34 Singapore. 



Others carry a portable cooking apjDaratus on a pole balanced 

 by a table at the other end, and serve up a meal of shell-fish, 

 rice, and vegetables for two or three half -pence, while coolies 

 and boatmen waiting to be hired are everywhere to be met 

 with. 



In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest- 

 trees in the jungle, and saw them up into planks, they culti- 

 vate vegetables, which they bring to market, and they grow 

 pepper and gambir, which form important articles of export. 

 The French Jesuits have established missions among these in- 

 land Chinese, which seem very successful. I lived for several 

 weeks at a time with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the 

 centre of the island, where a pretty church has been built, and 

 there are about 300 converts. While there, I met a mission- 

 ary who had just arrived from Tonquin, where he had been 

 living for many years. The Jesuits stUl do their work 

 thoroughly as of old. In Cochin China, Tonquin, and China, 

 where all Christian teachers are obliged to live in secret, and 

 are liable to persecution, expulsion, and sometimes death, every 

 province, even those farthest in the interior, has a permanent 

 Jesuit mission establishment, constantly kept up by fresh 

 aspirants, who are taught the languages of the countries they 

 are going to at Penang or Singapore. In China there are 

 said to be near a million converts ; in Tonquin and Cochin 

 China, more than half a million. One secret of the success of 

 these missions is the rigid economy practiced in the expendi- 

 ture of the funds. A missionary is allowed about £30 a year, 

 on which he lives in whatever country he may be. This ren- 

 ders it possible to support a large number of missionaries with 

 very limited means ; and the natives, seeing their teachers 

 living in poverty and with none of the luxuries of life, are con- 

 vinced that they are sincere in what they teach, and have real- 

 ly given up home and friends and ease and safety for the 

 good of others. No wonder they make converts, for it must 

 be a great blessing to the \wov people among whom they la- 

 bor to have a man among them to whom they can go in any 

 trouble or distress, who will comfort and advise them, who 

 visits them in sickness, who relieves them in want, and who 

 they see living from day to day in danger of persecution and 

 death entirely for their sakes. 



