Malays, Tagals, and Chinese merchants, scattered among a large
indigenous population of Anamese fishermen, servants, and husbandmen,
through the colonial district, which looked asleep or dead, to the
markets, where the Chinamen and natives of India were in the full swing
and din of buying and selling all sorts of tropical fruits and rubbishy
French goods, and through what may be called the Government town or
official quarter. It was getting dark when I reached the wharf, and the
darkness enabled me to hobble unperceived on board on my bandaged feet.
The heat of the murky, lurid evening was awful, and as thousands of
mosquitoes took possession of the ship, all comfort was banished, and I
was glad when we steamed down the palm-fringed Saigon or Donnai waters,
and through the mangrove swamps at the mouths of the Me-kong river, and
past the lofty Cape St. Jacques, with its fort, into the open China
Sea.

I. L. B.



LETTER VII

Beauties of the Tropics--Singapore Hospitality--An Equatorial
Metropolis--An Aimless Existence--The Growth of Singapore--"Farms" and
"Farmers"--The Staple of Conversation--The Glitter of "Barbaric
Gold"--A Polyglot Population--A Mediocre People--Female Grace and
Beauty--The "Asian Mystery"--Oriental Picturesqueness--The
Metamorphosis of Singapore


SINGAPORE, January 19, 1879.