284 By Stream and Sea. 



with difficulty introduced as curiosities into rare palm houses ; 

 and the residents, in cool white garments, take measure of us 

 from under their umbrellas. In latitudes where the sun has 

 equatorial power there is a wonderful clearness of perspec- 

 tive, and withal a dreamy look about air, earth, and sky, 

 that suggests siesta, and makes indolence a sin and a 

 shame at home both a virtue and a necessity. 



When the pilot mounts the bridge, and the propeller 

 churns the green water once more into milky foam, we 

 steamed slowly through a narrow channel, past clustering 

 islands of spices, cocoa nuts, pine apples, and bananas, out 

 into the spacious roadstead, where ships of every nation, not 

 excluding the towering Chinese junk, rock lazily at anchor ; 

 and so by a broad backward sweep abreast of the distant 

 town we arrive at the wharf, where the European officials 

 and natives in all their oriental strangeness of costume, or 

 no costume worth mentioning, await us. Before the gang- 

 way can be shipped the sun has streamed over the islets 

 opposite, suffusing them with a final outpouring of gold, 

 purple, and rose colour; then the king of day suddenly 

 leaves them and us to a twilight that in brevity, as in scenic 

 effects, is a dissolving view of amazing splendour. 



In the Himalaya troopship lying at the Tanjong wharf at 

 Singapore, I recognized the vessel in which I once made 

 passage on a journalistic expedition, and I was not long in 

 renewing my acquaintance with her gallant captain. She 

 was waiting for one of our regiments that had been settling 

 our little difficulty at Perak ; and to this extent she resem- 

 bled the Batavian vessel that had brought warriors from 

 Acheen. There, however, the resemblance ended. Need 

 I say that the Himalaya was " alow and aloft " precisely 

 what every English navy ship is wherever you may find her 

 a pattern of order and efficiency ? Nor need I apologize 



