SINGAPORE
Our captain had sent a boat ashore to warn the authorities of our
arrival. We were afraid we should be in quarantine owing to the plague
raging at the time in India. We had to undergo a sanitary inspection and
waited a long time for the doctor. At last, a boat flying a yellow flag,
bearing the inscription: “Health Officer,” came off to us. It contained
the port-doctor. It is dreadful if we have to perform a quarantine!
It’s all right. The native passengers only passed the ordeal of medical
examination. They showed their tongues and their eyelids to the doctor,
and after he had examined the state of their health, we were permitted
to land. We were instantly surrounded by a whole fleet of junks full
of howling natives, who attacked our boat offering their different
wares insistingly in funny English: “You bye laidee, veree nice, you
bye!” Naked bronze-coloured boys, screaming out “A la mer!” dived into
the water after the coins dropped overboard by passengers, and came to
the surface smiling, holding the coins between their teeth. They won’t
trouble themselves to search for coppers, and discover them in the deep
with their lynx eyes.
We were in a dense crowd of Hindoos, Negroes and half-castes, when we
stepped on shore. Enterprising natives attacked us, each of them seeming
determined to carry some portion of us away with them. They were not
ruffians demanding our money or our lives, as they seemed doing, but
were simply peaceable porters and guides, hoping to earn an honest
penny. An elegant victoria drawn by a pair of fine horses, with a native
coachman—wearing a red fez—on the box, was placed at our disposal by
a rich rajah, but I preferred to drive to the Hôtel d’Europe in a
carriage belonging to our Consul,—Mr. Kleimenoff,—drawn by a pacific
pony. The Consul’s “Kawass,” a negro of the blackest black, wearing on
his shoulder a belt with the Russian arms—the double eagle—embroidered
on it, was sitting on the box. We are again on British territory. The
names of the streets and all the sign-boards are written in English.
Every nationality seemed to be represented in the streets: all shades of
black, brown and yellow—Chinese, Malays, Hindoos and Europeans from all
countries. The Hindoos are slender and handsome men, with firm polished
bodies like bronze statuettes. The negroes are also splendid specimens
of manhood, robust and square-built; they wear round their necks, arms
and legs silver bands ornamented with coral beads. Both sexes walk
about in the streets in the primitive simplicity of nature, naked and
unashamed. The women with silver rings in their nostrils and clinking
bangles round their arms and ankles, wear nothing above the waist and
not much below. They grow old very early, and at the age of twenty look
forty at least. Little black children, resembling each other as two drops
of ink, are playing in the tropical sunlight in the dust. Good-looking
English soldiers promenade, stick in hand, and English officials drive
importantly in victorias.
The Hôtel d’Europe is composed of several separate pavilions, with high
ceilinged bare rooms, with white-washed walls and mat-covered floors. The
hotel is draughty and perfectly adapted to the tropics. The doors do not
touch the floor and the ceilings and the walls between each room are also
open at the top, leaving an interval for the air to circulate freely;
every sound, therefore, is heard in the next apartment.
October 13th.—After tiffin, we went to the Botanic Gardens, the most
wonderful in the world, a vision of loveliness. I had not eyes enough to
admire it properly. On our way back we passed the race-courses and saw a
line of smart carriages standing on the road. The race days in Singapore
resemble Sunday in London, nothing can be got in the city, all the shops
and banks are closed.
October 14th.—Our Consul gave us to-day a first rate dinner. His house
is very stylish: all his servants are christened Chinamen, who have come
from Pekin, where they form a large colony. Their ancestors were Cossacks
taken prisoners by the Chinese in the seventeenth century.
October 15th.—To-day, we start for Java, in the Dutch East Indies, on the
_Godavéri_ a steamboat of the Méssageries Maritimes. The ship makes the
trip in thirty-six hours. What a chance to see the most beautiful country
in the world! The voyage will not be a pleasant one however, because we
are sure to be roasted alive, our cabin being on the sunny side. The
captain, fat and jovial, is a weather-beaten experienced old seaman, who
has had long practice in these far away waters; it is twenty-five years
already that he has plied between Singapore and Java, fighting with
the waves. The gallant old mariner has hoisted the Russian flag in our
honour. The passengers for the greater part are Dutchmen, and half-castes
(a cross-breed between Dutch colonists and Japanese.)
October 16th.—To-day we are upon the equator and enter the south
hemisphere. We cross the great meridian—the 180th degree of longitude,
and are close to the centre of the globe. We drop out a day of our
lives; yesterday it was October 15th (Sunday), to-day it is October 17th
(Tuesday). We did not celebrate the passage of the line, and had no
foolish ceremonies, no fantastics, no ducking at sea, which consisted in
sprinkling with salt-water the neophyte who crossed the equator for the
first time. All that sort of thing has gone out. One of the passengers
exclaimed for fun that he saw the equator and a naive lady-passenger took
up her opera-glasses and began to stare round about, which made everybody
laugh. We remained long on deck, enjoying the beautiful tropical night.
The sky was sown with stars. Good-by the “Old Bear,” and welcome the
“Southern Cross.” It is not particularly large nor strikingly bright,
but it does, after a fashion, suggest a cross not carefully shaped,
consisting of four large stars and a little one. We saw also the black
patch of the sky which the sailors call the “soot-bag.” We had music on
deck, where the piano was carried out. I played duets together with Mr.
Shaniavski, and the commissaire scraped on the mandoline. I have remarked
that it is always the commissaires who constitute the musical element on
French steamers.