hundreds of Bengalis are to be seen at all hours of daylight
unmercifully beating on great stones the delicate laces, gauzy silks,
and elaborate flouncings of the European ladies; of the ceaseless rush
and hum of industry, and of the resistless, overpowering, astonishing
Chinese element, which is gradually turning Singapore into a Chinese
city! I must conclude abruptly, or lose the mail.

I. L. B.



LETTER VIII

St. Andrew's Cathedral--Singapore Harbor Scenes--Chinese
Preponderance--First Impressions of Malacca--A Town "Out of the
Running"


S.S. "RAINBOW," MALACCA ROADS, January 20.

Yesterday I attended morning service in St. Andrew's, a fine colonial
cathedral, prettily situated on a broad grass lawn among clumps of
trees near the sea. There is some stained glass in the apse, but in the
other windows, including those in the clerestory, Venetian shutters
take the place of glass, as in all the European houses. There are
thirty-two punkahs, and the Indians who worked them, anyone of whom
might have been the model of the Mercury of the Naples Museum, sat or
squatted outside the church. The service was simple and the music very
good, but in the Te Deum, just as the verse "Thou art the King of
Glory, O Christ," I caught sight of the bronze faces of these "punkah-