in their absence, to give him "auspicious"
food, chiefly fat pork and Saam-su, an intoxicating wine. Pieces of
betel-nut, the stimulating qualities of which are well known, are
invariably given. These delays being over, the criminal is carried into
the presence of the judge, who sits not in the judgment-hall but in the
porch of the inner gateway of his Yamun. On the prisoner giving his
name, a superscription bearing it, and proclaiming his crime and the
manner of his death, is tied to a slip of bamboo and bound to his head.
A small wooden ticket, also bearing his name and that of the prison
from which he is taken to execution, is tied to the back of his neck.

Then the procession starts, the criminals, of whom there are usually
several, being carried in open baskets in the following order:--Some
spearmen, the malefactors, a few soldiers, a chair of state, bearing
the ruler of the Naam-Hoi county, attended by equerries; and another
chair of state, in which is seated the official who, after all is over,
pays worship to the five protecting genii of Canton, a small temple to
whom stands close to the potter's field, and who have power to restrain
those feelings of revenge and violence which the spirits of the
decapitated persons may be supposed hereafter to cherish against all
who were instrumental in their decapitation. Last of all follows a
herald on horseback, carrying a yellow banner inscribed "By Imperial
Decree," an indispensable adjunct on such occasions, as without it the
county ruler would not be justified in commanding the executioner to
give the death stroke. This ruler or his deputy sits at a table covered
with a red cloth, and on being told that all the preliminaries have
been complied with, gives the word for execution. The criminals, who
have been unceremoniously pitched out of the dust baskets into the mud
or gore or dust of the execution ground, kneel down in a row or rows,
and the executioner with a scimitar strikes off head after head, each
with a single stroke, an assistant attending to hand him a fresh sword
as soon as the first becomes blunt.  It is said that Chinese criminals
usually meet their doom with extreme apathy, but occasionally they
yield to extreme terror, and howl at the top of their voices, "Save
life!  Save life!" As soon as the heads have fallen, some coolies of a
pariah class take up the trunks and put them into wooden shells, in
which they are eventually buried in a cemetery outside one of the city
gates, called "The trench for the bones of ten thousand men." It is not
an uncommon thing, under ordinary circumstances, for fifteen, twenty,
or thirty-five wretches to suffer the penalty of death in this spot;
and this number swells to very large dimensions at a jail delivery, or
during a rebellion, or when the crews of pirates are captured in the
act of piracy. My friend Mr. Bulkeley Johnson, of Shanghai, saw one
hundred heads fall in one morning.

Mr. Henry says that the reason that most of the criminals meet death
with such stoicism or indifference is, that they have been worn down
previously by starvation and torture.  Some are stupefied with Saam-su.
It is possible in some cases for a criminal who is fortunate enough to
have rich relations to procure a substitute; a coolie sells himself to
death in such a man's stead for a hundred dollars, and for a week
before his surrender indulges in every kind of expensive debauchery,
and when the day of doom arrives is so completely stupefied by wine and
opium, as to know nothing of the terror of death.

We had not gone far into this aceldema when we came to a space cleared
from pots, and to a great pool of blood and dust mingled, blackening in
the sun, then another and another, till there were five of them almost
close together, with splashes of blood upon the adjacent pots, and
blood trodden into the thirsty ground. Against the wall opposite, a
rudely constructed cross was resting, dark here and there with patches
of blood. Among the rubbish at the base of the wall there were some
human fragments partly covered with matting; a little farther some
jaw-bones with the teeth in them, then four more crosses, and some
human heads lying at the foot of the wall, from which it was evident
that dogs had partially gnawed off the matting in which they had been
tied up. The dead stare of one human eye amidst the heap haunts me
still. A blood-splashed wooden ticket, with a human name on one side
and that of the Naam-Hoi prison on the other, was lying near one of the
pools of blood, and I picked it up as a memento, as the stroke which
had severed its string had also severed at the same time the culprit's
neck. The place was ghastly and smelt of blood.

The strangest and most thrilling sight of all was the cross in this
unholy spot, not a symbol of victory and hope, but of the lowest infamy
and degradation, of the vilest death which the vilest men can die. Nor
was it the solid, lofty structure, fifteen or twenty feet high, which
art has been glorifying for a thousand years, but a rude gibbet of
unplaned wood, roughly nailed together, barely eight feet high, and not
too heavy for a strong man to carry on his shoulders. Most likely it
was such a cross, elevated but little above the heads of the howling
mob of Jerusalem, which Paul had in view when he wrote of Him who hung
upon it, "But made Himself obedient unto death, _even the death of the
cross_." To these gibbets infamous criminals, whose crimes are regarded
as deserving of a lingering death, are tightly bound with cords, and
are then slowly hacked to pieces with sharp knives, unless the friends
of the culprit are rich enough to bribe the executioner to terminate
the death agony early by stabbing a vital part.

These facts do not require to be dressed out with words.  They are most
effective when most baldly stated. I left the execution ground as I
left the prison--with the prayer, which has gained a new significance,
"For all prisoners and captives we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord;"
but though our hands are nationally clean now as regards the
administration of justice and the treatment of criminals, we need not
hold them up in holy horror as if the Chinese were guilty above all
other men, for the framers of the Litany were familiar with dungeons
perhaps worse than the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, and with
forms of torture which spared not even women, and the judges' and
jailers' palms were intimate with the gold of accused persons. It is
simply that heathenism in Canton is practising at this day what
Christianity in Europe looked upon with indifference for centuries.

I. L. B.



LETTER V

Portuguese Missionaries--A Chinese Hospital--Chinese
Anaesthetics--Surgery and Medicine--Ventilation and Cleanliness--A
Chinese "Afternoon Tea"--A New Inspiration


HONG KONG, January 10.

The year seems already getting old and frowzy. Under these blue skies,
and with all the doors and windows open, I should think it midsummer if
I did not look at the calendar. Oh, how I like blue, sunny skies,
instead of gray and grim ones, and blazing colors instead of the dismal
grays and browns of our nondescript winters!

I left Canton by the Kin-Kiang on Monday, with two thousand Chinese
passengers and two Portuguese missionary priests, the latter wearing
Chinese costume, and so completely got up as Chinamen that had they not
spoken Portuguese their features would not have been sufficient to
undeceive me.  They were noble-looking men, and bore upon their faces
the stamp of consecration to a noble work. On the other steamer, the
Tchang, instead of a man with revolvers and a cutlass keeping guard
over the steerage grating, a large hose pipe is laid on to each
hatch-way, through which, in case of need, boiling water can be sent
under strong pressure. Just as we landed here, about five hundred large
fishes were passed through a circular net from a well in the steamer
into a well in a fishing boat, to which all the fishmongers in Hong
Kong immediately resorted.

(I pass over the hospitalities and festivities of Hong Kong, and an
afternoon with the Governor in the Victoria Prison, to an interesting
visit paid with Mr., now Sir J.  Pope Hennessey to the Chinese
Hospital.)

We started from Government House, with the Governor, in a chair with
six scarlet bearers, attended by some Sikh orderlies in scarlet
turbans, for a "State Visit" to the Tung-Wah Hospital, a purely Chinese
institution, built some years ago by Chinese merchants, and supported
by them at an annual cost of $16,000. In it nothing European, either in
the way of drugs or treatment, is tried. There is a dispensary
connected with it, where advice is daily given to about a hundred and
twenty people; and, though lunacy is rare in China, they are building a
lunatic asylum at the back of the hospital.

The Tung-Wah hospital consists of several two-storied buildings of
granite, with large windows on each side, and a lofty central building
which contains the directors' hall, the accommodation for six resident
physicians, and the business offices. The whole is surrounded by a
well-kept garden, bounded by a very high wall. We entered by the grand
entrance, which has a flagged pavement, each flag consisting of a slab
of granite twelve feet long by three broad, and were received at the
foot of the grand staircase by the directors and their chairman, the
six resident doctors, and Mr. Ng Choy, a rising, Chinese barrister,
educated at Lincoln's Inn, who interpreted for us in admirable English.
He is the man who goes between the Governor and the Chinese community,
and is believed to have more influence with the Governor on all
questions which concern Chinamen than anybody else. These gentlemen all
wore rich and beautiful dresses of thick ribbed silk and figured
brocade, and, unless they were much padded and wadded, they had all
attained to a remarkable embonpoint.

The hall in which the directors meet is lofty and very handsome, the
roof being supported on massive pillars. One side is open to the
garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle, with a chair massive
enough for a throne for the chairman, and six grand, carved ebony
chairs on either side.

Our procession consisted of the chairman and the twelve directors, the
six stout middle-aged doctors, Mr. Ng Choy, the Governor, the Bishop of
Victoria, and myself; but the patients regarded the unwonted spectacle
with extreme apathy.

The wards hold twenty each, and are divided into wooden stalls, each
stall containing two beds. Partitions seven feet high run down the
centre. The beds are matted wooden platforms, and the bedding white
futons or wadded quilts, which are washed once a week. The pillows are
of wood or bamboo. Each bed has a shelf above it, with a teapot upon it
in a thickly wadded basket, which keeps the contents hot all day, the
infusion being, of course, poured off the leaves.  A ticket, with the
patient's name upon it, and the hours at which he is to take his
medicine, hangs above each person.

No amputations are performed, but there are a good many other
operations, such as the removal of cancers, tumors, etc. The doctors
were quite willing to answer questions, within certain limits; but when
I asked them about the composition and properties of their drugs they
became reticent at once and said that they were secrets. They do not
use chloroform in operations, but they all asserted, and their
assertions were corroborated by Mr. Ng Choy, that they possess drugs
which throw their patients into a profound sleep, during which the most
severe operations can be painlessly performed. They asserted further
that such patients awake an hour or two afterward quite cheerful, and
with neither headache nor vomiting! One of them showed me a bottle
containing a dark brown powder which, he said, produced this result,
but he would not divulge the name of one of its constituents, saying
that it is a secret taught him by his tutor, and that there are several
formulas. It has a pungent and slightly aromatic taste.

The surgery and medicine are totally uninfluenced by European science,
and are of the most antiquated and barbaric description. There was a
woman who had had a cancer removed, and the awful wound, which was
uncovered for my inspection, was dressed with musk, lard, and
ambergris, with a piece of oiled paper over all. There was also
exhibited to us a foot which had been pierced by a bamboo splinter.
Violent inflammation had extended up to the knee, and the wound, and
the swollen, blackened limb were being treated with musk and tiger's
fat. A man with gangrened feet, nearly dropping off, had them rolled up
in dark-colored paste, of which musk and oil were two ingredients. All
the wounds were deplorably dirty, and no process of cleaning them
exists in this system of surgery.

The Governor and Bishop were not allowed to go into the women's ward.
It looked very clean and comfortable, but a woman in the last
death-agony was unattended. They never bleed, or leech, or blister, or
apply any counter-irritants in cases of inflammation. They give
powdered rhinoceros' horns, sun-dried tiger's blood, powdered tiger's
liver, spiders' eyes, and many other queer things, and for a tonic and
febrifuge, where we should use quinine, they rely mainly on the ginseng
(Panax quinquefolia?) of which I saw so much in Japan. They judge much
by the pulse and tongue.  The mortality in this hospital is very large,
not only from the nature of the treatment, but because Chinamen who
have no friends in Victoria go there when they are dying, in order to
secure that their bodies shall be sent to their relations at a
distance. There were fifteen sick and shipwrecked junkmen there,
covered with sores, who looked very far down in the scale of humanity.

After going through the wards I went into the laboratory, where six men
were engaged in preparing drugs, then to the "chemical kitchen," where
a hundred and fifty earthen pipkins on a hundred and fifty earthen
furnaces were being used in cooking medicines under the superintendence
of eight cooks in spotless white clothing; then to the kitchen, which
is large and clean; then alone into the dead-house, which no Chinese
will enter except an unclean class of pariahs, who perform the last
offices for the departed and dress the corpses for burial. This gloomy
receptacle is also clean.

Great attention is paid to cleanliness and ventilation. Dry earth is
used as a deodorizer, but if there be a bad odor they burn sandalwood.
They don't adopt any disinfectants; indeed, they don't appear to know
their use. The patients all lie with their backs to the light, and
there is a space five feet wide between the beds and the windows. All
the windows were open both at the top and bottom, so as to create a
complete current of air, and the airiness and freedom from smells and
closeness were quite remarkable, considering the state in which the
wounds are, which is worse than I dare attempt to describe. The
hospital is conducted on strictly "temperance principles," i.e., no
alcoholic stimulants are given, which is not remarkable, considering
how little comparatively they are used in China, and with what
moderation on the whole by those who use them. There were seventy-five
patients in the wards yesterday, and the cases were mostly either
serious originally, or have been made so by the treatment. There are
one hundred and twenty beds. There is much to admire in this hospital,
the humane arrangements, the obvious comfort of the patients, and the
admirable ventilation and perfect cleanliness of the beds and wards,
but the system adopted is one of the most antiquated quackery, and when
I think of the unspeakably horrible state of the wounds, the mortifying
limbs, and the gangrened feet ready to drop off, I almost question
Governor Hennessey's wisdom in stamping the hospital with his approval
on his "State Visit."

The Governor and I were received in the boardroom after our two hours'
inspection, where we were joined by Mrs.  Hennessey, and entertained by
the directors at what might be called "afternoon tea." But when is the
Chinaman not drinking tea? A monstrous plateau of the preserved and
candied fruits, in the making of which the Chinese ladies excel, had
been placed upon the ebony table, and when we were seated in the
stately ebony chairs on the chairman's right, with the yellow,
shining-faced, wadded or corpulent directors opposite to us, excellent
tea with an unusual flavor was brought in, and served in cups of
antique green dragon china. The Governor made kindly remarks on the
hospital, which fluent Mr. Ng Choy doubtless rendered into the most
fulsome flattery; the chairman complimented the Governor, and unlimited
"soft sawder," in Oriental fashion, passed all round.

It is proper in China on such an occasion to raise the tea-cup with
both the hands to a good height and bow to each person, naming at the
same time the character so continually seen on tea-cups and sake
bottles--Happiness,--which is understood to be a wish for happiness in
this formula, "May your happiness be as the Eastern Sea;" but the wish
may also mean "May you have many sons." It is strange that these
Chinamen, who showed all fitting courtesy to Mrs. Hennessey and me,
would only have spoken of their wives apologetically as "the mean ones
within the gates!" It was a charming Oriental sight, the grand, open-
fronted room with its stone floor and many pillars, the superbly
dressed directors and their blue-robed attendants, and the immense
costumed crowd outside the gate in the sunshine, kept back by
crimson-turbaned Sikh orderlies.

If civilization were to my taste, I should linger in Victoria for the
sake of its beauty, its stirring life, its costume and color, its
perfect winter climate, its hospitalities, its many charming residents,
and for various other reasons, and know nothing of its feuds in state,
church, and society. But I am a savage at heart, and weary for the
wilds first, and then for the beloved little home on the wooded edge of
the moorland above the Northern Sea, which gleams like a guiding star,
even through the maze of sunshine and color of this fascinating Eastern
world. to-day I lunched at (acting) Chief Justice Snowden's, and he
urges me to go to Malacca on my way home. I had never dreamed of the
"Golden Chersonese;" but I am much inspired by his descriptions of the
neighborhood of the Equator, and as he has lent me Newbold's Malacca
for the voyage, and has given me letters to the Governor and Colonial
Secretary of the Straits Settlements, you will next hear from me from
Singapore!

I. L. B.



LETTER VI

A Cochin China River--The Ambition of Saigon--A French Colonial
Metropolis--European Life in Saigon-A Cochin-Chinese
Village--"Afternoon Tea" in Choquan--Anamese Children--Anamite
Costume--Anamite River-Dwellings--An Amphibious Population--An
Unsuccessful Colony--"With the Big Toe"--Three Persecuting
Kings--Saigon


S.S. "SINDH," CHINA SEA, January.

This steamer, one of the finest of the Messageries Maritimes line, is
perfect in all respects, and has a deck like that of an old-fashioned
frigate. The weather has been perfect also, and the sea smooth enough
for a skiff. The heat increases hourly though, or rather has increased
hourly, for hotter it cannot be! Punkahs are going continually at meal
times, and if one sits down to write in the saloon, the "punkah-wallah"
spies one out and begins his refreshing labors at once. But we took on
board a host of mosquitoes at Saigon, and the nights are consequently
so intolerable that I weary for the day.

The twenty-four hours spent at Saigon broke the monotonous pleasantness
of our voyage very agreeably to me, but most of the passengers complain
of the wearisome detention in the heat. In truth, the mercury stood at
92 degrees!

At daybreak yesterday we were steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong
river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah
palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if
they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem. The country, as
overlooked from our lofty deck, appeared a dead level of rice and
scrubby jungle intermixed, a vast alluvial plain, from which the heavy,
fever-breeding mists were rising in rosy folds. Every now and then we
passed a Cochin Chinese village--a collection of very draughty-looking
wooden huts, roofed with palm leaves, built over the river on gridiron
platforms supported on piles. Each dwelling of the cluster had its boat
tethered below it. It looked a queer amphibious life. Men were lying on
the gridirons smoking, women were preparing what might be the
breakfast, and babies were crawling over the open floors, born with the
instinct not to tumble over the edge into the river below.  These
natives were small and dark, although of the Mongolian type, with wide
mouths and high cheek bones--an ugly race; and their attitudes, their
tumble-to-pieces houses, and their general forlornness, gave me the
impression that they are an indolent race as well, to be ousted in time
possibly by the vigorous and industrious Chinaman.

After proceeding for about forty miles up this mighty Me-kong or
Cambodia river, wearying somewhat of its nipah-fringed alluvial flats,
and of the monotonous domestic economy of which we had so good a view,
we reached Saigon, which has the wild ambition to propose to itself to
be a second Singapore! All my attempts to learn anything about Saigon
on board have utterly failed. People think that they told me something
altogether new and sufficient when they said that it is a port of call
for the French mail steamers, and one of the hottest places in the
world! This much I knew before I asked them! If they know anything more
now, no dexterity of mine can elicit it. There was a general stampede
ashore as soon as we moored, and gharries--covered spring carts--drawn
by active little Sumatra ponies, and driven by natives of Southern
India, known as Klings, were immediately requisitioned, but nothing
came of it apparently, and when I came back at sunset I found that,
after an hour or two of apparently purposeless wanderings, all my
fellow-passengers had returned to the ship, pale and depressed. True,
the mercury was above 90 degrees!

Arriving in this condition of most unblissful ignorance, I was
astonished when a turn in the river brought us close upon a
considerable town, straggling over a great extent of ground,
interspersed with abundant tropical greenery, its river front
consisting of a long, low line of much-shaded cafes, mercantile
offices, some of them flying consular flags and Government offices,
behind which lies the city with its streets, shops, and great covered
markets or bazaars, and its barracks, churches, and convents.

The Me-kong, though tortuous and ofttimes narrow, is navigable as the
Donnai or Saigon branch up to and above Saigon for vessels of the
largest tonnage, and the great Sindh steamed up to a wharf and moored
alongside it, almost under the shade of great trees. A French
three-decker of the old type, moored higher up, serves as an hospital.
There were two French ironclads, a few steamers, and some big sailing
ships at anchor, but nothing looked busy, and the people on the wharf
were all loafers.

After all my fellow-passengers had driven off I stepped ashore and
tried to realize that I was in Cochin China or Cambodia, but it would
not do. The irrepressible Chinaman in his loose cotton trousers was as
much at home as in Canton, and was doing all the work that was done;
the shady lounges in front of the cafes were full of Frenchmen,
Spaniards, and Germans, smoking and dozing with their feet upon tables
or on aught else which raised them to the level of their heads; while
men in linen suits and pith helmets dashed about in buggies and
gharries, and French officers and soldiers lounged weariedly along all
the roads. There was not a native to be seen! A little later there was
not a European to be seen! There was a universal siesta behind closed
jalousies, and Saigon was abandoned to Chinamen and leggy dogs. Then
came the cool of the afternoon, i.e., the mercury, with evident
reluctance, dawdled down to 84 degrees; military bands performed, the
Europeans emerged, smoking as in the morning, to play billiards or
ecarte, or sip absinthe at their cafes; then came the mosquitoes and
dinner, after which I was told that card-parties were made up, and that
the residents played till near midnight. Thus from observation and
hearsay, I gathered that the life of a European Saigonese was made up
of business in baju and pyjamas with cheroot in mouth from 6 to 9:30
A.M., then the bath, the toilette, and the breakfast of claret and
curry; next the sleeping, smoking, and lounging till tiffin; after
tiffin a little more work, then the band, billiards, ecarte, absinthe,
smoking, dinner, and card-parties, varied by official entertainments.

Rejecting a guide, I walked about Saigon, saw its streets, cafes, fruit
markets, bazaars, barracks, a botanic or acclimatization garden, of
which tigers were the chief feature, got out upon the wide, level
roads, bordered with large trees, which run out into the country for
miles in perfectly straight lines, saw the handsome bungalows of the
residents, who surround themselves with many of the luxuries of Paris,
went over a beautiful convent, where the sisters who educate native
girl children received me with kindly courtesy; and eventually driving
in a gharrie far beyond the town, and then dismissing it, I got into a
labyrinth of lanes, each with a high hedge of cactus, and without
knowing it found that I was in a native village, Choquan, a village in
which every house seems to be surrounded and hidden by high walls of a
most malevolent and obnoxious cactus, so as to insure absolute privacy
to its proprietor. Each dwelling is under the shade of pommeloe,
orange, and bamboo. By dint of much peeping, and many pricks which have
since inflamed, I saw that the poorer houses were built of unplaned
planks or split bamboo, thatched with palm leaves, with deep verandas,
furnished with broad matted benches with curious, round bamboo pillows.
On these men, scarcely to be called clothed, were lying, smoking or
chewing the betel-nut, and all had teapots in covered baskets within
convenient reach.  The better houses are built of an ornamental
framework of carved wood, the floor of which is raised about three feet
from the ground on brick pillars. The roofs of these are rather steep,
and are mostly tiled, and have deep eaves, but do not as elsewhere form
the cover of the veranda.  While I was looking through the cactus
screen of one of these houses, a man came out with a number of low
caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs, who attacked me in a cowardly
bullying fashion, yelping, barking, and making surreptitious snaps at
my feet. Their owner called them off, however, and pelted them so
successfully that some ran away whimpering, and two pretended (as dogs
will) to have broken legs. This man carried a cocoa-nut, and on my
indicating that I was thirsty, he hesitated, and then turning back,
signed to me to follow him into his house.  This was rare luck!

Within the cactus screen, which is fully ten feet high, there is a
graveled area, on which the neat-looking house stands, and growing out
of the very thirsty ground are cocoa palms, bananas, bread fruit, and
papayas. There are verandas on each side of the doorway with stone
benches; the doorway and window frames are hung with "portieres" of
split reeds, and a ladder does duty for door steps. The interior is
very dark, and divided into several apartments.  As soon as I entered
there was a rush as if of bats into the darkness, but on being
reassured, about twenty women and boy and girl children appeared, and
contemplated me with an apathetic stare of extreme solemnity. Remember
the mercury was 92 degrees, so the women may be excused for having
nothing more than petticoats or loose trousers on in the privacy of
their home, the children for being in a state of nudity, and the man
for being clothed in a loin cloth! As I grew used to the darkness I saw
a toothless old woman smoking in a corner, fanned by two girls, who, I
believe, are domestic slaves. Near one of the window openings a young
woman was lounging, and two others were attentively removing vermin
from her luxuriant but ill-kept hair. Mats and bamboo pillows covered
the floors, and most of the inmates had been rudely disturbed in a
siesta.

I was evidently in the principal apartment, for the walls were
decorated with Chinese marine pictures, among which were two glaring
daubs of a Madonna and an Ecce Homo. There was also a rude crucifix,
from which I gather that this is a Roman Catholic family. There were
two teapots of tea on a chair, a big tub of pommeloes on the floor, and
a glazed red earthenware bowl full of ripe bananas on another chair.  A
sort of sickle, a gun, and some bullock gear hung against the wall. In
the middle of the room there was a sort of trap in the floor, and there
was the same in two other apartments. Through this all rubbish is
conveniently dropped. A woman brought in a cocoa-nut, and poured the
milk into a gourd calabash, and the man handed me the dish of bananas,
so I had an epicurean repast, and realized that I was in Cochin China!
They were courteous people, and not only refused the quarter dollar
which I pressed upon them, but gave me a handkerchief full of bananas
when I left them, being pleased, however, to accept a puggree.

The neat gravel area, the covered walls, and neatly tiled roof, the
lattice work, the boards suspended from the door-posts, with (as I
have since learned) texts from the Chinese Classics in gold upon them,
and the large establishment, show that the family belongs to the upper
class of Anamites, and leave one quite unprepared for the reeking,
festering heap of garbage below the house, the foul, fetid air, and
swarming vermin of the interior, and the unwashedness of the inmates. I
bowed myself out, the gate was barred behind me, and in two minutes I
had lost what I supposed to be my way, and having left the maze of
cactus-walled paths behind, was entangled in a maze of narrow village
paths through palms and bananas, flowering trees covered with creepers
and orchids, and a wonderful profusion of small and great ferns.
Getting back into the cactus hidden village I found groups of pretty,
dark-skinned children, quite naked, playing in the deep dust, while
some no bigger were lounging in the shade smoking cigars, lazily
watching the clouds of smoke which they puffed out from their chubby
cheeks.

Finding my own footsteps in the deep dust, I got back to a pathway with
a monstrous bamboo hedge on one side, and a rice-field on the other, in
which was a slimy looking pond with a margin of pink water-lilies, in
which a number of pink buffaloes of large size were wallowing with much
noise and rough play, plastering their sensitive hides with mud as a
protection against mosquitoes.

With some difficulty, by some very queer paths and with much
zigzagging, I at last reached Cholen,* a native town, said to be three
or eight miles from Saigon, and was so exhausted by the fatigue of the
long walk in such a ferocious temperature that I sat by the roadside on
a stump under a huge tropical tree, considering the ways of ants and
Anamites. Children with brown chubby faces which had never been washed
since birth, and, according to all accounts, will never be washed till
death, stood in a row, staring the stare of apathy, with a quiet
confidence. They had no clothes on, and I admired their well-made forms
and freedom from skin disease. The Mongolian face is pleasant in
childhood. A horde of pariah dogs in the mad excitement of a free
fight, passed, covering me with dust. (By the way, I am told that
hydrophobia is unknown in Cochin China.) Then some French artillerymen,
who politely raised their caps; then a quantity of market girls,
dressed like the same class in China, but instead of being bare-headed,
they wore basket hats, made of dried leaves, fully twenty-four inches
in diameter, by six in depth. These girls walked well, and looked
happy. Then a train of Anamese carts passed, empty, the solid wooden
wheels creaking frightfully round the ungreased axles, each cart being
drawn by two buffaloes, each pair being attached to the cart in front
by a rope through the nostrils, so that one driver sufficed for eleven
carts. The native men could not be said to be clothed, but, as I
remarked before, the mercury was above 90 degrees. They were, however,
protected both against sun and rain by hats over three feet in
diameter, very conical, peaked at the top, coming down umbrella fashion
over the shoulders, and well tilted back.  
[*Cholen, i.e., the big market, has a population which is variously
estimated at from 30,000 to 80,000. I am inclined to think that the
lowest estimate is nearest the mark.--I. L. B.]

After laboriously reaching Cholen, I found far the greater part of the
town to be Chinese, rather than Anamese, with Chinese streets, temples,
gaming houses, club houses, and that general air of business and
industry which seems characteristic of the Chinese everywhere; but
still groping my way about, I came upon what I most wished to see--the
real Anamese town. There is a river, the Me-kong, or one of its
branches, and the town--the real native Cholen--consists of a very
large collection of river-dwellings, little, if at all, superior to
those which we passed in coming up. I spent an hour among them, and I
never saw any house whose area could be more than twelve feet square,
while many were certainly not more than seven feet by six.  Such
primitive, ramshackle, shaky-looking dwellings I never before have
seen. As compared with them, an Aino hut, even of the poorest kind, is
a model of solidity and architectural beauty. They looked as if a
single gust would topple them and their human contents into the water.
Yet, if it were better carried out, it is not a bad idea to avoid
paying any Anamese form of rent, to secure perfect drainage, a
never-failing water supply, good fishing, immunity from reptiles, and
the easiest of all highways at the very door.

These small rooms with thatched roofs and gridiron floors, raised on
posts six or eight feet above the stream, are reached from the shore by
a path a foot wide, consisting of planks tied on to posts. The
river-dwellings, I must add, are tied together with palm fibre rope.
One of average size can be put together for eleven shillings. In front
of each house a log canoe is moored, into which it is easy to drop from
above when the owner desires any change of attitude or scene.

I ventured into two of these strange abodes, but it was dizzy work to
walk the plank, and as difficult to walk the gridiron floor in shoes.
Both were wretched habitations, but doubtless they suit their inmates,
who need nothing more than a shelter from the sun and rain. The men
wore only loin cloths. The women were clothed to the throat in loose
cotton garments; the children wore nothing. In both the men were
fishing for their supper over the edge of their platforms. In one a
woman was cooking rice; and in both there was a good store of rice,
bananas, and sweet potatoes. There was no furniture in either, except
matted platforms for sleeping upon, a few coarse pipkins, a red
earthen-ware pitcher or two, and some calabashes. On the wall of one
was a crucifix, and on a rafter in the other a wooden carving of a
jolly-looking man, mallet in hand, seated on rice bags, intended for
Daikoku, the Japanese God of Wealth. The people were quite unwashed,
but the draught of the river carried off the bad smells which ought to
have been there, and, fortunately, a gridiron floor is unfavorable to
accumulations of dirt and refuse. These natives look apathetic, and
are, according to our notions, lazy; but I am weary of seeing the
fevered pursuit of wealth, and am inclined to be lenient to these
narcotized existences, provided, as is the case, that they keep clear
of debt, theft, and charity.

Below this amphibious town there is a larger and apparently permanent
floating village, consisting of hundreds of boats moored to the shore
and to each other, poor and forlorn as compared with the Canton house
boats, but yet more crowded, a single thatched roof sheltering one or
more families, without any attempt at furniture or arrangement. The
children swarmed, and looked healthy, and remarkably free from eye and
skin diseases. There were Romish pictures in some of these boats, and
two or three of them exhibited the cross in a not inconspicuous place.
In my solitary explorations I was not mobbed or rudely treated in any
way.  The people were as gentle and inoffensive in their manners as the
Japanese, without their elaborate courtesy and civilized curiosity.

Having seen all I could see, I turned shipwards, weary, footsore, and
exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I
reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in
handkerchiefs. The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level
straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome.  Overtaking even
at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got
upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and
slow progress intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a
half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an
extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square
miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation
and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was
chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on
the advice of the astrologers of the court. The telegraph wire runs
near it, and so the old and the new age meet.

On my weary way I was overtaken by a young French artillery officer,
who walked with me until we came upon an empty gharrie, and was
eloquent upon the miseries of Saigon. It is a very important military
station, and a sort of depot for the convicts who are sent to the
(comparatively) adjacent settlement of New Caledonia. A large force of
infantry and artillery is always in barracks here, but it is a most
sickly station. At times 40 per cent. of this force is in hospital from
climatic diseases, and the number of men invalided home by every mail
steamer, and the frequent changes necessary, make Saigon a very costly
post.  The French don't appear to be successful colonists. This Cochin
Chinese colony of theirs, which consists of the six ancient southern
provinces of the empire of Anam, was ceded to France in 1874, but its
European population is still under twelve thousand, exclusive of the
garrison and the Government officials. The Government consists of a
governor, aided by a privy council. The population of the colony is
under a million and a half, including eighty-two thousand Cambodians
and forty thousand Chinese. According to my various informants--this
young French officer, a French nun, and a trader of dubious
nationality, in whose shop I rested--France is doing its best to
promote the prosperity and secure the good-will of the natives. The
land-tax, which was very oppressive under the native princes, has been
lowered, municipal government has been secured to the native towns, and
corporate and personal rights have been respected. These persons
believe that the colony, far from being a source of profit to France,
is kept up at a heavy annual loss, and they regard the Chinese as the
only element in the population worth having. They think the Anamese
very superior to the Cambodians, from whom indeed they conquered these
six provinces, but the Cambodians are a bigger and finer race
physically.

I do not think I have said how hideous I think the adult Anamese.
Somewhere I have read that two thousand years before our era the
Chinese called them Giao-chi, which signifies "with the big toe." This
led me to look particularly at their bare feet, and I noticed even in
children such a wide separation of the big toe from the rest as to
convey the perhaps erroneous impression that it is of unusual size. The
men are singularly wide at the hips, and walk with a laughably
swaggering gait, which is certainly not affectation, but is produced by
a sufficient anatomical cause. I never saw such ugly, thick-set, rigid
bodies, such uniformly short necks, such sloping shoulders, such flat
faces and flatter noses, such wide, heavy, thick-lipped mouths, such
projecting cheek bones, such low foreheads, such flat-topped heads, and
such tight, thick skin, which suggests the word hide-bound. The dark,
tawny complexion has no richness of tint. Both men and women are short,
and the teeth of both sexes are blackened by the constant chewing of
the betel-nut, which reddens the saliva, which is constantly flowing
like blood from the corners of their mouths. Though not a vigorous,
they appear to be a healthy people, and have very large families. They
suffer chiefly from "forest fever" in the forest lands, but the rice
swamps, deadly to Europeans, do not harm them.

I rested for some time at a very beautiful convent, and was most kindly
entertained by some very calm, sweet-looking sisters, who labor piously
among the female Anamese, and have schools for girls. The troops are
stationed at Saigon for only two years, owing to the unhealthiness of
the climate, but these pious women have no sanitarium, and live and die
at their posts. Various things in the convent chapel remind one of the
faithfulness unto death both of missionaries and converts. In this
century alone three successive kings rivaled each other in persecuting
the Christians, both Europeans and native, over and over again
murdering all the missionaries. In 1841 the king ordered that all
missionaries should be drowned, and in 1851 his successor ordered that
whoever concealed a missionary should be cut in two. The terrible and
sanguinary persecution which followed this edict never ceased, till
years afterward the French frightened the king into toleration, and put
an end, one hopes forever, to the persecution of Christians. The
sisters compute the native Christians at seven thousand, and have
sanguine hopes for the future of Christianity in French Cochin China,
as well as in Cambodia, which appears to be under a French
protectorate.

I do not envy the French their colony. According to my three
informants, Europeans cannot be acclimatized, and most of the children
born of white parents die shortly after birth. The shores of the sea
and of the rivers are scourged by severe intermittent fevers, and the
whole of the colony by dysentery, which among Europeans is particularly
fatal. The mean temperature is 83 degrees F., the dampness is unusual,
and the nights are too hot to refresh people after the heat of the
day.* 
[*The chief production of the country is rice, which forms half the sum
total of the exports. The other exports are chiefly salt-fish, salt,
undyed cotton, skins of beasts, and pepper. About seven hundred vessels
enter and leave Saigon in a year.]

After leaving the convent I resumed my gharrie, and the driver took me,
what I suppose is the usual "course" for tourists, through a quaint
Asiatic town inhabited by a mixed, foreign population of Hindus,
Malays, Tagals, and Chinese merchants, scattered among a large
indigenous population of Anamese fishermen, servants, and husbandmen,
through the colonial district, which looked asleep or dead, to the
markets, where the Chinamen and natives of India were in the full swing
and din of buying and selling all sorts of tropical fruits and rubbishy
French goods, and through what may be called the Government town or
official quarter. It was getting dark when I reached the wharf, and the
darkness enabled me to hobble unperceived on board on my bandaged feet.
The heat of the murky, lurid evening was awful, and as thousands of
mosquitoes took possession of the ship, all comfort was banished, and I
was glad when we steamed down the palm-fringed Saigon or Donnai waters,
and through the mangrove swamps at the mouths of the Me-kong river, and
past the lofty Cape St. Jacques, with its fort, into the open China
Sea.

I. L. B.



LETTER VII

Beauties of the Tropics--Singapore Hospitality--An Equatorial
Metropolis--An Aimless Existence--The Growth of Singapore--"Farms" and
"Farmers"--The Staple of Conversation--The Glitter of "Barbaric
Gold"--A Polyglot Population--A Mediocre People--Female Grace and
Beauty--The "Asian Mystery"--Oriental Picturesqueness--The
Metamorphosis of Singapore


SINGAPORE, January 19, 1879.

It is hot--so hot!--but not stifling, and all the rich-flavored,
colored fruits of the tropics are here--fruits whose generous juices
are drawn from the moist and heated earth, and whose flavors are the
imprisoned rays of the fierce sun of the tropics. Such cartloads and
piles of bananas and pine-apples, such heaps of custard-apples and
"bullocks' hearts," such a wealth of gold and green giving off
fragrance! Here, too, are treasures of the heated, crystal seas--things
that one has dreamed of after reading Jules Verne's romances. Big
canoes, manned by dark-skinned men in white turbans and loin-cloths,
floated round our ship, or lay poised on the clear depths of aquamarine
water, with fairy freights--forests of coral white as snow, or red,
pink, violet, in massive branches or fern-like sprays, fresh from their
warm homes beneath the clear warm waves, where fish as bright-tinted as
themselves flash through them like "living light." There were displays
of wonderful shells, too, of pale rose-pink, and others with rainbow
tints which, like rainbows, came and went--nothing scanty, feeble, or
pale!

It is a drive of two miles from the pier to Singapore, and to eyes
which have only seen the yellow skins and non-vividness of the Far
East, a world of wonders opens at every step. It is intensely tropical;
there are mangrove swamps, and fringes of cocoa-palms, and
banana-groves, date, sago, and travelers' palms, tree-ferns,
india-rubber, mango, custard-apple, jack-fruit, durion, lime,
pomegranate, pine-apples, and orchids, and all kinds of strangling and
parrot-blossomed trailers. Vegetation rich, profuse, endless, rapid,
smothering, in all shades of vivid green, from the pea-green of spring
and the dark velvety green of endless summer to the yellow-green of the
plumage of the palm, riots in a heavy shower every night and the heat
of a perennial sun-blaze every day, while monkeys of various kinds and
bright-winged birds skip and flit through the jungle shades. There is a
perpetual battle between man and the jungle, and the latter, in fact,
is only brought to bay within a short distance of Singapore.

I had scarcely finished breakfast at the hotel, a shady, straggling
building, much infested by ants, when Mr. Cecil Smith, the Colonial
Secretary, and his wife called, full of kind thoughts and plans of
furtherance; and a little later a resident, to whom I had not even a
letter of introduction, took me and my luggage to his bungalow. All the
European houses seem to have very deep verandas, large, lofty rooms,
punkahs everywhere, windows without glass, brick floors, and jalousies
and "tatties" (blinds made of grass or finely-split bamboo) to keep out
the light and the flies. This equatorial heat is neither as exhausting
or depressing as the damp summer heat of Japan, though one does long
"to take off one's flesh and sit in one's bones."

I wonder how this unexpected and hastily planned expedition into the
Malay States will turn out? It is so unlikely that the different
arrangements will fit in. It seemed an event in the dim future; but
yesterday my host sent up a "chit" from his office to say that a
Chinese steamer is to sail for Malacca in a day or two, and would I
like to go? I was only allowed five minutes for decision, but I have no
difficulty in making up my mind when an escape from civilization is
possible. So I wrote back that if I could get my money and letters of
introduction in time I would go, and returned to dine at Mr. Cecil
Smith's, where a delightfully cultured and intellectual atmosphere made
civilization more than tolerable. The needed letters were written,
various hints for my guidance were thrown out, and I drove back at
half-past ten under heavens which were one blaze of stars amidst a dust
of nebulae, like the inlaid gold spots amidst a dust of gold on old
Japanese lacquer, and through a moist, warm atmosphere laden with the
heavy fragrance of innumerable night-blossoming flowers.

Singapore, as the capital of the Straits Settlements and the residence
of the Governor, has a garrison, defensive works, ships of war hanging
about, and a great deal of military as well as commercial importance,
and "the roll of the British drum" is a reassuring sound in the midst
of the unquiet Chinese population. The Governor is assisted by
lieutenant-governors at Malacca and Pinang, and his actual rule extends
to the three "protected" States of the Malay Peninsula--Sungei Ujong,
Selangor, and Perak--the affairs of which are administered by British
Residents, who are more or less responsible to him.

If I fail in making you realize Singapore it is partly because I do not
care to go into much detail about so well known a city, and partly
because my own notions of it are mainly of overpowering greenery, a
kaleidoscopic arrangement of colors, Chinese predominance, and
abounding hospitality. I almost fail to realize that it is an island;
one of many; all, like itself, covered with vegetation down to the
water's edge; about twenty-seven miles long by fourteen broad, with the
city at its southern end. It is only seventy miles from the equator,
but it is neither unhealthy nor overpoweringly hot! It is low and
undulating, its highest point, Bukit Timor, or the Hill of Tin, being
only five hundred and twenty feet high. The greatest curse here used to
be tigers, which carried off about three hundred people yearly. They
were supposed to have been extirpated, but they have reappeared,
swimming across from the mainland State of Johore it is conjectured;
and as various lonely Chinese laborers have been victimized, there is
something of a "scare," in the papers at least. Turtles are so abundant
that turtle-soup is anything but a luxury, and turtle flesh is
ordinarily sold in the meat shops.

Rain is officially said to fall on two hundred days of the year, but
popularly every day! The rainfall is only eighty-seven inches,
however, and the glorious vegetation owes its redundancy to the
dampness of the climate. Of course Singapore has no seasons. The
variety is only in the intensity of the heat, the mercury being
tolerably steady between 80 degrees and 84 degrees, the extreme range
of temperature being from 71 degrees to 92 degrees. People sleep on
Malay mats spread over their mattresses for coolness, some dispense
with upper sheets, and others are fanned all night by punkahs. The soft
and tepid land and sea breezes mitigate the heat to a slight extent,
but I should soon long for a blustering north-easter to break in upon
the oppressive and vapor-bath stillness.

As Singapore is a military station, and ships of war hang about
constantly, there is a great deal of fluctuating society, and the
officials of the Straits Settlements Government are numerous enough to
form a large society of their own. Then there is the merchant class,
English, German, French, and American; and there is the usual round of
gayety, and of the amusements which make life intolerable. I think that
in most of these tropical colonies the ladies exist only on the hope of
going "home!" It is a dreary, aimless life for them--scarcely life,
only existence. The greatest sign of vitality in Singapore Europeans
that I can see is the furious hurry in writing for the mail. To all
sorts of claims and invitations, the reply is, "But it's mail day, you
know," or, "I'm writing for the mail," or, "I'm awfully behind hand
with my letters," or, "I can't stir till the mail's gone!" The hurry is
desperate, and even the feeble Englishwomen exert themselves for
"friends at home." To judge from the flurry and excitement, and the
driving down to the post-office at the last moment, and the commotion
in the parboiled community, one would suppose the mail to be an
uncertain event occurring once in a year or two, rather than the most
regular of weekly fixtures! The incoming mail is also a great event,
though its public and commercial news is anticipated by four weeks by
the telegraph.

The Americans boast of the rapid progress of San Francisco, with which
the Victorians boast that Melbourne is running a neck and neck race;
but, if boasting is allowable, Singapore may boast, for in 1818 the
island was covered with dense primeval forest, and only a few miserable
fishermen and pirates inhabited its creeks and rivers. The prescience
of Sir Stamford Raffles marked it out in 1819 as the site of the first
free port in the Malayan Seas, but it was not till 1824 that it was
formally ceded to the East India Company by the Sultan of Johore, and
it only became a Crown colony in 1867, when it was erected into the
capital of the Straits Settlements, which include Malacca and Pinang.

Like Victoria, Singapore is a free port, and the vexatiousness of a
custom-house is unknown. The only tax which shipping pays is 1-1/2 per
cent. for the support of sundry lighthouses. The list of its exports
suggests heat.  They are chiefly sugar, pepper, tin, nutmegs, mace,
sago, tapioca, rice, buffalo hides and horns, rattans, gutta, india
rubber, gambier, gums, coffee, dye-stuffs, and tobacco, but the island
itself, though its soil looks rich from its redness, only produces
pepper and gambier. It is a great entrepot, a gigantic distributing
point.* 
[*The exports and imports of Singapore amounted in 1823 to 2,120,000
pounds, in 1859-60 to 10,371,000 pounds, and in 1880, to 23,050,000
pounds! In the latter year, tonnage to the amount of three millions of
tons arrived in its harbor. It must be observed that the imports, to a
very large extent, are exported to other places.]

The problem of raising a revenue without customs duties is solved by a
stamp-tax, land-revenue, and (by far the most important), the sale of
the monopolies of the preparation and retailing of opium for smoking,
and of spirits and other excisable commodities, these monopolies being
"farmed" to private individuals, mostly Chinamen. It is rather puzzling
to hear "farmers" spoken of so near the equator. A revenue of nearly
half a million annually and a public debt of one hundred thousand
pounds is not bad for so young a colony. The prosperity of the Straits
Settlements ports is a great triumph for free traders, and a traveler,
even if, like myself, he has nothing but a canvas roll and a "Gladstone
bag," congratulates himself on being saved from the bother of
unstrapping and restrapping stiffened and refractory straps, and from
the tiresome delays of even the most courteous custom-house officers.

The official circle is large, as I before remarked. A Crown colony
where the Government has it all its own way must be the paradise of
officials, and the high sense of honor and the righteous esprit de
corps which characterize our civil servants in the Far East, and a
conscientious sense of responsibilities for the good government and
well-being of the heterogeneous populations over which they rule, seem
as good a check as the general run of colonial parliaments.

The Governor, Sir William Robinson (now Sir F. A. Weld), is assisted by
an Executive Council of eight members, and a Legislative Council
consisting of nine official and six non-official members, including Mr.
Whampoa, C.M.G., a Chinaman of great wealth and enlightened public
spirit, who is one of the foremost men in the colony. Then on the Civil
Establishment there are a legion of departments, the Colonial
Secretary's office with a branch office and Chinese Protectorate, a
Land Office, Printing Office, Treasury, Audit Office, Post Office,
Public Works and Survey Department, Marine Department, Judicial
Department, Attorney-General's Department, Sheriff's Department, Police
Court and Police Department, and Ecclesiastical, Educational, Medical,
and Prison Staffs.

It is natural that when the mail has been worn threadbare and no
stirring incidents present themselves, such as the arrival of a new
ship of war or a touring foreign prince, and the receptions of Mr.
Whampoa and the Maharajah of Johore have grown insipid, that much of
local conversation should consist of speculations as to when or whether
Mr. ---- will get promotion, when Mr. ---- will go home, or how much he
has saved out of his salary; what influence has procured the
appointment of Mr. ---- to Selangor or Perak, instead of Mr. ----,
whose qualifications are higher; whether Mr. ----'s acting appointment
will be confirmed; whether Mr. ---- will get one or two years' leave;
whether some vacant appointment is to be filled up or abolished, and so
on ad infinitum. Such talk girdles the colonial world as completely as
the telegraph, which has revolutionized European business here as
elsewhere.

The island is far less interesting than the city. Its dense, dark
jungle is broken up mainly by pepper and gambier plantations, the
latter specially in new clearings.  The laborers on these are Chinese,
and so are the wood-cutters and sawyers, who frequent the round-topped
wooded undulations. The climate is hotter and damper, to one's
sensations at least, than the hottest and dampest of the tropical
houses at Kew, and heat-loving insects riot. The ants are a pest of the
second magnitude, mosquitoes being of the first, the palm-trees and the
piles of decaying leaves and bark being excellent nurseries for larvae.
The vegetation is luxuriant, and in the dim, green twilight which is
created by enormous forest trees there are endless varieties of ferns,
calladiums, and parasitic plants; but except where a road has been cut
and is kept open by continual labor, the climbing rattan palms make it
impossible to explore.

My short visit has been mainly occupied with the day at the Colonial
Secretary's Lodge, and in walking and driving through the streets. The
city is ablaze with color and motley with costume. The ruling race does
not show to advantage. A pale-skinned man or woman, costumed in our
ugly, graceless clothes, reminds one not pleasingly, artistically at
least, of our dim, pale islands. Every Oriental costume from the Levant
to China floats through the streets--robes of silk, satin, brocade, and
white muslin, emphasized by the glitter of "barbaric gold;" and Parsees
in spotless white, Jews and Arabs in dark rich silks; Klings in Turkey
red and white; Bombay merchants in great white turbans, full trousers,
and draperies, all white, with crimson silk girdles; Malays in red
sarongs, Sikhs in pure white Madras muslin, their great height rendered
nearly colossal by the classic arrangement of their draperies; and
Chinamen of all classes, from the coolie in his blue or brown cotton,
to the wealthy merchant in his frothy silk crepe and rich brocade, make
up an irresistibly fascinating medley.

The English, though powerful as the ruling race, are numerically
nowhere, and certainly make no impression on the eye. The Chinese, who
number eighty-six thousand out of a population of one hundred and
thirty-nine thousand, are not only numerous enough, but rich and
important enough to give Singapore the air of a Chinese town with a
foreign settlement. Then there are the native Malays, who have crowded
into the island since we acquired it, till they number twenty-two
thousand, and who, besides being tolerably industrious as boatmen and
fishermen, form the main body of the police. The Parsee merchants, who
like our rule, form a respectable class of merchants here, as in all
the great trading cities of the East. The Javanese are numerous, and
make good servants and sailors. Some of the small merchants and many of
the clerks are Portuguese immigrants from Malacca; and traders from
Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes, Bali, and other islands of the Malay
Archipelago are scattered among the throng. The washermen and grooms
are nearly all Bengalees. Jews and Arabs make money and keep it, and
are, as everywhere, shrewd and keen, and only meet their equals among
the Chinese. Among the twelve thousand natives of India who have been
attracted to Singapore, and among all the mingled foreign
nationalities, the Klings from the Coromandel coast, besides being the
most numerous of all next to the Chinese, are the most attractive in
appearance, and as there is no check on the immigration of their women,
one sees the unveiled Kling beauties in great numbers.* 
[*The Singapore census returns for 1881 are by no means "dry reading,"
and they give a very imposing idea of the importance of the island. It
is interesting to note that of the 434 enumerators employed only seven
were Europeans!

The number of houses on the island is 20,462; the total population is
139,208 souls, viz., 105,423 males and 33,785 females. The total
increase in ten years is divided as follows:--

     Europeans and Americans                            823
     Eurasians                                          930
     _Chinese_                                       32,194
     Malays and other natives of the Archipelago      6,954
     Tamils and other natives of India                  637
     Other nationalities                                559

Among these "other nationalities" the great increase has been among the
Arabs, who have nearly doubled their numbers. Among the "Malays and
other natives of the Archipelago" are included, Achinese, Boyanese,
Bugis, Dyaks, Jawi-Pekans, and Manilamen.

The European resident population, exclusive of the soldiers, is only
1,283. _The Chinese population is_ 86,766; the Malay, 22,114; the
Tamil, 10,475; the Javanese, 5,881; and the Eurasian, 3,091. In the
very small European population 19 nationalities are included, the
Germans numerically following the British. Of 15,368 domestic servants,
only 844 are women.]

These Klings are active and industrious, but they lack fibre
apparently, and that quick-sightedness for opportunities which makes
the Chinese the most successful of all emigrants. Not a Malay or a
Kling has raised himself either as a merchant or in any other capacity
to wealth or distinction in the colony. The Klings make splendid
boatmen, they drive gharries, run as syces, lend small sums of money at
usurious interest, sell fruit, keep small shops, carry "chit books,"
and make themselves as generally useful as their mediocre abilities
allow. They are said to be a harmless people so far as deeds go. They
neither fight, organize, nor get into police rows, but they quarrel
loudly and vociferously, and their vocabulary of abuse is said to be
inexhaustible. The Kling men are very fine-looking, lithe and active,
and, as they clothe but little, their forms are seen to great
advantage. The women are, I think, beautiful--not so much in face as in
form and carriage. I am never weary of watching and admiring their
inimitable grace of movement. Their faces are oval, their foreheads
low, their eyes dark and liquid, their noses shapely, but disfigured by
the universal adoption of jewelled nose-rings; their lips full, but not
thick or coarse; their heads small, and exquisitely set on long,
slender throats; their ears small, but much dragged out of shape by the
wearing of two or three hoop-earrings in each; and their glossy, wavy,
black hair, which grows classically low on the forehead, is gathered
into a Grecian knot at the back. Their clothing, or rather drapery, is
a mystery, for it covers and drapes perfectly, yet has no _make_, far
less fit, and leaves every graceful movement unimpeded. It seems to
consist of ten wide yards of soft white muslin or soft red material, so
ingeniously disposed as to drape the bust and lower limbs, and form a
girdle at the same time. One shoulder and arm are usually left bare.
The part which may be called a petticoat--though the word is a slur
upon the graceful drapery--is short, and shows the finely turned
ankles, high insteps, and small feet. These women are tall, and
straight as arrows; their limbs are long and rounded; their appearance
is timid, one might almost say modest, and their walk is the poetry of
movement. A tall, graceful Kling woman, draped as I have described,
gliding along the pavement, her statuesque figure the perfection of
graceful ease, a dark pitcher on her head, just touched by the
beautiful hand, showing the finely moulded arm, is a beautiful object,
classical in form, exquisite in movement, and artistic in coloring, a
creation of the tropic sun.  What thinks she, I wonder, if she thinks
at all, of the pale European, paler for want of exercise and engrossing
occupation, who steps out of her carriage in front of her, an
ungraceful heap of poufs and frills, tottering painfully on high heels,
in tight boots, her figure distorted into the shape of a Japanese sake
bottle, every movement a struggle or a jerk, the clothing utterly
unsuited to this or any climate, impeding motion, and affecting health,
comfort, and beauty alike?

It is all fascinating. Here is none of the indolence and apathy which
one associates with Oriental life, and which I have seen in Polynesia.
These yellow, brown, tawny, swarthy, olive-tinted men are all intent on
gain; busy, industrious, frugal, striving, and, no matter what their
creed is, all paying homage to Daikoku. In spite of the activity,
rapidity, and earnestness, the movements of all but the Chinese are
graceful, gliding, stealthy, the swarthy faces have no expression that
I can read, and the dark, liquid eyes are no more intelligible to me
than the eyes of oxen. It is the "Asian mystery" all over.

It is only the European part of Singapore which is dull and sleepy
looking. No life and movement congregate round the shops. The
merchants, hidden away behind jalousies in their offices, or dashing
down the streets in covered buggies, make but a poor show. Their houses
are mostly pale, roomy, detached bungalows, almost altogether hidden by
the bountiful vegetation of the climate. In these their wives, growing
paler every week, lead half-expiring lives, kept alive by the efforts
of ubiquitous "punkah-wallahs;" writing for the mail, the one active
occupation. At a given hour they emerge, and drive in given directions,
specially round the esplanade, where for two hours at a time a double
row of handsome and showy equipages moves continuously in opposite
directions. The number of carriages and the style of dress of their
occupants are surprising, and yet people say that large fortunes are
not made now-a-days in Singapore! Besides the daily drive, the ladies,
the officers, and any men who may be described as of "no occupation,"
divert themselves with kettle-drums, dances, lawn tennis, and various
other devices for killing time, and this with the mercury at 80
degrees! Just now the Maharajah of Johore, sovereign of a small state
on the nearest part of the mainland, a man much petted and decorated by
the British Government for unswerving fidelity to British interests,
has a house here, and his receptions and dinner parties vary the
monotonous round of gayeties.

The native streets monopolize the picturesqueness of Singapore with
their bizarre crowds, but more interesting still are the bazaars or
continuous rows of open shops which create for themselves a perpetual
twilight by hanging tatties or other screens outside the sidewalks,
forming long shady alleys, in which crowds of buyers and sellers
chaffer over their goods, the Chinese shopkeepers asking a little more
than they mean to take, and the Klings always asking double. The bustle
and noise of this quarter are considerable, and the vociferation
mingles with the ringing of bells and the rapid beating of drums and
tom-toms--an intensely heathenish sound. And heathenish this great city
is. Chinese joss-houses, Hindu temples, and Mohammedan mosques almost
jostle each other, and the indescribable clamor of the temples and the
din of the joss-houses are faintly pierced by the shrill cry from the
minarets calling the faithful to prayer, and proclaiming the divine
unity and the mission of Mahomet in one breath.

How I wish I could convey an idea, however faint, of this huge,
mingled, colored, busy, Oriental population; of the old Kling and
Chinese bazaars; of the itinerant sellers of seaweed jelly, water,
vegetables, soup, fruit, and cooked fish, whose unintelligible street
cries are heard above the din of the crowds of coolies, boatmen, and
gharriemen waiting for hire; of the far-stretching suburbs of Malay and
Chinese cottages; of the sheet of water, by no means clean, round which
hundreds of Bengalis are to be seen at all hours of daylight
unmercifully beating on great stones the delicate laces, gauzy silks,
and elaborate flouncings of the European ladies; of the ceaseless rush
and hum of industry, and of the resistless, overpowering, astonishing
Chinese element, which is gradually turning Singapore into a Chinese
city! I must conclude abruptly, or lose the mail.

I. L. B.



LETTER VIII

St. Andrew's Cathedral--Singapore Harbor Scenes--Chinese
Preponderance--First Impressions of Malacca--A Town "Out of the
Running"


S.S. "RAINBOW," MALACCA ROADS, January 20.

Yesterday I attended morning service in St. Andrew's, a fine colonial
cathedral, prettily situated on a broad grass lawn among clumps of
trees near the sea. There is some stained glass in the apse, but in the
other windows, including those in the clerestory, Venetian shutters
take the place of glass, as in all the European houses. There are
thirty-two punkahs, and the Indians who worked them, anyone of whom
might have been the model of the Mercury of the Naples Museum, sat or
squatted outside the church. The service was simple and the music very
good, but in the Te Deum, just as the verse "Thou art the King of
Glory, O Christ," I caught sight of the bronze faces of these "punkah-
wallahs," mostly bigoted Mussulmen, and was overwhelmed by the
realization of the small progress which Christianity has made upon the
earth in nineteen centuries. A Singhalese D.D. preached an able sermon.
Just before the communion we were called out, as the Rainbow was about
to sail, and a harbor boat, manned by six splendid Klings, put us on
board.

The Rainbow is a very small vessel, her captain half Portuguese and
half Malay, her crew Chinese, and her cabin passengers were all Chinese
merchants. Her engineer is a Welshman, a kindly soul, who assured Mr.
----, when he commended me to his care, that "he was a family man, and
that nothing gave him greater pleasure than seeing that ladies were
comfortable," and I owe to his good offices the very small modicum of
comfort that I had. Waiting on the little bridge was far from being
wearisome, there was such a fascination in watching the costumed and
manifold life of the harbor, the black-hulled, sullen-looking steamers
from Europe discharging cargo into lighters, Malay prahus of all sizes
but one form, sharp at both ends, and with eyes on their bows, like the
Cantonese and Cochin China boats, reeling as though they would upset
under large mat sails, and rowing-boats rowed by handsome, statuesque
Klings. A steamer from Jeddah was discharging six hundred pilgrims in
most picturesque costumes; and there were boats with men in crimson
turbans and graceful robes of pure white muslin, and others a mass of
blue umbrellas, while some contained Brahmins with the mark of caste
set conspicuously on their foreheads, all moving in a veil of gold in
the setting of a heavy fringe of cocoa-palms.

We sailed at four, with a strong favorable breeze, and the sea was
really delightful as we passed among green islets clothed down to the
water's edge with dense tropical vegetation, right out into the open
water of the Straits of Malacca, a burning, waveless sea, into which
the sun was descending in mingled flame and blood. Then, dinner for
three, consisting of an excellent curry, was spread on the top of the
cabin, and eaten by the captain, engineer, and myself, after which the
engineer took me below to arrange for my comfort, and as it was
obviously impossible for me to sleep in a very dirty and very small
hole, tenanted by cockroaches disproportionately large, and with a
temperature of eighty-eight degrees, he took a mattress and pillows
upon the bridge, told me his history, and that of his colored wife and
sixteen children under seventeen, of his pay of 35 pounds a month, lent
me a box of matches, and vanished into the lower regions with the
consoling words, "If you want anything in the night, just call
'Engineer' down the engine skylight." It does one's heart good to meet
with such a countryman.

The Rainbow is one of the many tokens of preponderating Chinese
influence in the Straits of Malacca. The tickets are Chinese, as well
as the ownership and crew. The supercargo who took my ticket is a sleek
young Chinaman in a pigtail, girdle, and white cotton trousers. The
cabin passengers are all Chinamen. The deck was packed with Chinese
coolies on their way to seek wealth in the diggings at Perak. They were
lean, yellow, and ugly, smoked a pipe of opium each at sundown, wore
their pigtails coiled round their heads, and loose blue cotton
trousers. We had slipped our cable at Singapore, because these coolies
were clambering up over every part of the vessel, and defying all
attempts to keep them out, so that "to cut and run" was our only
chance. The owners do not allow any intoxicant to be brought on board,
lest it should be given to the captain and crew, and they should take
too much and lose the vessel. I am the only European passenger and the
only woman on board. I had a very comfortable night lying on deck in
the brisk breeze on the waveless sea, and though I watched the stars,
hoping to see the Southern Cross set, I fell asleep, till I was awoke
at the very earliest dawn by a most formidable Oriental shouting to me
very fiercely I thought, with a fierce face; but it occurred to me that
he was trying to make me understand that they wanted to wash decks, so
I lifted my mattress on a bench and fell asleep again, waking to find
the anchor being let go in the Malacca roads six hours before we should
have arrived.

I am greatly interested with the first view of Malacca, one of the
oldest European towns in the East, originally Portuguese, then Dutch,
and now, though under English rule, mainly Chinese. There is a long bay
with dense forests of cocoa-palms, backed by forests of I know not
what, then rolling hills, and to the right beyond these a mountain
known as Mount Ophir, rich in gold. Is this possibly, as many think,
the Ophir of the Bible, and this land of gems and gold truly the
"Golden Chersonese?" There are islets of emerald green lying to the
south, and in front of us a town of antiquated appearance, low houses,
much colored, with flattish, red-tiled roofs, many of them built on
piles, straggling for a long distance, and fringed by massive-looking
bungalows, half buried in trees. A hill rises near the middle, crowned
by a ruined cathedral, probably the oldest Christian church in the Far
East, with slopes of bright green grass below, timbered near their base
with palms and trees of a nearly lemon-colored vividness of
spring-green, and there are glimpses of low, red roofs behind the hill.
On either side of the old-world-looking town and its fringe of
bungalows are glimpses of steep, reed roofs among the cocoa-palms. A
long, deserted-looking jetty runs far out into the shallow sea, a few
Chinese junks lie at anchor, in the distance a few Malay fishermen are
watching their nets, but not a breath stirs, the sea is without a
ripple, the gray clouds move not, the yellow plumes of the palms are
motionless; the sea, the sky, the town, look all alike asleep in a
still, moist, balmy heat.


Stadthaus, Malacca, 4 P.M.--Presently we were surrounded by a crowd of
Malay boats with rude sails made of mats, but their crews might have
been phantoms for any noise they made. By one of these I sent my card
and note of introduction to the Lieutenant-Governor. An hour afterward
the captain told me that the Governor usually went into the country
early on Monday morning for two days, which seemed unfortunate. Soon
after, the captain and engineer went ashore, and I was left among a
crowd of Chinamen and Malays without any possibility of being
understood by any of them, to endure stifling heat and provoking
uncertainty, much aggravated by the want of food, for another three
hours. At last, when very nearly famished, and when my doubts as to the
wisdom of this novel and impromptu expedition had become very serious
indeed, a European boat appeared, moving with the long steady stroke of
a man-of-war's boat, rowed by six native policemen, with a
frank-looking bearded countryman steering, and two peons in white, with
scarlet-and-gold hats and sashes, in the bow, and as it swept up to
the Rainbow's side the man in white stepped on board, and introduced
himself to me as Mr. Biggs, the colonial chaplain, deputed to receive
me on behalf of the Governor, who was just leaving when my card
arrived. He relieved all anxiety as to my destination by saying that
quarters were ready for me in the Stadthaus.

We were soon on a lovely shore under the cathedral-crowned hill, where
the velvety turf slopes down to the sea under palms and trees whose
trunks are one mass of ferns, brightened by that wonderful flowering
tree variously known as the "flamboyant" and the "flame of the forest"
(Poinciana regia). Very still, hot, tropical, sleepy, and dreamy,
Malacca looks, a town "out of the running," utterly antiquated, mainly
un-English, a veritable Sleepy Hollow.

I. L. B.



LETTER IX

The Lieutenant-Governor of Malacca--A Charming Household--The Old
Stadthaus--A Stately Habitation--An Endless Siesta--A Tropic
Dream--Chinese Houses--Chinese Wealth and Ascendency--"Opium
Farming"--The Malacca Jungle--Mohammedan Burial-Places--Malay
Villages--Malay Characteristics--Costume and Ornament--Bigotry and
Pilgrimage--The Malay Buffalo


STADTHAUS, MALACCA, January 21-23.

This must surely fade like a dream, this grand old Stadthaus, this
old-world quiet, this quaint life; but when it fades I think I shall
have a memory of having been "once in Elysium." Still, Elysium should
have no mosquitoes, and they are nearly insupportable here; big spotted
fellows, with a greed for blood, and a specially poisonous bite, taking
the place at daylight of the retiring nocturnal host. The Chinese
attendant is not careful, and lets mosquitoes into my net, and even one
means a sleepless night. They are maddening.

I was introduced to my rooms, with their floors of red Dutch tiles,
their blue walls, their white-washed rafters, their doors and windows
consisting of German shutters only, their ancient beds of portentous
height, and their generally silent and haunted look, and then went to
tiffin with Mr. and Mrs. Biggs. Mr. Biggs is a student of hymnology,
and we were soon in full swing on this mutually congenial subject. Mrs.
Biggs devotes her time and strength to the training and education of
young Portuguese girls. I pass their open bungalow as I go to and from
the Governor's cottage, and it usually proves a trap.

Captain Shaw, who has been for many years Lieutenant-Governor of
Malacca, is a fine, hearty, frank, merry, manly, Irish naval officer,
well read and well informed, devoted to Malacca and its interests, and
withal a man of an especially unselfish, loving, and tender nature,
considerate to an unusual degree of the happiness and comfort of those
about him. Before I had been here many hours I saw that he was the
light of a loving home.* He can be firm and prompt when occasion
requires firmness, but his ordinary rule is of the gentlest and most
paternal description, so that from the Chinese he has won the name of
"Father," and among the Malays, the native population, English rule, as
administered by him, has come to be known as "the rule of the just."
The family, consisting of the Governor, his, wife, and two daughters
just grown up, is a very charming one, and their quiet, peaceful life
gives me the opportunity which so rarely falls to the lot of a traveler
of becoming really intimate with them.  
[*I should not have reproduced this paragraph of my letter were Captain
Shaw still alive, but in five weeks after my happy visit he died almost
suddenly, to the indescribable grief of his family and of the people of
Malacca, by whom he was greatly beloved.]

The Government bungalow, in which I spend most of my time, is a
comfortable little cottage, with verandas larger than itself. In the
front veranda, festooned with trailers and orchids, two Malay military
policemen are always on guard, and two scornful-looking Bengalis in
white trousers, white short robes, with sashes of crimson silk striped
with gold, and crimson-and-gold flat hats above their handsome but
repellent faces, make up the visible part of the establishment. One of
these Bengalis has been twice to Mecca, at an expense of 40 pounds on
each visit, and on Friday appears in a rich Hadji suit, in which he
goes through the town, and those Mussulmen who are not Hadji bow down
to him. I saw from the very first that my project of visiting the
native States was not smiled upon at Government House.

The Government bungalow being scarcely large enough for the Governor's
family, I am lodged in the old Dutch Stadthaus, formerly the residence
of the Dutch Governor, and which has enough of solitude and faded
stateliness to be fearsome, or at the least eerie, to a solitary guest
like myself, to whose imagination, in the long, dark nights, creeping
Malays or pilfering Chinamen are far more likely to present themselves
than the stiff beauties and formal splendors of the heyday of Dutch
ascendancy. The Stadthaus, which stands on the slope of the hill, and
is the most prominent building in Malacca, is now used as the Treasury,
Post Office, and Government offices generally. There are large state
reception-rooms, including a ball-room, and suites of apartments for
the use of the Governor of the Straits Settlements, the Chief-Justice,
and other high officials, on their visits to Malacca. The Stadthaus, at
its upper end on the hill, is only one story high, but where it abuts
on the town it is three and even four. The upper part is built round
three sides of a Dutch garden, and a gallery under the tiled veranda
runs all round. A set of handsome staircases on the sea side leads to
the lawn-like hill with the old cathedral, and the bungalows of the
Governor and colonial chaplain. Stephanotis, passiflora, tuberose,
alamanda, Bougainvillea, and other trailers of gorgeous colors, climb
over everything, and make the night heavy with their odors. There must
be more than forty rooms in this old place, besides great arched
corridors, and all manner of queer staircases and corners. Dutch tiling
and angularities and conceits of all kinds abound.

My room opens on one side upon a handsome set of staircases under the
veranda, and on the other upon a passage and staircase with several
rooms with doors of communication, and has various windows opening on
the external galleries.  Like most European houses in the Peninsula, it
has a staircase which leads from the bedroom to a somewhat grim,
brick-floored room below, containing a large high tub, or bath, of
Shanghai pottery, in which you must by no means bathe, as it is found
by experience that to take the capacious dipper and pour water upon
yourself from a height, gives a far more refreshing shock than
immersion when the water is at 80 degrees and the air at 83 degrees.

The worst of my stately habitation is, that after four in the afternoon
there is no one in it but myself, unless a Chinese coolie, who has a
lair somewhere, and appears in my room at all sorts of unusual hours
after I think I have bolted and barred every means of ingress. However,
two Malay military policemen patrol the verandas outside at intervals
all night, and I have the comfort of imagining that I hear far below
the clank of the British sentries who guard the Treasury. In the early
morning my eyes always open on the Governor's handsome Mohammedan
servant in spotless white muslin and red head-dress and girdle,
bringing a tray with tea and bananas. The Chinese coolie who appears
mysteriously attends on me, and acts as housemaid, our communications
being entirely by signs. The mosquitoes are awful. The view of the
green lawns, the sleeping sea, the motionless forest of cocoa-palms
along the shore, the narrow stream and bridge, and the quaint red-tiled
roofs of the town, is very charming and harmonious; yet I often think,
if these dreamy days went on into months, that I should welcome an
earthquake shock, or tornado, or jarring discord of some rousing kind,
to break the dream produced by the heated, steamy, fragrant air, and
the monotonous silence.

I have very little time for writing here, and even that is abridged by
the night mosquitoes, which muster their forces for a desperate attack
as soon as I retire to the Stadthaus for two hours of quiet before
dinner, so I must give the features of Malacca mainly in outline.
Having written this sentence, I am compelled to say that the feature of
Malacca is that it is featureless! It is a land where it is "always
afternoon"--hot, still, dreamy. Existence stagnates. Trade pursues its
operations invisibly. Commerce hovers far off on the shallow sea. The
British and French mail steamers give the port a wide offing. It has no
politics, little crime, rarely gets even two lines in an English
newspaper, and does nothing toward making contemporary history. The
Lieutenant-Governor has occupied the same post for eleven years. A
company of soldiers vegetates in quarters in a yet sleepier region than
the town itself. Two Chinese steamers make it a port of call, but,
except that they bring mails, their comings and goings are of no
interest to the very small English part of the population. Lying
basking in the sun, or crawling at the heads of crawling oxen very like
hairless buffaloes, or leaning over the bridge looking at nothing, the
Malays spend their time when they come into the town, their very
movements making the lack of movement more perceptible.

The half-breed descendants of the Portuguese, who kept up a splendid
pomp of rule in the days of Francis Xavier, seem to take an endless
siesta behind their closely covered windows. I have never seen an
Englishman out of doors except Mr. Hayward, the active superintendent
of military police, or Mr. Biggs, who preserves his health and energies
by systematic constitutionals. Portuguese and Dutch rule have passed
away, leaving, as their chief monuments--the first, a ruined cathedral,
and a race of half-breeds; and the last, the Stadthaus and a flat-faced
meeting-house. A heavy shower, like a "thunder-plump," takes up a part
of the afternoon, after which the Governor's carriage, with servants in
scarlet liveries, rolls slowly out of Malacca, and through the
sago-palms and back again. If aught else which is European breaks the
monotony of the day I am not aware of it. The streets have no
particular features, though one cannot but be aware that a narrow
stream full of boats, and spanned by a handsome bridge, divides the
town into two portions, and that a handsome clock-tower (both tower and
bridge erected by some wealthy Chinese merchants) is a salient object
below the Stadthaus. Trees, trailers, fruits, smother the houses, and
blossom and fruit all the year round; old leaves, young leaves, buds,
blossom, and fruit, all appearing at once. The mercury rarely falls
below 79 degrees or rises above 84 degrees. The softest and least
perceptible of land and sea breezes blow alternately at stated hours.
The nights are very still. The days are a tepid dream. Since I arrived
not a leaf has stirred, not a bird has sung, the tides ebb and flow in
listless and soundless ripples. Far off, on the shallow sea, phantom
ships hover and are gone, and on an indefinite horizon a blurred ocean
blends with a blurred sky. On Mount Ophir heavy cloud-masses lie always
motionless. The still, heavy, fragrant nights pass with no other sounds
than the aggressive hum of mosquitoes and the challenge of the
sentries. But through the stormy days and the heavy nights Nature is
always busy in producing a rapidity and profusion of growth which would
turn Malacca into a jungle were it not for axe and billhook, but her
work does not jar upon the general silence. Yet with all this
indefiniteness, dreaminess, featurelessness, indolence, and silence, of
which I have attempted to convey an idea, Malacca is very fascinating,
and no city in the world, except Canton, will leave so vivid an
impression upon me, though it may be but of a fragrant tropic dream and
nothing more.

Yesterday Mrs. Biggs took me a drive through Malacca and its forest
environs. It was delightful; every hour adds to the fascination which
this place has for me. I thought my tropic dreams were over, when seven
years ago I saw the summit peaks of Oahu sink sunset flushed into a
golden sea, but I am dreaming it again. The road crosses the bridge
over the narrow stream, which is, in fact, the roadway of a colored and
highly picturesque street, and at once enters the main street of
Malacca, which is parallel to the sea.  On the sea side each house
consists of three or four divisions, one behind the other, each roof
being covered with red tiles. The rearmost division is usually built
over the sea, on piles. In the middle of each of the three front
divisions there is a courtyard. The room through which you enter from
the street always has an open door, through which you see houses
showing a high degree of material civilization, lofty rooms, handsome
altars opposite the doors, massive, carved ebony tables, and carved
ebony chairs with marble seats and backs standing against the walls,
hanging pictures of the kind called in Japan kakemono, and rich bronzes
and fine pieces of porcelain on ebony brackets. At night, when these
rooms are lighted up with eight or ten massive lamps, the appearance is
splendid. These are the houses of Chinese merchants of the middle
class.

And now I must divulge the singular fact that Malacca is to most
intents and purposes a Chinese city. The Dutch, as I wrote, have
scarcely left a trace. The Portuguese, indolent, for thc most part
poor, and lowered by native marriages, are without influence, a most
truly stagnant population, hardly to be taken into account. Their poor-
looking houses resemble those of Lisbon. The English, except in so far
as relates to the administration of government, are nowhere, though it
is under our equitable rule that the queerly mixed population of
Chinese, Portuguese, half-breeds, Malays, Confucianists, Buddhists,
Tauists, Romanists, and Mohammedans "enjoy great quietness."* 
[*By the census of 1881 the resident European population of the
Settlement of Malacca consists of 23 males and 9 females, a "grand"
total of 32! The Eurasian population, mainly of Portuguese mixed blood,
is 2,213. The Chinese numbers 19,741, 4,020 being females. The Malay
population is 67,488, the females being 2,000 in excess of the males,
the Tamils or Klings are 1,781, the Arabs 227, the Aborigines of the
Peninsula 308, the Javanese 399, the Boyanese 212, and the Jawi-Pekans
867. Besides these there are stray Achinese, Africans, Anamese,
Bengalis, Bugis, Dyaks, Manilamen, Siamese, and Singhalese, numbering
174. The total population of the territory is 93,579, viz., 52,059 males
and 41,520 females, an increase in ten years of 15,823. The decrease in
the number of resident Europeans is 31.9 per cent. In "natives of India"
42 per cent., and in "other nationalities" 48.9 per cent. On the other
hand the Chinese population has increased by 6,259 or 46.4 per cent.,
and the Malays by 11,264, or 19.3 per cent. The town of Malacca contains
5,538 houses, and the country districts 11,177. The area of the
settlement is 640 square miles, and the density of the population 146 to
the square mile; only twelve of the population are lunatics.]

Of the population of the town the majority are said to be Chinese, and
still their crowded junks are rolling down on the north-east monsoon.
As I remarked before, the coasting trade of the Straits of Malacca is
in their hands, and to such an extent have they absorbed the trade of
this colony, that I am told there is not a resident British merchant in
Malacca. And it is not, as elsewhere, that they come, make money, and
then return to settle in China, but they come here with their wives and
families, buy or build these handsome houses, as well as large
bungalows in the neighboring cocoa-groves, own most of the plantations
up the country, and have obtained the finest site on the hill behind
the town for their stately tombs. Every afternoon their carriages roll
out into the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to
smoke and gamble. They have fabulous riches in diamonds, pearls,
sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They love Malacca, and take a pride in
beautifying it. They have fashioned their dwellings upon the model of
those in Canton, but whereas cogent reasons compel the rich Chinaman at
home to conceal the evidences of his wealth, he glories in displaying
it under the security of British rule. The upper class of the Chinese
merchants live in immense houses within walled gardens. The wives of
all are secluded, and inhabit the back regions and have no share in the
remarkably "good time" which the men seem to have. Along with their
industrious habits and their character for fair trading, the Chinese
have brought to Malacca gambling and opium-smoking. One-seventh of the
whole quantity of opium exported from India to China is intercepted and
consumed in the Straits Settlements, and the Malacca Government makes a
large revenue from it. The Chinaman who "farms the opium"--i.e., who
purchases from the Government the exclusive right to sell it--pays for
his monopoly about 50 pounds per day. It must be remembered, however,
that every man who smokes opium is not what we understand by an
"opium-smoker," and that between the man who takes his daily pipe of
opium after his supper, and the unhappy opium-slave who reduces himself
to imbecility in such dens as I saw in Canton, there is just as much
difference as there is in England between the "moderate drinker" and
the "habitual drunkard." Slavery is prohibited in Malacca, and slaves
from the neighboring State fly for freedom to the shelter of the
British flag; but there is reason to suppose that the numerous women in
the households of the Chinese merchants, though called servants, are
persons who have been purchased in China, and are actually held in
bondage. Apart from these exceptions, the Chinese population is a
valuable one, and is, in its upper classes, singularly public-spirited,
law-abiding, and strongly attached to British rule.

I saw no shops except those for the sale of fish, fruit, and coarse
native pottery, but doubtless most things which are suited to the wants
of the mixed population can be had in the bazaars. As we drove out of
the town the houses became fewer and the trees denser, with mosques
here and there among them, and in a few minutes we were in the great
dark forest of cocoa, betel, and sago palms, awfully solemn and
oppressive in the hot stillness of the evening. Every sight was new,
for though I have seen the cocoa-palm before, the palm-fringes of the
coral islands, with their feathery plumes have little kinship with the
dark, crowded cocoa-forests of Malacca, with their endless vistas and
mysterious gloom. These forests are intersected by narrow, muddy
streams, suggestive of alligators, up which you can go in canoes if you
lie down, and are content with the yet darker shade produced by the
nipah, a species of stemless palm, of which the poorer natives make
their houses, and whose magnificent fronds are often from twenty to
twenty-two feet in length. The soft carriage road passes through an
avenue of trees of great girth and a huge spread of foliage, bearing
glorious yellow blossoms of delicious fragrance. Jungles of sugar-cane
often form the foreground of dense masses of palms, then a jungle of
pine-apples surprises one, then a mass of lianas, knotted and tangled,
with stems like great cables, and red blossoms as large as breakfast
cups. The huge trees which border the road have their stems and
branches nearly hidden by orchids and epiphytes--chiefly that lovely
and delicate one whose likeness to a hovering dove won for it the name
of the "Flower of the Holy Ghost," an orchid (Peristeria elata) which
lives but for a day, but in its brief life fills the air with
fragrance. Then the trees change, the long tresses of an
autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead
trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns,
among which the dark-green shining fronds of the Asplenium nidus,
measuring four feet in length, specially delight the eye; huge
tamarinds and mimosa add the grace of their feathery foliage; the
banana unfolds its gigantic fronds above its golden fruitage; clumps of
the betel or areca palms, with their slender and absolutely straight
shafts, make the cocoa-palms look like clumsy giants; the gutta-percha,
india rubber, and other varieties of ficus, increase the forest gloom
by the brown velvety undersides of their shining dark-green leafage;
then comes the cashew-nut tree, with its immense spread of branches,
and its fruit an apple with a nut below; and the beautiful bread-fruit,
with its green "cantalupe melons," nearly ripe, and the gigantic jak
and durion, and fifty others, children of tropic heat and moisture, in
all the promise of perpetual spring, and the fulfillment of endless
summer, the beauty of blossom and the bounteousness of an unfailing
fruitage crowning them through all the year. At their feet is a tangle
of fungi, mosses, ferns, trailers, lilies, nibongs, reeds, canes,
rattans, a dense and lavish undergrowth, in which reptiles, large and
small, riot most congenially, and in which broods of mosquitoes are
hourly hatched, to the misery of man and beast. Occasionally a small
and comparatively cleared spot appears, with a crowded cluster of
graves, with a pawn-shaped stone at the head of each, and the beautiful
Frangipani,* the "Temple Flower" of Singhalese Buddhism, but the "Grave
Flower" of Malay Mohammedanism, sheds its ethereal fragrance among the
tombs. The dead lie lonely in the forest shade, under the feathery
palm-fronds, but the living are not far to seek.  
[*Plumieria sp.]

It is strange that I should have written thus far and have said nothing
at all about the people from whom this Peninsula derives its name, who
have cost us not a little blood and some treasure, with whom our
relations are by no means well defined or satisfactory, and who, though
not the actual aborigines of the country, have at least that claim to
be considered its rightful owners which comes from long centuries of
possession. In truth, between English rule, the solid tokens of Dutch
possession, the quiet and indolent Portuguese, the splendid memories of
Francis Xavier, and the numerical preponderance, success, and wealth of
the Chinese, I had absolutely forgotten the Malays, even though a dark-
skinned military policeman, with a gliding, snake-like step, whom I
know to be a Malay, brings my afternoon tea to the Stadthaus! Of them I
may write more hereafter. They are symbolized to people's minds in
general by the dagger called a kris, and by the peculiar form of frenzy
which has given rise to the phrase "running amuck."

The great cocoa groves are by no means solitary, for they contain the
kampongs, or small raised villages of the Malays. Though the Malay
builds his dismal little mosques on the outskirts of Malacca, he shuns
the town, and prefers a life of freedom in his native jungles, or on
the mysterious rivers which lose themselves among the mangrove swamps.
So in the neighborhood of Malacca these kampongs are scattered through
the perpetual twilight of the forest.  They do not build the houses
very close together, and whether of rich or poor, the architecture is
the same. Each dwelling is of planed wood or plaited palm leaves, the
roof is high and steep, the eaves are deep, and the whole rests on a
gridiron platform, supported on posts from five to ten feet high, and
approached by a ladder in the poorer houses, and a flight of steps in
the richer. In the ordinary houses mats are laid here and there over
the gridiron, besides the sleeping mats; and this plan of an open
floor, though trying to unaccustomed Europeans, has various advantages.
As, for instance, it insures ventilation, and all debris can be thrown
through it, to be consumed by the fire which is lighted every evening
beneath the house to smoke away the mosquitoes. A baboon, trained to
climb the cocoa palms and throw down the nuts, is an inmate of most of
the houses.

The people lead strange and uneventful lives. The men are not inclined
to much effort except in fishing or hunting, and, where they possess
rice land, in ploughing for rice.  They are said to be quiet,
temperate, jealous, suspicious, some say treacherous, and most bigoted
Mussulmen. The women are very small, keep their dwellings very tidy,
and weave mats and baskets from reeds and palm leaves. They are clothed
in cotton or silk from the ankles to the throat, and the men, even in
the undress of their own homes, usually wear the sarong, a picturesque
tightish petticoat, consisting of a wide piece of stuff kept on by a
very ingenious knot. They are not savages in the ordinary sense, for
they have a complete civilization of their own, and their legal system
is derived from the Koran.

They are dark brown, with rather low foreheads, dark and somewhat
expressionless eyes, high cheek bones, flattish noses with broad
nostrils, and wide mouths with thick lips.  Their hair is black,
straight and shining, and the women dress it in a plain knot at the
back of the head. To my thinking, both sexes are decidedly ugly, and
there is a coldness and aloofness of manner about them which chills one
even where they are on friendly terms with Europeans, as the people
whom we visited were with Mrs. Biggs.

The women were lounging about the houses, some cleaning fish, others
pounding rice; but they do not care for work, and the little money
which they need for buying clothes they can make by selling mats, or
jungle fruits. Their lower garment, or sarong, reaching from the waist
to the ankles, is usually of red cotton of a small check, with stripes
in the front, above which is worn a loose sleeved garment, called a
kabaya, reaching to the knees, and clasped in front with silver or
gold, and frequently with diamond ornaments. They also wear gold or
silver pins in their hair, and the sarong is girt or held up by a clasp
of enormous size, and often of exquisite workmanship, in the poorer
class of silver, and in the richer of gold jeweled with diamonds and
rubies. The sarong of the men does not reach much below the knee and
displays loose trousers. They wear above it a short-sleeved jacket, the
baju, beautifully made, and often very tastefully decorated in fine
needlework, and with small buttons on each side, not for use, however.
I have seen one Malay who wore about twenty buttons, each one a diamond
solitaire! The costume is completed by turbans or red handkerchiefs
tied round their heads.

In these forest kampongs the children, who are very pretty, are not
encumbered by much clothing, specially the boys.  All the dwellings are
picturesque, and those of the richer Malays are beautiful. They rigidly
exclude all ornaments which have "the likeness of anything in heaven or
earth," but their arabesques are de