FIFTH ENTRY. 

 AT SINGAPORE. 



HERE is no place, perhaps, in the far East which has 

 received greater immediate advantages from the Suez 

 Canal than Singapore. Most of the vessels which 

 pass Port Said without increasing its trade by so much as 

 the value of half a dollar, halt at this curious capital of 

 the Straits Settlements. It is the half-way house between 

 England and China on the one hand, and Australasia on the 

 other. At the beginning of the present century it was a 

 collection of Malay fishermen's huts. Even Sir Stamford 

 Raffles, through whose forethought the island became part of 

 the British possessions in 1819, could never have dreamt of 

 the great commercial importance it would some day obtain. 

 A convenience it was from the first ; now it is a necessity. 

 Fine docks have been built out of a humid swamp by the 

 Tanjong Paggar Dock Company, near the western entrance 

 of the roadstead, where the handful of savage fishermen have 

 grown into a thriving population of over 26,000 persons, who 

 are enjoying the advantages of European trade and English 

 rule, and who, though chiefly natives to the manner born, 



