SINGAPORE. 295 



crately ornamented on the front with fancy tile and brick work, 

 figures of apocryphal dragons and Chinese Hons in high relief, 

 and surrounded by beautifully kept gardens of tropical plants and 

 shrubs. All of these impart a tasty and luxuriant air to the 

 streets. The wealthy Chinamen take very kindly to European lux- 

 uries of aU kinds except in matters of dress. They are lavish in 

 the use of fine furniture, wines, and food, and then* turnouts are 

 really dazzling with their fine open carriages, matched horses, ele- 

 gant harnesses, and liveried servants, though in dress they draw the 

 line at the white stiff hat of EngHsh make. Theu- dress is cool and 

 roomy, made of white silk or linen, and they wear no jeweliy what- 

 ever. 



The population of Singapore (about one hundi-ed thousand) is 

 a sort of omnium gatherum from the various over-crowded coun- 

 tries of Southern Asia generally. The Chinese are by far the most 

 numerous, the most thrifty and enterprising, and the most satisfac- 

 tory to deal ^\ith. The Malays come next, and after them the 

 Tamils fi'om Southern India and Ceylon. The population includes 

 a goodly sprinkHng of Portuguese half-castes, a few Javanese, 

 a few Siamese, and of Eui'opeans, a mixture of English, Dutch, 

 Germans, French, Swiss, and last but not least, three Americans, 

 our consul and his daughters. 



Of the social life of Singapore I know nothing ; but from what 

 I was told, I judge it is not at all different from other British colonies. 

 There are the usual balls and dinner parties, and the usual number 

 of grades in society, each of which knows its station to a line and 

 never ventures beyond it. To an American it seems extremely 

 silly for wholesale merchants and their clerks to hold themselves, 

 socially, above the retail merchants and their clerks, regaixlless of 

 the amount of business they do, and their moral and intellectual 

 standing. For my part, I have no patience with society's nonsensi- 

 cal standards, in accordance with which a man's business or profes- 

 sion is everything, and he himseK is nothing. Thank God for 

 America, where every man stands on his merits, if he has any. 



The hotels of Singapore are all bad, and life in them is exceed- 

 ingly dull. The liquor consumed in them, and the drunken men 

 one sees almost daily, keep the abstemious traveller in a state of 

 pei-petual disgust. The extent to which intoxicating liquors of all 

 kinds are drunk in the East Indies is simply appalling. The drink- 

 ing habit is so universal, that, as a general thing, when you go to 

 call on an acquaintance at his house, or to visit a stranger in com- 



