MARSEILLES TO SINGAPORE 19 



chow-shops and sold along the road by innumerable 

 vendors that most contribute to the general effect, 

 or perhaps the incense burned in the hundreds of 

 little shrines and temples is primarily responsible. 

 But I think the very air which lies over Singapore 

 like a steaming blanket, thick, heavy, and motion- 

 less, must itself contain all the elements of that 

 inimitable odor, absorbed through countless genera- 

 tions of contact with unwashed humanity and 

 temple incense, and diffused throughout the city 

 with a poignancy all too marked for the delicately 

 adjusted senses of the conventional westerner. 



My quarters in Raffles' Hotel were of the plea- 

 santest. In front of my room was a little veranda, 

 furnished with cane lounging-chairs and looking 

 directly out upon the harbor, where the thousands 

 and thousands of Malay junks lying huddled to- 

 gether by the quays, or lazily wandering hither and 

 thither among the larger shipping, afforded a scene 

 unequalled in picturesqueness. Before my door 

 passed a continuous and varied stream of brown 

 humanity ; in all the world there is no ethnological 

 museum like Singapore ; people from every eastern 

 country and tribe, and indeed from nearly every 

 land in the two hemispheres, are gathered there, 

 and to one who has never before seen the Orient, 

 this heterogeneous procession of natives continu- 



