And sake
bottles - Happiness, - which is understood to be a wish for happiness in
this formula, "May your happiness be as the Eastern Sea;" but the wish
may also mean "May you have many sons." It is strange that these
Chinamen, who showed all fitting courtesy to Mrs. Hennessey and me,
would only have spoken of their wives apologetically as "the mean ones
within the gates!" It was a charming Oriental sight, the grand, open-
fronted room with its stone floor and many pillars, the superbly
dressed directors and their blue-robed attendants, and the immense
costumed crowd outside the gate in the sunshine, kept back by
crimson-turbaned Sikh orderlies.
If civilization were to my taste, I should linger in Victoria for the
sake of its beauty, its stirring life, its costume and color, its
perfect winter climate, its hospitalities, its many charming residents,
and for various other reasons, and know nothing of its feuds in state,
church, and society. But I am a savage at heart, and weary for the
wilds first, and then for the beloved little home on the wooded edge of
the moorland above the Northern Sea, which gleams like a guiding star,
even through the maze of sunshine and color of this fascinating Eastern
world. to-day I lunched at (acting) Chief Justice Snowden's, and he
urges me to go to Malacca on my way home. I had never dreamed of the
"Golden Chersonese;" but I am much inspired by his descriptions of the
neighborhood of the Equator, and as he has lent me Newbold's Malacca
for the voyage, and has given me letters to the Governor and Colonial
Secretary of the Straits Settlements, you will next hear from me from
Singapore!
I. L. B.
LETTER VI
A Cochin China River - The Ambition of Saigon - A French Colonial
Metropolis - European Life in Saigon-A Cochin-Chinese
Village - "Afternoon Tea" in Choquan - Anamese Children - Anamite
Costume - Anamite River-Dwellings - An Amphibious Population - An
Unsuccessful Colony - "With the Big Toe" - Three Persecuting
Kings - Saigon
S.S. "SINDH," CHINA SEA, January.
This steamer, one of the finest of the Messageries Maritimes line, is
perfect in all respects, and has a deck like that of an old-fashioned
frigate. The weather has been perfect also, and the sea smooth enough
for a skiff. The heat increases hourly though, or rather has increased
hourly, for hotter it cannot be! Punkahs are going continually at meal
times, and if one sits down to write in the saloon, the "punkah-wallah"
spies one out and begins his refreshing labors at once. But we took on
board a host of mosquitoes at Saigon, and the nights are consequently
so intolerable that I weary for the day.
The twenty-four hours spent at Saigon broke the monotonous pleasantness
of our voyage very agreeably to me, but most of the passengers complain
of the wearisome detention in the heat.
