747 GENERAL REPORT ON THE RESIDENCY OF SINGAPORE* 
found to succeed very well, under Chinese gardeners. These soils 
however are not extensive. In the Bras Basa valley they were 
found to contain carbon 43, silex 2. 75, magnetic protoxide of iron 
0. 25, loss 54.* 
Agricultural Labourers. The labouring population is of 
varied class and character; of these Chinese are the most numerous, 
and are principally employed in the gambier and pepper planta¬ 
tions of the interior, and vegetable gardens that surround the 
suburbs. They are little employed as day labourers by European 
planters, being found when thus employed to have no superiority 
over other Asiatics. Their disadvantages as day labourers, are also 
rendered considerable by the possession of a dogmatic temper and 
an unyeilding disposition, when under Europeans ; qualities not a 
little fostered by the contempt, brought from their native country, 
which is held for all outside barbarians ; inducing a suspension in 
a great measure of the conventionalities of behaviour on their 
part, that obtains in the intercourse between employer and servant. 
In employing them therefore it is necessary to have a Chinese 
overseer, who has been long accustomed to the manners of 
Europeans. As contractors they are eminently useful. To work by 
contract they seem in contradiction to the other races, to be as 
partial as the others are disinclined; for all operations though hard and 
unordinary, they enter into competition, with great spirit, frequent¬ 
ly without any knowledge as to the probable profit or loss. This 
is principally owing to the system of combination that they adopt 
of extending the mutual interest and responsibility of the under¬ 
taking to every workman that is engaged ; thus though the work 
turn out unprofitable—great loss cannot accrue to any individual, 
as in profits and losses, they all bear their share—and if loss be 
incurred, it only amounts to this, that instead of each workman 
obtaining for his labour the usual wages, viz., 3 to 3| dollars per 
mensem, he may only obtain 2 to 2|. If all the workmen do not 
join the compact in any undertaking—there is seldom less that f 
or J who are partners. Their addiction to opium smoking, gam¬ 
bling, and other enervating vices, brings on a rapid decay of the 
physical energy brought from their native clime, which they 
would otherwise retain, as the climate does not appear to affect 
them prejudicially. The Javanese and Boyans hold the next rank 
as labourers, the latter come from the small island of Bawian, in 
the Java sea, and as labourers both may be said to be charac¬ 
terized by their soberness, slowness and honesty united to dulness, 
patience and endurance. They are valuable as labourers on nutmeg 
and cocoanut plantations, where the labour is light and where the 
value of the produce requires equivocal characters to be excluded— 
their pay is 2± to 3 dollars a month. Ivlings or natives of the 
Coromandel Coast will rank next, who, as Dr. Oxley observes f 
* Colonel Low. 
t J ournal of Indian Archipelago. 
