Foot-prints of Travel - Maturin Murray Ballou (book suggestions txt) 📗

common people we meet in the ordinary walks of life are far from prepossessing, and are much the same as those who have emigrated to this country. One looks in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in their place there is plenty of apparent cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. With the Japanese the traveller feels himself constantly sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters their houses and drinks tea with them; but not so with the Chinese. In place of affiliation we realize a constant sense of repulsion.

We embark at Hong Kong for Singapore by the way of the China Sea and the Gulf of Siam. The northerly wind favors us, causing the ship to rush through the turbulent waters like a race-horse. The Philippine Islands are passed, and leaving Borneo on our port-bow as we draw near to the Equatorial Line, the ship is steered due west for the mouth of the Malacca Straits. Off the Gulf of Siam we are pretty sure to get a view of a water-spout, and it is to be hoped that it may be a goodly distance from us. Atmospheric and ocean currents meet here, from the China Sea northward, from the Malacca Straits south and west, and from the Pacific Ocean eastward, mingling off the Gulf of Siam, and causing, very naturally, a confusion of the elements, resulting sometimes in producing these wind and water phenomena. A water-spout is a miniature cyclone, an eddy of the wind rotating with such velocity as to suck up a column of water from the sea to the height of one or two hundred feet. This column of water appears to be largest at the top and bottom, and contracted in the middle. If it were to fall foul of a ship and break, it would surely wreck and submerge her. Modern science shows that all storms are cyclonic; that is, they are circular eddies of wind of greater or less diameter. The power of these cyclones is more apparent upon the sea than upon the land, where the obstruction is naturally greater. Yet we know how destructive they sometimes prove in our Western States.

Singapore is the chief port of the Malacca Straits, and is an island lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese at Singapore. They dominate the Strait settlements, monopolizing all branches of small trade, while the natives are lazy and listless, true children of the equatorial regions. Is it because Nature is here so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific, that her children are sluggish, dirty, and heedless? It would seem to require a less propitious climate, a sterile soil, and rude surroundings to awaken human energy and to place man at his best. The common people are seen almost naked, and those who wear clothes at all, affect the brightest colors. The jungle is dense, tigers abound, and men, women, and children are almost daily killed and eaten by them.

It is easy to divine the merchantable products of the island from the nature of the articles which are seen piled up for shipment upon the wharves, consisting of tapioca, cocoanut oil, gambia, tin ore, indigo, tiger-skins, coral, gutta-percha, hides, gums, and camphor.

There is no winter or autumn here, no sere and yellow leaf period, but seemingly a perpetual spring, with a temperature almost unvarying; new leaves always swelling from the bud, flowers always in bloom, the sun rising and setting within five minutes of six o'clock during the entire year. Singapore enjoys a soft breeze most of the day from across the Bay of Bengal, laden with fragrant sweetness from the spice-fields of Ceylon.

Each place we visit has its peculiar local pictures. Here, small hump-backed oxen are seen driven about at a lively trot in place of horses. Pedlers roam the streets selling drinking-water, with soup, fruit, and a jelly made from sugar and sea-weed, called agar-agar. Native houses are built upon stilts to keep out the snakes and tigers. The better class of people wear scarlet turbans and white cotton skirts; others have parti-colored shawls round their heads, while yellow scarfs confine a cotton wrap about the waist. Diminutive horses drag heavy loads, though themselves scarcely bigger than large dogs. Itinerant cooks, wearing a wooden yoke about their necks, with a cooking apparatus on one end, and a little table to balance it on the other, serve meals of fish and rice upon the streets to laborers and boatmen, for a couple of pennies each. Money has here, as in most Eastern countries, a larger purchasing power than it has with us in the West. The variety of fruit is greater than in China or Japan, and there are one or two species, such as the delicious mangosteen, which are found indigenous in no other region.

The stranger, upon landing at Singapore, is hardly prepared to find such excellent modern institutions as exist here. Among them are an attractive museum, a public library, a Protestant cathedral, a hospital, public schools, and a fine botanical garden. The island belongs to the English government, having been purchased by it so long ago as 1819, from the Sultan of Johore,--wise forethought, showing its importance as a port of call between England and India.

A two days' sail through waters which seem at night like a sea of phosphorescence, every ripple producing flashes of light, will take us to the island of Penang, the most northerly port of the Straits. It resembles Singapore in its people, vegetation, and climate, enjoying one long, unvarying summer. While the birds and butterflies are in perfect harmony with the loveliness of nature, while the flowers are glorious in beauty and in fragrance, man alone seems out of place in this region. Indolent, dirty, unclad, he does nothing to improve such wealth of possibilities as nature spreads broadcast only in equatorial islands. He does little for himself, nothing for others, while the sensuous life he leads poisons his nature, so that virtue and vice have no relative meaning for him. We speak now of the masses, the common people. Noble exceptions always exist. In size Penang is a little smaller than Singapore. Its wooded hills of vivid greenness rise above the town and surrounding sea in graceful undulations, growing more and more lofty as they recede inland, until they culminate in three mountain peaks. Penang is separated from the mainland by a narrow belt of sea not more than three miles wide, giving it a position of great commercial importance.

The areca-palm, known as the Penang-tree, is the source of the betel-nut, which is chewed by the natives as a stimulant; and as it abounds on the island, it has given it the name it bears. The town covers about a square mile, through which runs one broad, main street, intersected by lesser thoroughfares at right angles. A drive about the place gives us an idea that it is a thrifty town, but not nearly so populous as Singapore. It is also observable that the Chinese element predominates here. The main street is lined by shops kept by them. The front of the dwellings being open, gives the passer-by a full view of all that may be going on inside the household. Shrines are nearly always seen in some nook or corner, before which incense is burning, this shrine-room evidently being also the sleeping, eating, and living room. The islands of Penang and Singapore are free from malarial fevers, and probably no places on earth are better adapted to the wants of primitive man, for they produce spontaneously sufficient nutritious food to support life independent of personal exertion. The home of the Malay is not so clean as that of the ant or the birds; even the burrowing animals are neater. The native women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in figure, and passionately fond of ornaments, covering their arms and ankles with metallic rings, and thrusting silver and brass rings through their ears, noses, and lips.

The cocoanut-tree is always in bearing on the islands of the Straits, and requires no cultivation. Of the many liberal gifts bestowed upon the tropics, this tree is perhaps the most valuable. The Asiatic poet celebrates in verse the hundred uses to which the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the fruit, and the sap are applied. In Penang a certain number of these trees are not permitted to bear fruit. The embryo bud from which the blossoms and nuts would spring is tied up to prevent its expansion; a small incision then being made at the end, there oozes in gentle drops a pleasant liquor called toddy, which is the palm wine of the poet. This, when it is first drawn, is cooling and wholesome, but when it is fermented it produces a strong, intoxicating spirit. The banana is equally prolific and abundant, and forms a very large portion of the food of the common people. In the immediate neighborhood of the town are some plantations conducted by Europeans who live in neat cottages, with enclosures of cultivated flowers, and orchards of fruit-trees. Still further inland are large gardens of bread-fruit, nutmegs, cinnamon, pepper, and other spices. There are also large fields of sugar-cane, tobacco, and coffee. The delicate little sensitive plant here grows wild, and is equally tremulous and subsiding at the touch of human hands, as it is with us. Lilies are seen in wonderful variety, the stems covered with butterflies nearly as large as humming-birds.

Penang originally belonged to the Malay kingdom, but about the year 1786 it was given to an English sea-captain as a marriage-portion with the King of Keddah's daughter, and by him, in course of time, it was transferred to the East India Company. When Captain Francis Light received it with his dusky bride, it was the wild, uncultivated home of a few hundred fishermen. To-day it has a population of nearly a hundred thousand.


CHAPTER IV.

Our course now lies across the Indian Ocean, westward. The rains which we encounter are like floods, but the air is soft and balmy, and the deluges are of brief continuance. The nights are serene and bright, so that it is delightful to lie awake upon the deck of the steamer and watch the stars now and then screened by the fleecy clouds. In the daytime it is equally interesting to observe the ocean. Large sea-turtles come to the surface to sun themselves, stretching their awkward necks to get a sight of our hull; dolphins and flying-fish are too abundant to be a curiosity; big water-snakes raise their slimy heads a couple of feet above the sea; the tiny nautilus floats in myriads upon the undulating waves, and at times the ship is surrounded by a shoal of the indolent jelly-fish. Mirage plays us strange tricks in the way of optical delusion in these regions. We seem to be approaching land which we never reach, but which at the moment when we should fairly make it, fades into thin air.

Though the ocean covers more than three-quarters of the globe, but few of us realize that it represents more of life than does the land. We are indebted to it for every drop of water distributed over our hills, plains, and valleys; for from the ocean it has arisen by evaporation to return again through myriads of