Part 35

A Peep at the City of Singapore

Could an American boy, like a prince in the Arabian Nights, be taken by a genie from his warm bed in San Francisco or New York and awakened in the centre of Raffles Square, in Singapore, I will wager that he would be sadly puzzled to even give the name of the continent on which he had alighted.

Neither the buildings, the people, or the vehicles would aid him in the least to decide.

Enclosing the four sides of the little banian-tree shaded park in which he stands are rows of brick, white-faced, high-jointed go-downs. Through their glassless windows great white punkahs swing back and forth with a ceaseless regularity. Standing outside of each window, a tall, graceful punkah-wallah tugs at a rattan withe, his naked limbs shining like polished ebony in the fierce glare of the Malayan sun.

For a moment, perhaps, the boy thinks himself in India, possibly at Simla, for he has read some of Rudyard Kipling's stories.

Back under the portico-like verandas, whose narrow breadths take the place of sidewalks, are little booths that look like bay windows turned inside out. On the floor of each sits a Turk, cross-legged, or an Arab, surrounded by a heterogeneous assortment of wares, fez caps, brass finger-bowls, a praying rug, a few boxes of Japanese tooth-picks, some rare little bottles of Arab essence, a betel-nut box, and a half dozen piles of big copper cents, for all shopkeepers are money-changers.

The merchant gathers his flowing party-colored robes about him, tightens the turban head, and draws calmly at his water-pipe while a bevy of Hindu and Tamil women bargain for a new stud for their noses, a showy amulet, or a silver ring for their toes.

Squatting right in the way of all passers is a Chinese travelling restaurant that looks like two flour barrels, one filled with drawers, the other containing a small charcoal fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,--bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump of bird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, "Machen, machen" (eating, eating).

Next to the Arab booth is a Chinese lamp shop, then a European dry-goods store, an Armenian law office, a Japanese bazaar, a foreign consulate.

A babble of strange sounds and a jargon of languages salute the astonished boy's ears.

In the broad well-paved streets about him a Malay syce, or driver, is trying to urge his spotted Deli pony, which is not larger than a Newfoundland dog, in between a big, lumbering two-wheeled bullock-cart, laden with oozing bags of vile-smelling gambier, and a great patient water buffalo that stands sleepily whipping the gnats from its black, almost hairless hide, while its naked driver is seated under the trees in the square quarrelling and gambling by turns.

The gharry, which resembles a dry-goods box on wheels, set in with latticed windows, smashes up against the ponderous hubs of the bullock-cart. The meek-eyed bullocks close their eyes and chew their cuds, regardless of the fierce screams of the Malay or the frenzied objurgations of their driver.

But no one pays any attention to the momentary confusion. A party of Jews dressed in robes of purple and red that sweep the street pass by, without giving a glance at the wild plunging of the half-wild pony. A Singhalese jeweller is showing his rubies and cat's-eyes to a party of Eurasian, or half-caste clerks, that are taking advantage of their master's absence from the godown to come out into the court to smoke a Manila cigarette and gossip. The mottled tortoise-shell comb in the vender's black hair, and his womanish draperies, give him a feminine aspect.

An Indian chitty, or money-lender, stands talking to a brother, supremely unconscious of the eddying throng about. These chitties are fully six feet tall, with closely shaven heads and nude bodies. Their dress of a few yards of gauze wound about their waists, and red sandals, would not lead one to think that they handle more money than any other class of people in the East. They borrow from the great English banks without security save that of their caste name, and lend to the Eurasian clerks just behind them at twelve per cent a month. If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomes a pariah. The caste make up his losses.

Dyaks from Borneo idle by. Parsee merchants in their tall, conical hats, Chinese rickshaw runners and cart coolies, Tamil road-menders, Bugis, Achinese, Siamese, Japanese, Madras serving-men, negro firemen, Lascar sailors, throng the little square,--the agora of the commercial life of the city.

Such is Singapore, embracing all the races of Asia and Europe. Is it any wonder that the American boy is bewildered, standing there under the great banian tree with a Malay in sarong and kris by his side, singing with his syrah-stained lips the glorious promises of the Koran?

Look on the map of Asia for the southernmost point of the continent, and you will find it at the tip of the Malay Peninsula,--a giant finger that points down into the heart of the greatest archipelago in the world. At the very end of this peninsula, like a sort of cut-off joint of the finger, is the little island of Singapore, which is not over twenty-five miles from east to west, and does not exceed fifteen miles in width at its broadest point.

The famous old Straits of Malacca, which were once the haunts of the fierce Malayan pirates, separate the island from the mainland and the Sultanate of Johore.

The shipping that once worked its way through these narrow straits, in momentary fear that its mangrove-bound shores held a long, swift pirate prau, now goes further south and into the island-guarded harbor before Singapore.

Nothing can be more beautiful than the sea approach to Singapore. As you enter the Straits, the emerald-green of a bevy of little islands obstructs the vision, and affords a grateful relief to the almost blinding glare of the Malayan sky, and the metallic reflections of the ocean.

Some seem only inhabited by a graceful waving burden of strange, tropical foliage, and by a band of chattering monkeys; on others you detect a Malay kampong, or village, its umbrella-like houses of attap, close down to the shore, built high up on poles, so that half the time their boulevards are but vast mud-holes, the other half--Venice, filled with a moving crowd of sampans and fishing praus. A crowd of bronzed, naked little figures sport within the shadow of a maze of drying nets, and flee in consternation as the black, log-like head and cruel, watchful eyes of a crocodile glide quietly along the mangrove roots.

On another island you discern the grim breastworks and the frowning mouth of a piece of heavy ordnance.

Soon the island of Singapore reveals itself in a long line of dome-like hills and deep-cut shadows, whose stolid front quickly dissolves. The tufted tops of a sentinel palm, the wide-spreading arms of the banian, clumps of green and yellow bamboo, and the fan-shaped outlines of the traveller's palm become distinguishable. As the great, red, tropical sun rises from behind the encircling hills, the monotony of the foliage is relieved in places by objects which it all but hid from view. The granite minaret of the Mohammedan mosque, the carved dome of a Buddhist temple, the slender spire of an English cathedral, the bold projections of Government House, and the wide, white sides of the Municipal buildings all hold the eye.

Then a maze of strange shipping screens the nearing shore--the military masts and yards of British and Dutch men-of-war, the high-heeled, shoe-like lines of Chinese junks, innumerable Malay and Kling sampans, and great, unwieldy Borneo tonkangs.

For six miles along the wharves and for six miles back into the island extend the municipal limits of the city. Two hundred thousand people live within these limits; while outside, over the rest of the island along the sea-coast, in fishing villages, and in the interior on plantations of tapioca and pepper, live a hundred thousand more. Of these three hundred thousand over one hundred and seventy thousand are Chinese and only fifteen hundred are Europeans.

Grouped about Raffles Square, and facing the Bund, are the great English, German, and Chinese houses that handle the three hundred million dollars' worth of imports and exports that pass in and out of the port yearly, and make Singapore one of the most important marts of the commercial world.

Beyond, and back from the Square, is Tanglin, or the suburbs, where the government officials and the heads of these great firms live in luxurious bungalows, surrounded by a swarm of retainers.

Let us drive from Raffles Square through this cosmopolitan city and out to Tanglin. Beginning at Cavanagh Bridge, at one end of which stands the great Singapore Club and the Post Office, is the ocean esplanade,--the pride of the city. It encloses a public playground of some fifteen acres, reclaimed from the sea at an expense of over two hundred thousand dollars. Every afternoon when the heat of the day has fallen from 150° to 80°, the European population meets on this esplanade park to play tennis, cricket, and football, and to promenade, gossip, and listen to the music of the regimental or man-of-war band.