FROM MANILLA TO SINGAPORE, AND UP THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.—A DAY AT PULO PENANG.
The next day was passed in closing up letters for the mail, viewing the destruction caused by the earthquake, and making preparations for leaving Manilla. The Doctor found, on visiting his banker's, that there was a steamer ready to start for Singapore on the following morning, and that she had accommodations for a few passengers. As she would suit their purposes exactly, he engaged places for the party, and in due time they were at sea with the prow of their vessel directed toward the Straits of Malacca.
ON THE WAY TO SINGAPORE.
The anchor was dropped in the harbor of Singapore, and the steamer was quickly surrounded with the same swarm of boatmen that greeted our friends at the time of their first arrival. Some of the sharp-eyed fellows recognized Doctor Bronson and the youths, and claimed them as old acquaintances; the result was that only a few minutes were required for the negotiations that had taken so long on their first visit, and before the anchor had been down half an hour the trio were at the hotel with their baggage, and safely quartered in their rooms.[3]
"We are just in time," said the Doctor, "to catch the steamer that leaves here every week for Penang, Rangoon, and Calcutta. We will go in her as far as Rangoon, and have a peep at Burmah, and when we have done with that strange country we can go somewhere else."
The boys were delighted with the idea of going to Burmah, and declared themselves ready to leave on the instant; but they moderated their enthusiasm on learning that the steamer would not start till noon of the next day. A garri was called, and our friends drove to the banker's and the post-office, and their journey was rewarded with a fine parcel of letters and papers from home. They also called at the United States Consulate, and found that two or three letters had been addressed to them in care of the consul, and were safely kept by that gentleman, pending their return.
The news from home was entirely satisfactory. The families of Frank and Fred were greatly interested in the letters which the youths had sent describing their journey, and Miss Effie informed them that some of the letters had been given to the editor of their favorite newspaper, and so had found their way into print. "And the editor says," she added, "that they are good enough to make a book of, and when you get home you shall have one printed."
"What! we make a book!" exclaimed Fred, as Frank read the concluding sentence of Miss Effie's letter; "we could never do it in the world!"
"Why not?" Frank inquired. Evidently he thought the thing possible, perhaps for the reason that his sweetheart so regarded it.
"Because," Fred answered, "we don't write as the books do, or, at any rate, the most of them. We don't trouble ourselves about 'fine writing,' whatever that is, but go straight on and tell what we see and hear, the same as though we were sitting around the table at home and talking to our friends."
"Perhaps, after all," responded his cousin, "a book written in just that way wouldn't be so very bad. It's the kind of book I would prefer in reading about a country; and the fact that the editor prints our letters, shows that he's of my opinion. However, let's not trouble ourselves about the prospects of being book-writers, but go on and make our letters just as we've been making them."
This was agreed to without further discussion, and the rest of the afternoon and the evening were devoted to reading and rereading letters and papers, and answering the most important of the missives.
BAY ON THE COAST OF SUMATRA.
At noon the next day they were steaming out of the harbor of Singapore, and entering the Straits of Malacca. On their right they had the Malay Peninsula stretching away as far as the eye could reach, while on their left were the densely-wooded shores of Sumatra. The air was warm, but its severity was tempered by a breeze that blew steadily in their faces as they steamed up the Straits, and seemed to be laden with the odor of spices and other tropical products. At least so thought Frank, but the Doctor assured him that the perfume was principally imaginary, as they were not yet where spices grow in profusion.
"The principal products of the region we are now passing," he explained, "are rice, sugar, pepper, and gambier, and none of those articles are famous for their odors, with the possible exception of pepper."
One of the boys asked what gambier was.
"Gambier," Doctor Bronson answered, "is a vegetable product that is largely used in dyeing and tanning, and is sometimes called Japan earth, for the reason that when it was first introduced it was supposed to be a species of earth, and to come from Japan. The tree or bush that produces it is of the same family as the Peruvian bark trees, and is a native of the East Indian Archipelago. The leaves and small shrubs are boiled in water, and a thick decoction is formed, which is finally poured into moulds and allowed to harden in the sun. A great quantity of gambier is produced in the Malay Peninsula, and if we went on shore we could visit the plantations where it is cultivated. They would remind us of the tea-plantations we saw in Java, as the bush is six or eight feet high, and looks not unlike the largest tea-shrubs."
COAST SCENE IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.
Occasionally the steamer came quite near to the shore, and gave them charming glimpses of the scenery of the Malayan Peninsula. Everywhere there was an abundant vegetation, and the principal trees in the landscape were palms and their kindred. Villages were scattered here and there, and the captain of the steamer pointed out several establishments that he said were the residences of local chiefs, acting under the authority of the British Government. Several provinces along this part of the peninsula are under British control, though nominally ruled by their own sultans; as long as the sultan remains friendly to the English he is allowed to do pretty much as he pleases, but when he defies their authority, they speedily chastise him into obedience. Step by step the English have increased their power in this part of the world, and the movements on the political chess-board indicate that they will not be satisfied until they have secured all the territory between their Indian possessions and the frontier of China.
It is three hundred and ninety miles from Singapore to Penang, and as the steamer was not of the highest speed, she did not reach there until the morning of the second day from the former port. In fact, the departure from Singapore had been timed so that they should arrive early in the morning, and have the day before them. Frank and Fred were on deck as the vessel swung into the harbor and came to anchor, and their eyes were busily engaged in contemplating the novel sights of the place. Doctor Bronson joined them a little later, and arranged with some boatmen to take them on shore as soon as breakfast was over. The boatmen were similar to those that surrounded the ship on their arrival at Singapore when they came from Siam—Klings, Chinese, Malays, and Arabs, with a sprinkling of negroes from the coast of Africa.
Penang is an island containing about a hundred square miles in all, and is separated from the main-land of the Malay peninsula by a strait from two to seven miles in width; it is sometimes called Prince of Wales Island, and by the natives is known as Pulo Penang, "pulo" being the Malay word for island. It is an important English possession, and was under the British flag long before Singapore. The history of its transfer to the English is somewhat romantic, and is told as follows:
It formerly belonged to the King or Sultan of Quedah, in Malacca, and was given by him to his daughter on the occasion of her marriage with Captain Light in 1785. Light was master of an English ship trading in the Straits, and a few years after his marriage he sold the island to the East India Company, on condition of being appointed governor. Afterward he negotiated with his father-in-law to give the English authority over the whole province of Quedah on payment of an annual subsidy; the sultan consented, and since that time the English have had complete possession.
We will let the boys tell the story of their sight-seeing in Penang during the day the ship remained there:
"We had no trouble in going ashore, as the boatmen were in competition with each other, and did not demand as high prices as at Singapore; for a dollar apiece we were brought on shore and taken back to the ship again at the end of the day, and the captain says we might have done better than that if we had bargained a little longer. The harbor is at the northern end of the strait that separates Penang from the main-land, and a very nice harbor it is. The capital is called Georgetown, and we are told that it has about 100,000 inhabitants; such a mixture you never saw in America, and we don't believe there are a dozen places in the world with such an odd population. The English are the masters, but there are not more than a thousand of them, not counting the garrison of soldiers; and there are a few Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, and other Europeans. The rest are Malays, Chinese, Parsees, Klings, Bengalees, Arabs, and descendants of the early Portuguese settlers, together with a few other sorts and kinds 'too numerous to mention.'
"We went through the town, but there was nothing very curious, after what we have seen and described to you in Singapore, and so we didn't take a long time about it. Each of us bought a Penang lawyer to take along. What do you suppose a Penang lawyer is?
"It is a cane, or walking-stick, with a straight stem; it has a root shaped like an egg, and forming a capital thing for the hand to grasp when the cane is finished and polished. These canes are called lawyers, because they are employed in settling disputes, and they certainly appear very useful for that purpose. One of them has been known to finish a discussion in a few seconds where an ordinary attorney would have taken an hour or two, and then would have been as far from the end of it as ever. The shillalah of the Irishman is something like it, but though it may be quite as effective, it is not half as handsome.
PALM-TREES IN PULO PENANG.
"Back of Georgetown the hills rise up nearly if not quite two thousand feet, and we were told that from the summit we could have a magnificent view. So we climbed up there, or rather we took a carriage to the foot of the hills, and then hired coolies with chairs to carry us the rest of the way. You cannot imagine a prettier excursion. The tropical trees, with their splendid foliage, shade the roads and paths, and sometimes you can go a mile or more without a ray of the sun striking you; at every turn there is a charming view of some kind or other, and you are constantly in sight of delightful summer-houses, where the merchants and professional residents of Penang have their homes. Higher and higher you go, and find the air becoming cooler as you ascend; when you are at the summit, you find the temperature ten or twenty degrees less than in Georgetown, and are glad that you brought along your light overcoat.
"As we stand at the top we look away to the main-land, and our guide says that in clear weather we can see ninety miles. The harbor with its shipping is in full view, and we have the whole panorama of the island and a long stretch of the Malay peninsula. We seem to be at the top of a great mound of trees, as the whole of the hills are thickly wooded. Farther down there are cleared spaces, especially in the valleys and plains, and we can see fields of rice, sugar-cane, and other products of the warm regions of the earth. On the upper parts of the hills the air is cool enough for the cultivation of European vegetables and flowers that will not grow in the vicinity of Georgetown.
"Where the forest is neglected, even for a few months, it soon becomes so overgrown with jungle that it is not easy to get through it; Doctor Bronson says it is a constant fight with nature to keep down the verdure, and if Penang were left to itself for a single year it would be all overgrown, as when Captain Light came here nearly a hundred years ago. They tell a funny story of how Captain Light cleared away the jungle. He used to load cannon with silver dollars, and then fire them into the grass and bushes; then the Malays went to work to find the dollars, and, of course, they had to clear the ground before they could do so.
A SUBURBAN COTTAGE.
"Where we left our carriage there was a pretty water-fall, and we saw several little cascades on our journey. They are fed by water from the clouds that sweep over Penang, especially during the time of the south-west monsoon, and every owner of a bungalow on the mountain-side tries to have a stream of water going through his place, and if he can get a cascade in it, so much the better. Some of the residents have bathing-houses at the foot of their cascades, and they go there to get cool; a more delightful bath-house than one we saw it would be difficult to imagine. It had a floor of the solid rock of the island, and the water fell into a natural basin about four feet deep, and then ran off through a channel it had worn for itself in hundreds of years of patient work.
A PENANG BUTTERFLY.
"Penang is full of insect life; in some places where we went there was such a buzzing of beetles and other humming things that our voices were drowned when we were twenty yards apart. It reminded us of the buzzing of machinery in a cotton factory, and there was more of it in the early part of the day than later on. There is one beetle they call 'the trumpeter,' that does not rest from making a noise from morning till night unless he is disturbed; when you go near a tree where he is he stops, and does not start again till you go away. There are lots and lots of butterflies, and they are of all sizes and colors; there is one called the 'Saturnia-atlas' that measures ten or twelve inches across the wings, but he is not very abundant, and the only one we saw was in a glass case in the office of a merchant we called on. We saw some beautiful humming-birds, and were told that there are several varieties of these tiny things in Penang. There was a bright metallic lustre all over them, and when we looked at them in a certain light they glistened like a piece of burnished steel.
HUMMING-BIRDS.
"How many kinds of trees there are in Penang it is difficult to say, but there are great numbers of them. Some of them are so heavy that they will sink in water; the Chinese and Malays take these woods to make anchors for their boats and junks, and they use the rattans and bamboos for cordage if they cannot afford twisted ropes. Many of the plants live entirely on air, and we saw trees a foot in diameter growing on a rock where there wasn't a particle of soil. The moist air is what they thrive on, and they seem as well satisfied on a rock as in the richest soil.
"We asked how many fruits there were in Penang, and learned that they amounted to a hundred, and perhaps more. They have that delicious fruit, the mangosteen, that we told you about when in Java; and then they have the pineapple, custard-apple, pomegranate, mango, banana, and we don't know what else. We tried to eat the durian again, but couldn't get through it; and, as we are not to be very long in the land of this fruit, we don't think it worth our while to learn.
"At night the air is full of fire-flies, and sometimes they are so brilliant that they resemble a torch-light procession just breaking up. Then the natives kindle fires under the trees to cook their meals; and, as you ride or walk along the roads, the scene is a curious one, as the figures of these dark-skinned people are brought into strong relief by the light.
A TRAVELLING BLACKSMITH.
"You see so many Chinese in Penang that you can easily believe you are in Shanghai or Hong-Kong. They are everywhere, and in all kinds of business, from the most important to the most humble; they are wholesale merchants of every name and kind, and they practise all the industries known to civilization. There are Chinese tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, jewellers, cabinet-makers, and anything else you might name, besides a variety of trades you couldn't think of. Most of them work in shops, but there are many blacksmiths, cobblers, and others, who go from house to house, and carry their tools in baskets.
"The banks have Chinese clerks to keep the accounts and handle the money, and every European merchant in Penang has a comprador, the same as the merchants in Yokohama and Hong-Kong. You can hardly do anything in the way of buying or selling without coming in contact with a Chinese, and even if you try to avoid them you cannot. In commercial matters the Chinese have full control, and the European merchants complain that their profits are very light owing to the sharp competition of their Oriental rivals. Every year the Chinese are gaining in business, while the Europeans are diminishing; and the gentleman who told us about them says it is only a question of time, and not a long time at that, before all the trade of Penang will be in the hands of the Chinese.
"They are not only in Georgetown, but all over the island of Penang, and on the main-land. Some of them have been here for many years, and either brought wives from China, or married Malay ones; they have no intention of going back to China but will end their days in Penang. The most of these old settlers are rich, and have fine houses, with magnificent gardens filled with fruits and flowers; but there are plenty of poor settlers who cultivate the soil, and live in modest huts among their market-gardens and pepper-fields. A large part of the agriculture of the island, and of the neighboring province on the main-land, is in Chinese hands, and if all the people of the Flowery Kingdom were driven out of the Malay Peninsula and the adjacent islands, there wouldn't be much business left. Several times the Government has had trouble with them owing to their guilds and combinations; and on two or three occasions they have openly defied the laws, and refused to be bound by them. The garrisons of troops at Penang, Singapore, and other points are necessary to keep the Chinese in order, as no one can tell when they may make a serious disturbance.
"When we were at Manilla, we learned that the Chinese in the Philippine Islands were not always easy to control, and had twice broken into open insurrection. The first time was in 1603, when 23,000 Chinese were slaughtered by the Spanish troops and people; and the second was about fifty years later, when 25,000 were killed, and the rest, amounting to six or eight thousand, were banished. But others came to fill their places, and there have been no more insurrections, though quite often they narrowly escape them.
"It is fair to say, on behalf of the Chinese, that their insurrections in the Philippine Islands were brought about by excessive taxes and religious persecutions; at least we are so informed by the historians who have written on the subject. In Penang there is no danger of trouble on this account, as the inhabitants have the fullest liberty in the matter of religion, and the taxes are the same for all nationalities.
"It was late when we got back to the steamer, and, as we were pretty tired, we went straight to bed. When we rose in the morning, we were steaming out of the harbor; and so ended our visit to Penang."