SAIGON
The smell of earth reached us already, as well as the perfume of amber
and tropical flowers. We are in Cochin-China, in fairy-like decorations.
I thought myself in dreamland and had to pinch myself to be sure I was
awake.
The town of Saigon, buried in banyan and palm trees, is a city of
splendid wonders. The French colours floated everywhere. Small omnibuses
harnessed with a Malay pony were waiting under the banyan trees on the
quay. An aide-de-camp of the Governor-General of Cochin-China invited
us, in the name of his chief, to put up at his house, but we preferred
to drive independently to the Grand Hôtel, and mounted an omnibus drawn
by a Liliputian pony, with a native coachman on the box, dressed in
white linen with a red turban. We drove through streets that tried to
be French, and boulevards surrounded by mimosas and laurel trees. All
Saigon sleeps between the hours of two and five. The houses of commerce
are closed and every business stops. Most of the window-shades were down,
and there was no sign of life in the streets; we only saw a man sleeping
in an angle of a wall, flies above his head. It seemed a very long drive
to the Grand Hôtel. The coachman, to whom we had explained ourselves in a
language of signs, didn’t understand where we wanted to go, and instead
of driving us to the Grand Hôtel he brought us to the Botanic Gardens,
through long alleys of red sand. Once we were at the door of the gardens,
we decided to visit them, though it wasn’t at all an afternoon pastime in
such awful heat. In this tropical land, one of the hottest on the globe,
there are often cases of sunstroke amongst the Europeans. As to the
natives, they are accustomed to receive the caresses of the hot rays of
the sun, which is at its zenith in these parts.
On our way back to the hotel we saw the statue of Gambetta on the square.
The fancy of the sculptor has attired the great man in a fur-lined coat,
which looks rather queer in this country, where everyone would prefer to
be completely deprived of clothes.
A spacious gallery with hermetically closed shutters stretches the whole
length of our hotel. Directly after tiffin we went up to our apartment
and indulged in a pleasant siesta. I was awfully thirsty, taking up a
decanter to pour out a glass of water, what was my horror to find a
drowned scorpion at the bottom of it. It was enough to disgust you of the
Tropics for ever! I rang the bell and my summons were quickly answered
by a barefooted Annamite boy, with nothing but a bit of stuff wrapped
round his loins. I pointed out to him, with an indignant gesture, the
contents of the decanter, trying by an expressive gesture to let him
see all my disgust, but the boy didn’t appear shocked, he only grinned,
showing his shining teeth from ear to ear. When going to bed I looked in
and underneath the bed for relatives of the drowned scorpion and have
discovered an enormous tarantula on my mosquito-net. The whole night
swarms of noisy lizards crawled round the walls and on the ceiling,
making a very disagreeable concert. I was expecting them to come down
upon my head all the time. The lizards are generally quite inoffensive,
except a dangerous species called “to-que,” according to the sound they
produce. Before putting on our boots in the morning we looked inside,
lest a scorpion may be lying in ambush.
My husband was invited to dinner by the General-Governor, Mr. Prévost,
together with the Resident of Kambodge. The Palace is closed nearly
all the year round, because Mr. Prévost inhabits Hanoi-in-Tonkin. He
is passing now through Saigon on his way to Europe, on a holiday. I
dined comfortably with Mrs. Serebriakoff at a private table by an open
window. After the repast, we settled ourselves at a little table on the
boulevard, reminding one of the Paris boulevards, with well-dressed white
men sitting at small tables, smoking, drinking syrups and eating ices;
only instead of white-aproned Parisian waiters, it is Chinese boys,
resembling women with their long white robes and tresses hanging down
their backs, who serve the customers. We sat contemplating the movements
of the crowd on the boulevard, full of Europeanised negro swells, Hindoos
with a cast-mark on their forehead, and officers of the French army. Two
French regiments and two Annamite battalions are quartered at Saigon. The
Annamite soldiers are barefooted and wear straw hats of conical form.
There is no cavalry in Cochin-China, because horses, except Annamite
ponies, cannot stand the climate.
Mr. Prévost had invited my husband and his suite to share his box at the
opera, which was “Faust.” We saw their carriage stop before the theatre
just in front of the boulevard. We could hear the sound of our Anthem and
the Marseillaise, played by a military band in the garden belonging to
the theatre, and the clapping of hands and bravoes. Between the acts the
little tables on the boulevard were taken by storm by the audience, and
rapidly abandoned at the moment when an Annamite boy began to run up and
down the boulevard ringing the bell, which was to be the signal for the
beginning of the following act.
A guard of honour was placed this morning at the entrance-door of our
hotel, in honour of my husband. The French soldiers were replaced in the
afternoon by Annamite warriors, who grasped their guns and saluted Sergy
as he passed them and presented arms. After tiffin Mr. Rousseau called
upon us with his son. They are going to sail with us as far as Singapore.
Before dinner Sergy went to visit the barracks with General Corona, the
chief of the troops. The soldiers, locked up for punishment, were set
free to commemorate my husband’s inspection of the barracks.
At nightfall we went on board the _Melbourne_, and saw on the upper deck
a great number of French officers who had come to wish Mr. Rousseau a
happy voyage.
October 12th.—The heat is something dreadful, and I had to converse with
Mr. Rousseau. After tiffin I shut myself up, having decided to keep to my
cabin for the remainder of the voyage, until we reached Singapore.
Towards evening we approached the great Hindoo-Chinese city. We are now
in the neighbourhood of the equator, at the distance of half a degree
only. We have the pilot on board, because this port is dangerous, many
vessels having perished here. We entered the bay with some difficulty,
and passed before the wreck of a ship. We dropped anchor amongst a number
of steamers of different nationalities. The harbour is beautiful and
traversed in all directions by canoes mounted by natives, whose want of
dress amused me: it was a mere fig-leaf of coloured rag.