Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
his heels. He has a handsome warehouse or shop in town and a good house in the country.
He keeps a fine horse and gig, and every evening may be seen taking a drive bareheaded to
enjoy the cool breeze. He is rich, he owns several retail shops and trading schooners, he
lends money at high interest and on good security, he makes hard bargains and gets fatter
and richer every year.
In the Chinese bazaar are hundreds of small shops in which a miscellaneous collection of
hardware and dry goods are to be found, and where many things are sold wonderfully cheap.
You may buy gimlets at a penny each, white cotton thread at four balls for a halfpenny and
penknives, corkscrews, gunpowder, writing-paper, and many other articles as cheap or
cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The shopkeeper is very good-natured; he
will show you everything he has, and does not seem to mind if you buy nothing. He bates a
little, but not so much as the Klings, who almost always ask twice what they are willing to
take. If you buy a few things of him, he will speak to you afterwards every time you pass his
shop, asking you to walk in and sit down, or take a cup of tea, and you wonder how he can
get a living where so many sell the same trifling articles. The tailors sit
at
a table, not
on
one; and both they and the shoemakers work well and cheaply. The barbers have plenty to
do, shaving heads and cleaning ears; for which latter operation they have a great array of
little tweezers, picks, and brushes. In the outskirts of the town are scores of carpenters and
blacksmiths. 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 flint lock very handsomely. All about the streets are sellers of wa-
ter, 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 bal-
anced by a table at the other end, and serve up a meal of shell-fish, 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
