ioo6 THE TROPICAL 
men of European descent in the United States and 
Australia are legislating against. The very qualities 
of thrift, spare living and untiring industry in the 
most petty pursuits, from market gardening to peddling, 
which make the Chinaman a hated competitor of Ihe 
European artizan and labourer, are those which render 
the celestials so valuable as colonists in a land where 
Europeans cannot toil at ordinary labour aud where 
population is the great want. Coolies from India will 
be needed for plantation work, however; for Chinese 
prefer to squat and cultivate bits of gambier, indigo, 
and like products on their own account, rather than 
render steady labour to the owners of large estates. 
The rulers of North Borneo must guard against a 
process which has denuded the larger portion of the 
island of Singapore , of its forest, converting it into 
what in Ceylon we would call chena. It is only re- 
cently that a regular survey has been possible, and 
thousands of Chinamen, who had settled down quietly 
on the sides of hills most " remote from public view," 
are now, to their disgust, compelled to pay their 
share of a revenue which is rapidly increasing, in 
the shape of land tax. Gambier cultivation seemed 
to us to be as wasteful and exhausting to the soil 
as even tobacco. To regular mining the Chinese seem 
to have adapted themselves fairly in Malacca, although 
there have been " sudden flows of mutiny" and serious 
outbreaks. In Australia and California, the function 
of the Chinese digger, however, seems to be that of 
'"fossicking" alluvial ground already turned over and 
searched by European miners. As masons and car- 
penters the Chinese vie with our own Moormen and 
Sinhalese. From Buitenzorg, in Java, a special train 
started every morning with Chinese artizans employed 
on the works of railway extension, which now, we 
observe, has reached the beautiful inland town of 
Sukabumi, and which, it is hoped, will soon connect 
Batavia at sea-level with Bandong 2,000 feet higher up, 
and which at present can only be reached by a mountain 
road rising to over 5,000 feet. We could not at first 
understand the streams of well-dressed Chinese who, 
in the morning outwards and in the evening inwards, 
flowed past the Governor-General's residence and along 
the grand avenues of the Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens. 
Malays and Javanese can till the soil, but in most 
other puisuits it ia the pig-tailed race who are promin- 
ent, in Batavia, Singapore and Penang. The Chinaman 
can turn bin hand to anything. He will gather sea. 
slugs and bird's nests ; till the soil and mine it ; work 
as a maeon or a carpenter, but his tendoncy is towards 
commerce. Content to begin in the humblest line of 
peddling, he not unfrequently rises to the level of the 
European merchant. Kong Meng is one of the notables 
of Melbourne ; the house and gardens of the late Hon. 
Mr. Whampoa, member of the Straits Legislative 
Council, are among the sights of Singapore ; and in 
Batavia and its Buburbs are numerous Chinese villas 
grotesque in architecture, but displaying signs of great 
wealth and much taste in their surroundings of gardens 
blazing with flowers. A perfect stranger visiting the 
chief towns of Java and the Straits, if unacquainted 
with the history of the Settlements and their inhabit- 
ants, might be pardoned if he concluded that the bulk 
of the inhabitants were Chinese, ruled by a few Euro- 
AGRICULTURIST. . [June i, 1882. 
peans. Nine-tenths, at least, of the shops, from the 
smallest b iu'ique to the most extensive store, crammed 
with miscellaneous good*, are owned and served by 
Chinese, men varying in colour from dark yellow to 
pure white, and all looking out keenly from those 
queerly set eyes of theirs. Their eyes may not be 
quite straight, but they certainly enable their owners 
to keep a good look-out for the main chance. From 
their association together in secret societies; their lia- 
bility to sudden risings in which they show an utter 
disregard of human life, their own included ; and 
also their tendency to go back to the instincts of the 
pirate and the gang robber, the Chinese require to be 
well watched and firmly ruled. In Java, the Dutch 
had at one time to fight for existence against the 
numerous Chinese who rose agaiimt them; and in the 
Straits Settlements stringent measures have several times 
become necessary to repress clan fights and punish the 
authors of gang robberies. Mr. Cameron, writing in 1865, 
after describing the Chinese— birds of passage most of 
them and saving money with the view of returning to 
China — as the most industrious, and valuable class of 
the population ; the producers of gambier, pepper, sago 
and tapioca and the miners of tin, goes on to say that 
the secret societies and their oaths ; interfere seriously 
with the administration of justice. A good many of 
the Chinese smoke opium to excess and a great many 
are inveterate gamblers. The Maharajah of Johore 
makes a considerable portion of his revenue by a gam- 
bling farm, and we are not likely ever to forget the 
hideous sight of crowds of almost nude gamblers we 
saw in a "hell" in the outskirts of the capital of 
Johore. Most of the inmates of the jails are Chinese, 
and we saw one stalwart criminal in the jail under 
Capt. Grey's charge who had taken the lives of six 
of his fellow- beings.' 
With all their faults the Chinese are valu- 
able for their industry, aud men like Sir Walter 
Medhurat do not hesitate to term them the most 
valuable of all races as colonists. He asked us if we 
could account for their almost entire absence from 
Ceylon ? Our reply was that this problem had ex- 
ercised our mind ever since we had passed through 
Batavia, Singapore and Penang, and the only conclusion 
we could arrive at was that the I hiuese had somehow 
discovered, that we had already present in our midst, 
races with whom they could not successfully compete : 
Tamil coolies (" Klings " as they are called in the 
Straits), for the cultivation of the soil and Moormen as 
artizans, peddlers and shopkeepers. Considering the 
close contiguity of Ceylon to the Straits Settlements, 
and that while the pig-tail (often interwoven with silk 
thread of richest dyes) is the most prominent sight 
in the streets and bazaars of the Straits towns, here 
in Ceylon there is scarcely a representative of the 
race, the problem is surely a curious one. And it is 
not from want of effort made and inducement offered, 
that Chinese are not here. Lieut. -Governor Birch who, 
from having served in the straits, knew the Chinese 
well, did his best to attract some of them hither by 
the offer of what would seem to be t' mpting privil- 
eges in connection with lands "under" irrigation 
tanks. All in vain. It might be well to investigate 
