The Native Streets Monopolize The Picturesqueness Of Singapore With
Their Bizarre Crowds, But More Interesting Still Are The Bazaars Or
Continuous rows of open shops which create for themselves a perpetual
twilight by hanging tatties or other screens outside the
Sidewalks,
forming long shady alleys, in which crowds of buyers and sellers
chaffer over their goods, the Chinese shopkeepers asking a little more
than they mean to take, and the Klings always asking double. The bustle
and noise of this quarter are considerable, and the vociferation
mingles with the ringing of bells and the rapid beating of drums and
tom-toms - an intensely heathenish sound. And heathenish this great city
is. Chinese joss-houses, Hindu temples, and Mohammedan mosques almost
jostle each other, and the indescribable clamor of the temples and the
din of the joss-houses are faintly pierced by the shrill cry from the
minarets calling the faithful to prayer, and proclaiming the divine
unity and the mission of Mahomet in one breath.
How I wish I could convey an idea, however faint, of this huge,
mingled, colored, busy, Oriental population; of the old Kling and
Chinese bazaars; of the itinerant sellers of seaweed jelly, water,
vegetables, soup, fruit, and cooked fish, whose unintelligible street
cries are heard above the din of the crowds of coolies, boatmen, and
gharriemen waiting for hire; of the far-stretching suburbs of Malay and
Chinese cottages; of the sheet of water, by no means clean, round which
hundreds of Bengalis are to be seen at all hours of daylight
unmercifully beating on great stones the delicate laces, gauzy silks,
and elaborate flouncings of the European ladies; of the ceaseless rush
and hum of industry, and of the resistless, overpowering, astonishing
Chinese element, which is gradually turning Singapore into a Chinese
city!
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 137 of 437
Words from 37319 to 37617
of 120530
