Strange Fish, 301 



assortment of garden produce — fruits and vegetables mostly 

 strange to Englishmen. In the grove singing birds (they 

 are few in number, however), gaily answer each other's 

 hymns of joy. The Malay children, in Nature's cheap garb, 

 laugh and play with a vivacity very foreign to their natural 

 gravity of demeanour. That indescribable smell, half-incense, 

 half-sewage, peculiar to all oriental quarters, has not yet dis- 

 tilled in full offensiveness. A fresh invigorating breeze from 

 the sea fans your face. Wherefore a morning drive in the 

 tropics should be keenly enjoyed. 



Though the Chinese coolies prefer their fish dried, and to 

 our taste doubly high, there is a large consumption of fresh 

 fish amongst the native population. The Singapore Billings- 

 gate I accordingly found to be a lively and interesting place, 

 and quite lacking the attributes which have made our great 

 London fish market proverbial. These untutored people run 

 a-muck occasionally, I presume, like other folks, but as a 

 rule they are quiet and courteous to every one. The fish 

 were carefully classified in heaps upon the wooden floor of 

 the wholesomely-kept sheds. 



The marketing housewife at home justly regards the lordly 

 salmon and the delicious trout as the highest objects of 

 fishmongering desire; at Singapore the best affection is 

 bestowed upon sharks. In the shops in another portion of 

 the town there were to be seen dried, cured, and pickied in 

 a variety of ways, all manner of sharkish delicacies. 

 Squatting on the edge of a gutter, and busily at work with 

 chop-sticks, rice, and fish all hot, a number of natives 

 watched with zest the cutting up of a hammer-headed shark, 

 about four feeet long, which had just been landed, barely 

 dead, from a sampan. The operator first smote the brute 

 across the head with a keen-edged knife, to remove any 

 doubt upon the question whether the ugly customer had 



