32 Singapore. 



CHAPTER II. 



SINGAPORE. 

 A SKETCH OF THE TOWN AND ISLAND AS SEEN DURING SEVERAL VISITS 



FROM 1854 TO 1862. 



Few places are more interesting to a traveller from Europe 

 than the town and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, 

 examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different 

 religions and modes of life. The government, the garrison, 

 and the chief merchants are English, but the great mass of 

 the population is Chinese, including some of the wealthiest 

 merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of the 

 mechanics and laborers. The native Malays are usually fish- 

 ermen and boatmen, and they form the main body of the po- 

 lice. The Portuguese of Malacca supply a large number of 

 the clerks and smaller merchants. The KHngs of Western 

 India are a numerous body of Mohammedans, and, with many 

 Arabs, are petty merchants and shop-keepers. The grooms 

 and washer-men are all Bengalese, and there is a small but 

 highly respectable class of Parsee merchants. Besides these, 

 there are numbers of Javanese sailors and domestic servants, 

 as well as traders from Celebes, Bali, and many other islands 

 of the Archipelago. The harbor is crowded with men-of-war 

 and trading-vessels of many European nations, and hundreds 

 of Malay praus and Chinese junks, from vessels of several hun- 

 di'ed tons burden down to little fishing-boats and passenger 

 sampans ; and the town comprises handsome public buildings 

 and churches, Mohammedan mosques, Hindoo temples, Chinese 

 joss-houses, good European houses, massive warehouses, queer 

 old Kling and China bazars, and long suburbs of Chinese and 

 Malay cottages. 



By far the most conspicuous of the various kinds of people 

 in Singapore, and those which most attract the stranger's at- 

 tention, are the Chinese, whose numbers and incessant activity 

 give the place very much the appearance of a town in China. 



