Before leaving Point de Galle, a green boat came alongside, bearing an elephant flag, out of which came the captain of a Siamese man-of-war, to pay a visit of courtesy. He was quite a young-looking man, dressed in a red jacket with a yellow silk skirt. Behind him walked an attendant bearing a pearl box in his hand. One of our midshipmen thought this must contain his “character.” As he spoke but Siamese, and our commodore did not speak Siamese, the interview must have been quite satisfactory.
On the 15th of March we left Point de Galle, and headed across the bay of Bengal, in the direction of the northwest end of Sumatra. We did not take in our entire quantity of coal at Ceylon, but got on board fifty tons of the wood of the place, to try the experiment of its burning in our furnaces. It did not answer; the expense of consumption per hour was twenty dollars, while coal would have been about six, and producing less steam, while it induced greater danger of setting fire to the ship. In our run across the bay of Bengal we had a smooth sea, hot weather, and moonlight nights. In five days we were off the island of Nicobar, and entered the straits of Malacca, the weather changing to squally and rainy. Here we passed the English oriental mail-steamer from China, having on board commodore Aulick, whose late command of the East India squadron was soon to be assumed by the commodore aboard of our ship. Our run through the straits of Malacca was not signalized by any remarkable incidents. We saw the shore on either hand at times; passed in sight of the English East India penal settlement, Pulo-Penang, and close aboard of some most lovely tropical islands, anchored at night, and caught some red fish; made lay to, and frightened half to death, the captain of a Malay boat, called a parrigue, who had been manœuvring very suspiciously about nine at night, by firing a couple of muskets at him; and received and returned a salute. This was the English frigate Cleopatra, in tow of an East India Company’s steamer, one day’s run from Singapore. As they neared, the frigate broke stops with an American flag at the fore, and let slip with twenty-one guns. The old Mississippi was not to be caught napping, and although we had to lower away our quarter boats to prevent their injury by the concussion from our large guns, we soon had flying the English ensign at the fore, and replied with twenty-one. It is not the greater part of a century, that an American man-of-war would have been allowed to pass without any such national courtesy being shown by an Englishman. As the two vessels passed under our stern and stood on their way, our band gave them in its best style, “God save the Queen!”
At one o’clock in the day we were boarded by a native pilot, who brought from the consul at Singapore a letter-bag for us. It was the first news we had gotten directly, since leaving the United States, then out eighty days, and almost antipodal to our homes, and no one but he who has experienced it can appreciate fully the joy of getting a letter at such a time. It was the first that had come to me away from my own land, and I could have hallooed.
In the afternoon we rounded in among some beautiful islands, standing like verdure indexes to the harbor, and soon after anchored in the English free port of Singapore, about two miles from the shore.
And first the boats—yes, the boats. There are no more characteristic things of a people than their water vehicles. The enormous “Himalaya” steamship is the card that Great Britain sends out upon the ocean; the magnificent clipper-ships of our own America, as they ride at anchor in the “gorgeous East,” or the world over, as impatient steeds to break their tether, not in comparison, but outstripping by contrast far the naval architecture of any other people, do not evince the onward and upward march of the United States, more fully than does the stupid, cumbersome, unsightly junk, show the inertia of the opinionated Mongolian.
The Malay boats around the ship soon after we arrived, were most symmetrical in proportion, and pretty to look at. They are “dug-outs,” rather crank, but beautifully and sharply modelled. The song of the native rowers is quite strange, and far from unpleasing. The man who sits behind you in the sharp stern, steering with a paddle, pitches his voice, and gives the key-note of the “barbaric pearl” ditty (that is, I supposed, it must have been something about barbaric pearls), goes on with the burden, and the two rowers amidships, rather indifferent to the fact that the unsteadiness of their boat does not suit you, musically chorus, “A—lah! A—lah! El—lel—la!” Their larger boats called prahus, with their graceful latine sails, move with great rapidity through the water, and are said to be as elegantly modelled as any yacht “America.” Indeed, some are of the opinion that the fast modern pleasure-boat, owes its origin to the prahus of the Malay.
Thackeray, in his “Cornhill to Cairo,” has most pleasantly and truly described the keen relish which is afforded to travel if one could be taken up, and suddenly translated—or immersed as it were—among a people entirely different in complexion, habit, and costume, from his own. Unfortunately you are deprived of this in the East; your arrival at one place is continually anticipating another; and so at Singapore, most unwillingly, you get too large a slice of the picture, too much foretaste of the grand “central,” “celestial,” “flowery,” “middle kingdom,” though in a few days’ run of China. The first thing that met our gaze, laying in shore of us, their unsightly masts unshipped, their large sails under cover, their high stems and decks in the shadow of mats and bamboo, waiting for a change of the monsoon that they might go back to Quangtung or Fungching, were moored the ungainly Chinese junks. Of course, as is invariably the case, even on their smaller boats, from either side of the square bow peers the big painted eye; and if the stranger should be curious enough to inquire why they are put there, the matter-of-fact Chinaman, with a “Hy-yah,”—more expressive than the shoulder shrug of the Frenchman—would make answer, “No hab eye, how can see?”
On landing, the Chinese features of the place are found to predominate over all others, though the population of the town is also composed of English merchants, Malays, Arabs, Jews, Parsees, Hindoos, &c., amounting in all to about forty thousand. You no sooner put foot on the stairs that lead from the little bridged river, which equally divides the city, than your ears are filled with the interminable banging of gongs, more terrific than those which broke on the tympanum of Mr. Benjamin Bowbell when he was going to be buried alive with an Eastern princess. If a Chinese funeral is progressing, the gong is heard, if some mart has just been opened, or a public sale is to take place, beat the gong, and at sundown from the junk, “Joss” is “chin-chinn’d” by gong-beating. The streets present a scene of much bustle and activity, and traversing them are the most grotesque and picturesque oriental costumes—the large tassel pendent from the Fez cap of the Parsee, of as bright a scarlet, or his loose vest of as deep a blue, and the handle of his pipe just as long, as others that I had seen at prior places.
On the eastern side of the town, fronting on a fine parade or drive, are the residences principally of the Europeans, with the exception of some who have their bungaloes near the suburbs. Here are also situated government-offices, a very plain-looking Protestant church, whose swinging fans mitigate the intense heat to the worshipping congregation; a very fine hotel, under whose pleasant mahogany—located in arbored buildings, kept cool by moving punkas—we so agreeably placed our knees, to enjoy fine fruits, and for a time, keep from the rays of a torrid sun; and a pyramidal column, whose inscription tells in English, Arabic, and Hindostanee, how grateful the people there resident are for the service rendered them, while a prominent member of the East India Company’s government, by one Earl Dalhousie. He may be a scion of Pope’s
“Next comes Dalhousie,” &c.