its tall clock tower and chimes. In front of this white building is the
black statue of an elephant, presented to the city by the king of Siam
to commemorate the first visit ever paid to a foreign city by a Siamese
monarch. In the neighborhood of the Cathedral and Memorial Hall are the
hotels, which are good in most respects but whose charges to transient
guests are usually exorbitant: here is also the main recreation field
where cricket, tennis and football are played every afternoon by both
natives and Europeans.
[Illustration: A HINDU TEMPLE.
Rickishas passing.]
While these churches, residences and parks (including the well-known
botanical gardens) are interesting, it is the oriental element that has
the greatest charm for those from other lands. A rickisha ride through
the teeming streets of the Chinese or Malay quarters, especially at
night, is most interesting. If taken during the day a Chinese funeral
procession with its banners, bands and tom-toms may be met; in fact the
death-rate among the squalid Chinese residents is so high that funerals
are of very frequent occurrence.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE AT JAHORE.]
At the docks and other gathering places one is fascinated by the
constantly shifting sea of strange faces and costumes; sometimes the
lack of costume is more noticeable than the costume, as among the
coolies or laborers from India or Arabia. Chinese, Japanese, various
races of Malays and East Indians, jostle elbows with Englishmen,
Americans and every other race under the sun except perhaps, the
American Indian. It is surely a motley throng and the tower of Babel
was nowhere compared to this conglomeration of tongues.
The oriental is a rather mild individual as a rule and wrangling and
fighting is probably less common than among occidental communities.
Several interesting temples are to be seen in Singapore; their quaint
architecture is always interesting to the occidental tourist, and the
hideous images to be seen within will repay the trouble of removing
one's shoes, which must be done before admittance is granted.
[Illustration: CANAL AND MARKET PLACE AT JAHORE.]
When the sights of the city have been exhausted a visit to Jahore on the
mainland (Singapore is on a small island) of the Malay Peninsula will be
interesting. Here is the summer palace of H. H. the Sultan of Jahore;
also a large and handsome mosque. Here is also a wide-open gambling
establishment where hundreds of Chinese may be seen playing "fantan."
On the return from Jahore, if interested in such things, a visit to a
rubber estate may be made, and the whole process in the manufacture of
rubber may be seen in a few hours; it is a strange and fascinating
process and is, perhaps, the most important industry of the Federated
Malay States.
It is interesting to compare Singapore which has been a British colony
for nearly a century with Manila, a city of about the same size, that
has been under American rule for less than two decades. The results that
have been accomplished in the latter place along the lines of
sanitation, education, and other civilizing influences should make an
American proud of his native land.
VI. HOW RUBBER IS MADE.
One of the principal products of the Malay Peninsula is rubber. Like
most people who have never happened to investigate the matter my ideas
as to the way in which an automobile tire is extracted from a tree were
very hazy; so, with another American, who had charge of a mission
school in Singapore, I boarded the Jahore express on the F. M. S. R. R.
(F. M. S. meaning Federated Malay States) and after a run of half an
hour arrived at the Bukit Timar rubber estate some ten miles northwest
of Singapore.
The Bukit Timar is an up-to-date plantation of more than one hundred
thousand trees, and here we saw the whole process, from tree to sheet
rubber, as shipped to all parts of the world and sold by the pound.
Rubber trees grow to a considerable size, but this being a young
plantation most of the trees were not over six or eight inches in
diameter. In the middle of the estate was a very attractive bungalow
where lived the manager and his wife, a young English couple, and the
former very courteously showed us about his place and explained the
different processes.
"Tapping" begins at daybreak, and all the juice or _latex_ is collected
before noon. Dozens of native and Chinese men and boys are employed in
this process, some of the latter being so small that they can scarcely
carry the two buckets of latex on the bamboo stick over the shoulder.
In tapping, a very thin and narrow piece of bark is gouged off, just
deep enough to make the tree bleed, but not deep enough to kill it; so
that by the time the bark on one side of the tree has been cut away that
on the opposite side has had time to regenerate. The process is thus a
perpetual one and the tree lasts indefinitely.
The exact method of tapping varies, but usually it is begun as two
slanting grooves that converge to form a V. The latex oozes from the
freshly cut bark, runs down the converging grooves to their point of
union, and is caught in a small glass cup or other vessel suspended
under a tiny spout at the apex of the V. The method of tapping shown in
the photograph is different from this somewhat, though the principle is
the same. The latex that oozes from the grooves is a pure white, sticky
fluid resembling milk; about a tablespoonful is obtained each day from
each tree.
By the time each man has tapped or gouged all of the trees assigned to
him (perhaps two or three hundred) the first-tapped trees have bled all
they will for that day, so that collecting is begun at once. In each cup
is a little water to prevent the latex from coagulating and sticking to
the bottom.
[Illustration: HOME OF THE MANAGER OF THE BUKIT TIMAR RUBBER ESTATE
NEAR SINGAPORE.]
The first V is cut several feet from the ground, and the amount that is
gouged from each side of the V each day is so very thin that it will be
months before the apex of the V reaches the ground, by which time the
regeneration of the first cuts will be well under way.
After the flow of latex has ceased for the day a narrow strip hardens
along each groove, like gum on a cherry tree. These little strips of
rubber, with bits of adherent bark, as well as any drops that may have
fallen to the ground, are collected in bags and carried to the factory
to be made into sheets of cheap grades of commercial rubber.
[Illustration: A YOUNG RUBBER TREE SHOWING ONE METHOD OF TAPPING.
The white lines are the latex running down the grooves into the
glass cup at the bottom. Above the two slanting lines is seen
the scarred tissue where the bark has been gouged away. When the
lower end of the lower line reaches the ground the tree will be
tapped on the opposite side. The amount of latex in the cup
seems greater than it really is because of the water upon which
it floats. The size of the tree may be judged from the kodak
case at its foot.]
After the trees have been tapped the latex is collected in carefully
cleaned tin buckets, brought to the factory and strained into huge
earthenware tubs. It is then put into enamelware pans about twelve by
thirty-six inches in size and three inches deep, and a very weak acid
(usually acetic) is stirred into it. In about half an hour the acid
coagulates the latex (like rennet in making junket from milk) into a
soft, pure white mass, about two inches thick and of the area of the
pan. This soft mass of rubber is carefully floated out of the pan onto a
table, where it is rolled on both sides for a few minutes with a wooden
rolling-pin to squeeze out the excess of water and acid. It is then
carefully lifted into a large vessel of pure water to harden until the
next day.
[Illustration: THREE LATEX GATHERERS.
The boy in the middle of the group has the canvass bag over his
shoulder in which he carries the scraps of dried rubber from the
grooves on the trees.]
The next day it is run several times through smooth steel rollers under
dropping water, where it is flattened out into sheets of about an inch
or less in thickness and of a proportionately greater area. It is next
passed through roughened steel rollers that mark it off into ridges and
depressions like a waffle.
These sheets, now tough and elastic, are hung in a closed chamber and
smoked until they reach a proper shade of brown, when they are ready for
shipment. The smoking process, which is to preserve the rubber, often
takes many days, though at the time of our visit the manager of the
Bukit Timar estate was experimenting with a method that would complete
the smoking in a few hours.
The production of rubber in the Malay Peninsula is of rather recent date
and it has increased by leaps and bounds. In the various "booms" that
have taken place many fortunes have been made--as witnessed by the
palatial residences about Singapore--but many have also been lost,
though the witnesses to these are not so evident.
[Illustration: THE TRAVELER PALM, AN UNUSUAL TYPE OFTEN SEEN IN THE FAR
EAST SINGAPORE AND ELSEWHERE.]
Whether the increased demands for rubber will justify the thousands of
young trees that are still being planted, not only on the Malay
Peninsula but on Borneo and other islands of the Far East, remains to be
seen; but, judging from the opinions of several rubber experts of
Singapore, this is quite doubtful.
VII. TWO CHINESE CITIES.
After a voyage (unusually calm for the China Sea) of four days from
Singapore, the S. S. "Bülow" slowly steamed among the islands at
the entrance and came to anchor just after sunset in the beautiful
harbor of Hongkong. There is really no _city_ of Hongkong, though
letters so directed will reach their destination, and even the residents
of the city in whose harbor we were anchored would have spoken of living
in Hongkong. The name "Hongkong" belongs to the small island, ten miles
long by three wide, that lies about a mile from the mainland of China.
Along the north or land side of this island lies the city of Victoria,
with a population of 350,000, commonly known by the name of the entire
island, Hongkong.
Practically the whole island is occupied by mountains of a maximum
height of about 1800 feet, so that the town has only a narrow strip of
level ground along the beach and extends in scattered fashion to the
very top of the ridge.
As we came to anchor the twinkling lights of the streets and houses were
just beginning to appear, and in a little while, when the short tropical
twilight had changed to darkness, the shore line was a mass of lights
which gradually became more scattered toward the hill-tops, where often
a single light marked the location of some isolated residence. Across
the harbor another smaller group of lights showed the position of
Kowloon, a small seaport on the mainland and the southern terminus of
the Kowloon and Canton Railroad. On the water between the two towns,
really one great harbor, were thousands of lights, indicating the
position of invisible steamships, junks, tugs, launches and sampans.
Most of these lights were stationary, showing that the vessels to which
they belonged were at anchor, but some of them were in motion, and
hardly had we come slowly to a standstill and dropped anchor before we
were besieged by a swarm of launches and sampans all clamoring for
passengers to take ashore.
As is customary in the East, steamers usually anchor in the harbor at
Hongkong at some distance from shore, so that the larger hotels, as well
as Cook's Agency, have private launches to take passengers ashore. Since
it was rather late to see anything of the town most of the cabin
passengers preferred to remain on board for the night, and the view of
the lights of the harbor and town as seen from the ship was well worth
enjoying for one evening.
[Illustration: VIEW ON "THE PEAK"; GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE IN THE LEFT
BACKGROUND.]
The next morning we were able to see the meaning of the lights of the
night before. The business part of the town, with its crowded Chinese
sections and its fine municipal and office buildings, lies as a narrow
strip along the shore, while struggling up the mountain side are the
residences, churches, schools, etc. of the English and wealthy Chinese
residents. On this mountain side is also a most beautiful and
interesting botanical garden. On the highest point of "The Peak," as the
main peak of the range is called, is a weather observatory and signal
station, and from this point one of the most beautiful views in the
world may be obtained; to the south, the open China Sea, with numberless
green islands extending almost to the horizon; to the north, the
mainland of China, fringed with low mountains; between the mainland and
the island the long, narrow strait forming the harbors of Victoria and
Kowloon; at the foot of the mountain the densely crowded business
streets; and extending up the almost precipitous northern slopes of the
mountain the beautiful, often palatial homes of the wealthy residents.
Winding along the mountain sides a number of fine roads and paths give
access to these homes, but to reach the higher levels, especially, there
may be seen the cable tramway, going so straight up the side of the
mountain that it is almost alarming to look forward or back from the
open cars. The homes nearer the foot of the mountain are usually reached
by means of sedan chairs carried by two, three or even four coolies,
while in the level business section the usual means of travel are the
electric cars and the ever-ready rickishas. Horses are practically
unknown except for racing purposes; carts are pulled by Chinese coolies
instead of by horses, and merchandise is carried by coolies in baskets
or bales on the shoulders. It is an interesting though unpleasant sight
to see strings of Chinese men and women toiling up the steep sides of
the mountain, carrying stones, cement, window frames, timbers, and all
other material used in building the palaces in which the wealthy people
live. For a day of this back-breaking labor they are paid about what one
of their rich employers would give for one of his best cigars. Every
stick, stone and nail in all of these houses has been carried up all
these hundreds of feet on the backs of men and women, chiefly the
latter.
[Illustration: CHINESE JUNKS IN THE HARBOR OF CANTON.]
In a beautiful little level valley between the bases of two of the
mountains is the play ground of Hongkong, known as "Happy Valley"; here
are tennis courts, a golf course, etc. overlooked on either side, rather
incongruously, by a Chinese and a Christian burial ground.
Having visited the various points of interest about Hongkong, which is
really a part of the British Empire (ceded by the Chinese in 1841)
though a vast majority of its residents are Chinese, I decided to have a
look at a real Chinese city, Canton, located about ninety miles up the
Canton River. As Canton happened to be in the throes of a revolution at
that time, people were flocking by the thousands from there to Hongkong.
Cook's Agency was warning people to keep away, and Hongkong papers had
as headlines "Serious Outlook in Canton"; but I did not expect ever to
have another chance to visit this typical Chinese city, so I boarded one
of the boats of the French line that left Hongkong late in the evening
for the run up the river. I learned later that one of these boats had
been "shot up" a few days before by the revolutionists, and that a
number of the passengers had been killed. However we were not molested,
and reached Canton about eight the next morning.
After daylight we were able to get an idea of the country on either bank
of the muddy river; it was low and marshy, every acre being planted in
rice. Occasionally, on a slight elevation, would be seen a pagoda-shaped
temple, standing lonely among the rice fields, where doubtless it had
stood for many centuries.
At frequent intervals we passed small native boats, some of them with
sails and loaded with goods, most of them rowed by one or more oars. It
was to be noticed that when there was only one oar it was being worked
vigorously by a woman, while a man sat comfortably in the stern and
steered. These people were evidently going from the crowded villages in
which they lived to work in the rice fields.
At Canton the river, which is there only a few hundred yards wide, was
jammed with craft of all kinds, including one or two small war vessels
and hundreds, probably thousands, of _sampans_. The latter carry
passengers and small quantities of freight; they are roofed over more or
less completely and serve as the homes of the owners' families, all the
members of which take a hand in the rowing.
[Illustration: SAMPANS IN THE HARBOUR OF CANTON.]
The foreign (mostly English and French) quarter of Canton is known as
"the Shameen" (meaning sand-bank), a small island in the river
connected with the city proper by a couple of bridges. It has
beautifully shaded streets and fine houses, and is utterly different
from the Chinese Canton. At the Shameen's one hotel, which charges the
modest rate of from four to eight dollars per day for very ordinary
service, I was told that conditions were "very uncertain" and that
nobody was allowed to enter the walled city after 9 P. M. without a
pass.
[Illustration: A WIDE STREET IN CANTON.]
A guide having thrust his services upon me before I could get off the
boat, we left the Shameen, crossed one of the bridges and plunged into
the network of streets where, without a guide, a stranger would be lost
in a few minutes.
In a few of the streets outside of the walled city rickishas are the
usual means of travel, but inside the walls most of the streets are too
narrow for rickishas to pass one another, and paving of large flagstones
is too rough for wheels, so that the sedan chair is the only means of
locomotion except one's own legs. My self-appointed guide said he would
get chairs for seven dollars per day ($3.00 in American money) but I
told him I expected to walk and that if he wanted to go with me he would
have to do likewise; he immediately professed to think that walking was
the only way to go, so we agreed to see the town afoot. After we had
walked pretty briskly for three or four hours he inquired meekly, "Can
you walk this way all day?" People in the tropics are not usually fond
of walking, but Ping Nam was "game" and made no further remarks about my
method of locomotion. Some of the less frequented streets where there
were no sun-screens overhead were very hot, but in the busy streets the
sun was almost excluded by bamboo screens and by the walls of the houses
on each side, so that the heat was not nearly so oppressive as might be
expected in so terribly congested a city. Many of these streets were so
narrow that a tall man could touch the houses on each side with
outstretched hands.
On each side were stores of all sorts with open fronts with gay signs
and with gayly colored goods on display, making a picture of wonderful
fascination and everchanging interest.
Although we wandered for hour after hour through a perfect wilderness of
such streets we saw not a single white person; it seemed as though I
were the only Caucasian among the more than a million Asiatics, though
this, of course, was not actually the case.
In the busier streets the crowds filled the space from wall to wall, so
that when a string of coolies came along, bearing burdens in the usual
manner from a stick over the shoulder and humming the cheerful though
monotonous "get-out-of-the-way" tune, we had to step aside, close
against or into some store to let them pass; and when an occasional
chair came along it swept the entire traffic aside as a taxi might in a
crowded alley of an American city.
In spite of the density of the population the people all seemed happy
and contented; even the little children with faces covered with sores,
as was often the case, appeared cheerful, and ran and played like other
children.
In the stores the people could be watched at work of all kinds, from
blacksmithy to finest filigree silver work inlaid with the tiny colored
feathers of the brightly colored kingfisher; and from rough carpenter
work to the finest ivory carving for which the Chinese are famous. Of
course the amount they pay for some of this work of extreme skill is
ridiculously small, yet their living expenses are so small that they
are doubtless in better circumstances than many of the workers in our
larger cities.
The silk-weavers, working at their primitive looms in crowded rooms,
excite one's sympathy more than most of the other workers, though they
too seemed to be quite cheerful over their monotonous tasks.
[Illustration: COURT OF AN ANCESTRAL TEMPLE IN CANTON.]
Through these crowded streets we wandered, the sight of a white man and
a camera exciting some interest, though not a great deal. Canton is said
to have been the scene of more outrages of one sort or another than any
other city in the world, but in spite of the fact that a revolution was
supposed to be in progress we saw no signs of disorder. There were
soldiers and armed policemen everywhere, and groups of people were
frequently seen reading with interest proclamations posted at various
places; what the nature of the proclamations was I was, of course, not
able of myself to learn, and Ping Nam did not seem to care to enlighten
me, possibly thinking he might scare me out of town and thus lose his
job.
Occasionally stopping to watch some skilful artisan at work or to make
some small purchase, we went from place to place visiting temples and
other objects of especial interest. Some of these temples are centuries
old, others are comparatively new. Some are comparatively plain, others
like the modern Chun-ka-chi ancestral temple, which is said to have cost
$750,000 "gold," are wonderfully ornate, with highly colored carvings
and cement mouldings. Others are of interest chiefly because of the
hideous images they contain; one of these has hundreds of these idols
and is hence known as the "Temple of the Five Hundred Genii."
[Illustration: ENTRANCE OF THE "TEMPLE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED GENII,"
CANTON.]
After visiting several of these temples and the picturesque flowery
pagoda we set out for the famous water clock that is said to have been
built more than thirteen hundred years ago. It is now located in a dark
little room in the top of an old house and is reached by a winding
flight of outside stone stairs. It consists of four large jars of water,
one above the other, so that the water may run slowly, at a definite
rate, from the upper to the lower jars, and gradually raise, in the
lowest jar, a float with an attached vertical scale that tells the time.
In the window visible from the street below signs are placed at
intervals that tell the time indicated by the clock.
From the water clock we visited the ancient "City of the Dead," a small
cemetery just outside one of the old city gates. These gates, some of
which are large and imposing, pierce the dilapidated wall at intervals.
The wall, about six miles in circumference, is surrounded by the remains
of a moat, now chiefly useful as an addition to the picturesque
landscape and as a breeding place for mosquitoes. The top of a city
gate, reached by a winding stone stairway from within, is a convenient
place from which to view the densely crowded roofs of the adjacent part
of the city.
[Illustration: THE FLOWERY PAGODA, CANTON.]
From the "City of the Dead" we made for the fairly wide street along the
river front; here we took rickishas, much to the relief of my tired
guide, to say nothing of my tired self, and were soon at the Canton
terminus of the K. & C. R. R. The station was thronged with people
waiting for the Kowloon express.
The road-bed of the K. & C. R. R. is excellent, and the cars and
engine, all of English make, made a very respectable appearance.
For nearly half of the distance to Kowloon I had my section of the one
first-class car to myself, as I was the only Caucasian on the train:
then an English civil engineer and his family came aboard and shared my
compartment for the rest of the way. The second-and third-class cars,
of which there were half a dozen or more, were crowded with natives,
with boxes and bundles of all sorts and sizes.
[Illustration: A CITY GATE AND PARTS OF THE WALL AND MOAT, AS SEEN FROM
THE "CITY OF THE DEAD," CANTON.]
After making the run of about ninety miles in something less than three
hours we reached the ferry at Kowloon, and in a quarter of an hour more
we were again in Hongkong, as different from Canton as though it were on
the other side of the world instead of being only three hours away.
VIII. MEANDERINGS IN MODERN MANILA.