A Visit to Singapore. 3 1 



land which projects to the eastward of the mountains, and . is 

 nearly two miles from their base. At the north end of 

 the harbour are the fort and the principal jetties. Steamers do 

 not go alongside the quays, but anchor off from them and are 

 discharged by lighters. At the harbour there is a deep depres- 

 sion in the sea bottom, in which there is eighteen fathoms of 

 water, so that they are unable to make quays, the water being 

 too deep. The principal object of interest to passing travellers 

 is the waterfall, which is among the hills, about five miles from 

 the town. The road up to it is very beautiful, being lined with 

 various sorts of trees, principally cocoanuts, and twining among 

 them was a beautiful purple convolvulus. In a watercourse at 

 the side of the road I saw a number of curious little crawling 

 crabs that live in holes which they make in the mud. They 

 have one daw very much larger than the other, which they 

 carry over their heads as if beckoning. I also saw in the 

 same drain little fish that came out of the water and ran on the 

 mud, like the little green fish one gets in the rock pools at the 

 seaside, but of a lighter colour. The waterfall is in a very 

 beautiful situation, in a cleft among rocks rising to a height of 

 eighty feet or thereabouts. It is precipitated into a deep 

 pool. The river, when low, as I saw it, passes under large 

 boulders covered with vegetation, " trickling through soft velvet 

 mosses, almost hid from sight." All the valley in which the 

 fall and river are is retained by the Government as a public 

 park. It consists of many acres, and is kept in beautiful 

 order. As I was returning I passed a Hindoo funeral 

 procession. The dead body was placed on a bier made of 

 bamboos, over which was a canopy of white muslin ornamented 

 with red and yellow tissue paper and the leaves of the banana. 

 In front there were a number of men playing tomtoms, while 

 another Hindoo danced in front of the bier. His contortions 

 were very remarkable, and seemed utterly out of place. As the 

 procession passed along men laid down their outer garment — 

 a piece of calico about four yards long — for the bearers and 

 others to tread on. 



