Near by this place is the old Buddhist water clock, which for five hundred years has marked the time by the drip of water from a hidden spring. The masonry of this water-clock building looks very ancient, and the clock is reached by several long flights of granite stairs.
After viewing the clock we reached the wall and passed through the big south gates, which are fully six inches thick, of massive iron, studded with large nails. Outside on the bund were drawn up several rapid-fire guns belonging to Admiral Li, the efficient head of the Chinese navy at Canton, who also had a score of trim little gunboats patrolling the river. These boats had rapid-fire guns at bow and stern.
So we came back to the Canton hospital, where we had luncheon. After this I made my way back to the steamer, to find her crowded with over one thousand refugees from the old city, with their belongings. The decks and even the dining saloon were choked with these people, and during the two hours before the boat sailed at least three hundred more passengers were taken on board. We sailed in the late afternoon and were followed by four other river steamers, carrying in all over six thousand refugees.
Singapore The Meeting Place of Many Races
Of all the places in the Orient, the most cosmopolitan is Singapore, the gateway to the Far East; the one city which everyone encircling the globe is forced to visit, at least for a day. Hongkong streets may have seemed to present an unparalleled mixture of races; Canton's narrow alleys may have appeared strange and exotic; but Singapore surpasses Honkong in the number and picturesqueness of the races represented in its streets, as it easily surpasses Canton in strange sights and in swarming toilers from many lands that fill the boats on its canals and the narrow, crooked streets that at night glow with light and resound with the clamor of alien tongues.
Singapore is built on an island which adjoins the extreme end of the Malay Peninsula. It is about sixty miles from the equator, and it has a climate that varies only a few degrees from seventy during the entire year. This heat would not be debilitating were it not for the extreme humidity of the atmosphere. To a stranger, especially if he comes from the Pacific Coast, the place seems like a Turkish bath. The slightest physical exertion makes the perspiration stand out in beads on the face.
Singapore has a population of over three hundred thousand people; it has a great commercial business, which is growing every year; it already has the largest dry dock in the world. Its bund is not so imposing as that of Hongkong, but it has more public squares and its government buildings are far more handsome. As Hongkong owes much of its splendid architecture and its air of stability to Sir Paul Chator, so Singapore owes its spacious avenues, its fine buildings, its many parks, its interesting museum and its famous botanical gardens to Sir Stamford Raffles, one of the British empire-builders who have left indelibly impressed on the Orient their genius for founding cities and constructing great public enterprises. Yet, Singapore, with far more business than Manila, is destitute of a proper sewer system, and the streets in its native quarters reek with foul odors.
The feature of Singapore that first impresses the stranger is the variety of races seen in any of the streets, and this continues to impress him so long as he remains in the city. My stay in Singapore was four days, due to the fact that it was necessary to wait here for the departure of the British West India Company's steamer for Rangoon and Calcutta. In jinrikishas and pony carts I saw all quarters of the town, and my wonder grew every day at the remarkable show of costumes presented by the different races. One day, late in the afternoon, I sat down on a coping of the wall that surrounds a pretty park on Orchard road, and in the space of a half hour watched the moving show that passed by. At this hour all Singapore takes its outing to the Botanical Gardens, and one may study the people who have leisure and money.