I Am Greatly Interested With The First View Of Malacca, One Of The
Oldest European Towns In The East, Originally Portuguese, Then Dutch,
And Now, Though Under English Rule, Mainly Chinese.
There is a long bay
with dense forests of cocoa-palms, backed by forests of I know not
what, then rolling hills, and to the right beyond these a mountain
known as Mount Ophir, rich in gold.
Is this possibly, as many think,
the Ophir of the Bible, and this land of gems and gold truly the
"Golden Chersonese?" There are islets of emerald green lying to the
south, and in front of us a town of antiquated appearance, low houses,
much colored, with flattish, red-tiled roofs, many of them built on
piles, straggling for a long distance, and fringed by massive-looking
bungalows, half buried in trees. A hill rises near the middle, crowned
by a ruined cathedral, probably the oldest Christian church in the Far
East, with slopes of bright green grass below, timbered near their base
with palms and trees of a nearly lemon-colored vividness of
spring-green, and there are glimpses of low, red roofs behind the hill.
On either side of the old-world-looking town and its fringe of
bungalows are glimpses of steep, reed roofs among the cocoa-palms. A
long, deserted-looking jetty runs far out into the shallow sea, a few
Chinese junks lie at anchor, in the distance a few Malay fishermen are
watching their nets, but not a breath stirs, the sea is without a
ripple, the gray clouds move not, the yellow plumes of the palms are
motionless; the sea, the sky, the town, look all alike asleep in a
still, moist, balmy heat.
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