APPENDIX. 303 



those of tlie poorer classes, who seek to better their condition. 

 Perhaps after a time we may learn to treat the Chinese who come 

 to America in a way that will make it an inducement for a better 

 class to come — a class that in personal cleanliness, intelligence, 

 ability, and entei-prise, are not inferior to the average population 

 in any part of the world. 



SrN"GAPOKE. 



TEOPICAIi LIFE AND SCENEKT — A VlSrr TO PEPPER AND TAPIOCA 

 PLAIfTATIONS, ETC., ETC. 



From Hong-Kong to Singapore is a distance of nearly fifteen 

 hundred miles, the course being nearly due south and covering 

 something over twenty degrees of latitude. Arriving at Singa- 

 pore, a glance at the foliage of the shrubs and trees shows that 

 we are in a more tropical country than any we have yet visited. 

 Cocoa-nut, betel-nut, and traveller's palm-trees are everywhere to 

 be seen ; bananas (or plantains, as they are called here), together 

 with pineapples, grow by the way-side, and every wall and 

 hedge is covered with a luxuriant growth of flowering vines, such 

 as are seen nowhere except in the tropics. The palm-trees are' 

 exceedingly graceful, and, to. a stranger, are quite the feature of 

 the landscape ; the " betel-nut palm " is very slender, and rises 

 tall and straight seventy-five or one hundred feet, terminating 

 with the usual tuft of long, graceful, fern-like leaves, and the 

 bunch of nuts clustered among them. The nattves, and also many 

 Chinese, are continually chewing this nut, which stains their lips 

 and gums of a reddish hue, and also colors their teeth very black, 

 giving them anything but a prepossessing appearance. The 

 " cocoa-nut palm " is very abundant and grows stronger than any 

 other variety, although more crooked, and usually not so tall as 

 the betel-palm ; the leaves, which also grow only from the top, 

 are long and graceful, and the fruit clusters in great abundance 

 just at the base of the leaves. The " traveller's palm," however, 

 is more picturesque than either of the two former varieties ; the 



