PABT III.— THE MALAY PENINSULK 



CHAPTEK XXY. 



SINGAPORE. 



New Harbor. — A Back-door Entrance. — Mangrove Swamps and Malay 

 Houses. — Street Scenes. — The Sailors' Quarter. — Well-planned City. — 

 Chinese Shops and Houses. — Populace. — Social Life. — The Curse of the 

 East Indies. — The American Consul. — Two Am-jrican Travellers. — A Model 

 Millionaire. — The Climate of Singapore. — Market for Live Animals. — A 

 Visit to Mr. Whampoa's Villa. — Curios. — A Tigerish Orang-Utan. — Curios- 

 ities in Gardening. 



The twentieth of May found us steaming down tlie Strait of Ma- 

 lacca, close along the shore of the Malay Peninsula. The strait was 

 almost as smooth as a river, and all day long we sat comfortably 

 under the double awning, enjoying the slowly moving panorama of 

 forest-clad hills and mountains, stretches of level jungle, a river 

 mouth and a Malay village here and there, and pretty gi'een islets 

 rising jauntily out of the water along the shore. The next sunrise 

 saw us thi-eading our way through a bewildering maze of islands, 

 large and small, a perfect archipelago in fact, with only a nan-ow 

 passage for us at best. Presently we passed a flag-staff upon a hill, 

 and a little later three buoys described a semi-circle to the left 

 ai'ound a group of islets, and then we saw far across the water many 

 ships at anchor, and back of them a long hne of white buildings two 

 stories high, with a monotonous row of upper windows staring across 

 the water at us. Beyond that lay a background of low, green hills. 



This is Singapore, the great central ganglion of the Malay 

 Archipelago and Southeastern Asia, the hub of the Far East. 

 The spokes are steamship lines running in almost everj' direction, 

 to Bangkok, Saigon, China and Japan, Manilla, Sarawak, Pontianak, 

 Batavia, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Malacca. 



We had scarcely exclaimed, " Yonder is Singapore ! " when it 



