The former seem chiefly to make coffins and highly painted and
decorated clothes-boxes. The latter are mostly gun-makers, and
bore the barrels of guns by hand out of solid bars of iron. At
this tedious operation they may be seen every day, and they
manage to finish off a gun with a flintlock very handsomely. All
about the streets are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup,
and agar-agar (a jelly made of seaweed), who have many cries as
unintelligible as those of London. Others carry a portable
cooking-apparatus on a pole balanced by a table at the other end,
and serve up a meal of shellfish, rice, and vegetables for two or
three halfpence--while coolies and boatmen waiting to be hired
are everywhere to be met with.

In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest trees
in the jungle, and saw them up into planks; they cultivate
vegetables, which they bring to market; and they grow pepper and
gambir, which form important articles of export. The French
Jesuits have established missions among these inland Chinese,
which seem very successful. I lived for several weeks at a time
with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the centre of the
island, where a pretty church has been built and there are about
300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who had just
arrived from Tonquin, where he had been living for many years.
The Jesuits still do their work thoroughly as of old. In Cochin
China, Tonquin, and China, where all Christian teachers are
obliged to live in secret, and are liable to persecution,
expulsion, and sometimes death, every province--even those
farthest in the interior--has a permanent Jesuit mission
establishment constantly kept up by fresh aspirants, who are
taught the languages of the countries they are going to at Penang