(A SKETCH OF THE TOWN AND ISLAND AS SEEN DURING SEVERAL VISITS FROM 1854 TO 1862.)
FEW places are more interesting to a traveller from Europe than the town
and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety
of Eastern races, and of many different religions and modes of life. The
government, the garrison, and the chief merchants are English; but
the great mass of the population is Chinese, including some of the
wealthiest merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of
the mechanics and labourers. The native Malays are usually fishermen and
boatmen, and they form the main body of the police. The Portuguese of
Malacca supply a large number of the clerks and smaller merchants. The
Klings of Western India are a numerous body of Mahometans, and,
with many Arabs, are petty merchants and shopkeepers. The grooms and
washermen are all Bengalees, and there is a small but highly respectable
class of Parsee merchants. Besides these, there are numbers of Javanese
sailors and domestic servants, as well as traders from Celebes, Bali,
and many other islands of the Archipelago. The harbour is crowded with
men-of-war and trading vessels of many European nations, and hundreds
of Malay praus and Chinese junks, from vessels of several hundred tons
burthen down to little fishing boats and passenger sampans; and the town
comprises handsome public buildings and churches, Mahometan mosques,
Hindu temples, Chinese joss-houses, good European houses, massive
warehouses, queer old Kling and China bazaars, and long suburbs of
Chinese and Malay cottages.
By far the most conspicuous of the various kinds of people in Singapore,
and those which most attract the stranger's attention, are the Chinese,
whose numbers and incessant activity give the place very much the
appearance of a town in China. The Chinese merchant is generally a fat
round-faced man with an important and business-like look. He wears the
same style of clothing (loose white smock, and blue or black trousers)
as the meanest coolie, but of finer materials, and is always clean and
neat; and his long tail tipped with red silk hangs down to his heels.
He has a handsome warehouse or shop in town and a good house in the
country. He keeps a fine horse and gig, and every evening may be seen
taking a drive bareheaded to enjoy the cool breeze. He is rich--he
owns several retail shops and trading schooners, he lends money at high
interest and on good security, he makes hard bargains, and gets fatter
and richer every year.
In the Chinese bazaar are hundreds of small shops in which a
miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry goods are to be found, and
where many things are sold wonderfully cheap. You may buy gimlets at
a penny each, white cotton thread at four balls for a halfpenny, and
penknives, corkscrews, gunpowder, writing-paper, and many other
articles as cheap or cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The
shopkeeper is very good-natured; he will show you everything he has, and
does not seem to mind if you buy nothing. He bates a little, but not so
much as the Klings, who almost always ask twice what they are willing to
take. If you buy a few things from him, he will speak to you afterwards
every time you pass his shop, asking you to walk in and sit down, or
take a cup of tea; and you wonder how he can get a living where so many
sell the same trifling articles.
The tailors sit at a table, not on one; and both they and the shoemakers
work well and cheaply. The barbers have plenty to do, shaving heads and
cleaning ears; for which latter operation they have a great array of
little tweezers, picks, and brushes. In the outskirts of the town are
scores of carpenters and blacksmiths. The former seem chiefly to make
coffins and highly painted and decorated clothes-boxes. The latter are
mostly gun-makers, and bore the barrels of guns by hand out of solid
bars of iron. At this tedious operation they may be seen every day, and
they manage to finish off a gun with a flintlock very handsomely. All
about the streets are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup,
and agar-agar (a jelly made of seaweed), who have many cries
as unintelligible as those of London. Others carry a portable
cooking-apparatus on a pole balanced by a table at the other end, and
serve up a meal of shellfish, rice, and vegetables for two or three
halfpence--while coolies and boatmen waiting to be hired are everywhere
to be met with.
In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest trees in the
jungle, and saw them up into planks; they cultivate vegetables, which
they bring to market; and they grow pepper and gambir, which form
important articles of export. The French Jesuits have established
missions among these inland Chinese, which seem very successful. I lived
for several weeks at a time with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the
centre of the island, where a pretty church has been built and there are
about 300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who had just arrived
from Tonquin, where he had been living for many years. The Jesuits still
do their work thoroughly as of old. In Cochin China, Tonquin, and China,
where all Christian teachers are obliged to live in secret, and
are liable to persecution, expulsion, and sometimes death, every
province--even those farthest in the interior--has a permanent Jesuit
mission establishment constantly kept up by fresh aspirants, who are
taught the languages of the countries they are going to at Penang or
Singapore. In China there are said to be near a million converts; in
Tonquin and Cochin China, more than half a million. One secret of
the success of these missions is the rigid economy practised in the
expenditure of the funds. A missionary is allowed about £30. a year, on
which he lives in whatever country he may be. This renders it possible
to support a large number of missionaries with very limited means; and
the natives, seeing their teachers living in poverty and with none of
the luxuries of life, are convinced that they are sincere in what they
teach, and have really given up home and friends and ease and safety,
for the good of others. No wonder they make converts, for it must be a
great blessing to the poor people among whom they labour to have a man
among them to whom they can go in any trouble or distress, who will
comfort and advise them, who visits them in sickness, who relieves
them in want, and who they see living from day-to-day in danger of
persecution and death--entirely for their sakes.
My friend at Bukit-tima was truly a father to his flock. He preached
to them in Chinese every Sunday, and had evenings for discussion and
conversation on religion during the week. He had a school to teach their
children. His house was open to them day and night. If a man came to him
and said, "I have no rice for my family to eat today," he would give
him half of what he had in the house, however little that might be. If
another said, "I have no money to pay my debt," he would give him half
the contents of his purse, were it his last dollar. So, when he was
himself in want, he would send to some of the wealthiest among his
flock, and say, "I have no rice in the house," or "I have given away my
money, and am in want of such and such articles." The result was that
his flock trusted and loved him, for they felt sure that he was their
true friend, and had no ulterior designs in living among them.
The island of Singapore consists of a multitude of small hills, three or
four hundred feet high, the summits of many of which are still covered
with virgin forest. The mission-house at Bukit-tima was surrounded
by several of these wood-topped hills, which were much frequented by
woodcutters and sawyers, and offered me an excellent collecting ground
for insects. Here and there, too, were tiger pits, carefully covered
over with sticks and leaves, and so well concealed, that in several
cases I had a narrow escape from falling into them. They are shaped
like an iron furnace, wider at the bottom than the top, and are perhaps
fifteen or twenty feet deep so that it would be almost impossible for
a person unassisted to get out of one. Formerly a sharp stake was stuck
erect in the bottom; but after an unfortunate traveller had been killed
by falling on one, its use was forbidden. There are always a few tigers
roaming about Singapore, and they kill on an average a Chinaman every
day, principally those who work in the gambir plantations, which are
always made in newly-cleared jungle. We heard a tiger roar once or twice
in the evening, and it was rather nervous work hunting for insects among
the fallen trunks and old sawpits when one of these savage animals might
be lurking close by, awaiting an opportunity to spring upon us.
Several hours in the middle of every fine day were spent in these
patches of forest, which were delightfully cool and shady by contrast
with the bare open country we had to walk over to reach them. The
vegetation was most luxuriant, comprising enormous forest trees, as well
as a variety of ferns, caladiums, and other undergrowth, and abundance
of climbing rattan palms. Insects were exceedingly abundant and very
interesting, and every day furnished scores of new and curious forms.
In about two months I obtained no less than 700 species of beetles,
a large proportion of which were quite new, and among them were 130
distinct kinds of the elegant Longicorns (Cerambycidae), so much
esteemed by collectors. Almost all these were collected in one patch of
jungle, not more than a square mile in extent, and in all my subsequent
travels in the East I rarely if ever met with so productive a spot. This
exceeding productiveness was due in part no doubt to some favourable
conditions in the soil, climate, and vegetation, and to the season being
very bright and sunny, with sufficient showers to keep everything
fresh. But it was also in a great measure dependent, I feel sure, on
the labours of the Chinese wood-cutters. They had been at work here for
several years, and during all that time had furnished a continual supply
of dry and dead and decaying leaves and bark, together with abundance of
wood and sawdust, for the nourishment of insects and their larvae. This
had led to the assemblage of a great variety of species in a limited
space, and I was the first naturalist who had come to reap the harvest
they had prepared. In the same place, and during my walks in other
directions, I obtained a fair collection of butterflies and of other
orders of insects, so that on the whole I was quite satisfied with
these--my first attempts to gain a knowledge of the Natural History of
the Malay Archipelago.