Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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 Singa-
pore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different reli-
gions 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 Por-
tuguese 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 mer-
chants 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, Hindoo
temples, Chinese joss-houses, good European houses, massive warehouses, queer old Kling
and China bazaars, and long suburbs of Chinese and Malay cottages.
By far the most conspicuous of the various kinds of people in Singapore, and those which
most attract the stranger's attention, are the Chinese, whose numbers and incessant activity
give the place very much the appearance of a town in China. The Chinese merchant is gener-
ally a fat round-faced man with an important and business-like look. He wears the same style
of clothing (loose white smock, and blue or black trousers) as the meanest coolie, but of finer
materials, and is always clean and neat; and his long tail tipped with red silk hangs down to
