These Preliminary Observations Will
Enable The Reader Better To Apprehend The Importance I Attach To
The Details Of Physical Form Or Moral Character, Which I Shall
Give In Describing The Inhabitants Of Many Of The Islands.
CHAPTER II.
SINGAPORE.
(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.
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