On the esplanade, when the sun pales his fire in the evening, a tesselated group composed of the juvenile cockney, the Cingalese, the Parsee, and, of course, “John Chinaman,” take their evening promenade, while the wealthier natives who have been snoozing all day come out in their gigs for a drive. Those of more moderate pretensions, who can muster a halfrupee, get into a palanquin—pronounced palankee—for the purpose. These are small four-wheeled vehicles with mat cushions, capable of holding four persons. The turbaned and waist-scarfed Lascar driver, though he has a seat apportioned him, and sufficient reins, prefers coiling them over his arms, takes his little horse by the cheek of the bit, and running beside him, continually encourages him into a gallop. Some meddling English, with accompanying mistaken philanthropy, endeavored to get an order passed by which the dear syces should be made to save themselves fatigue and ride on their seats, but the dear syces preferred their old custom, and protested strongly against any such innovation. About a mile from the settlement are a large collection of houses occupied by the Malays, who, although under the protection of the English, still continue their custom of building their houses over the water, elevated on posts and separately, that they may feel freer from attack, or the visits of live animals. These latter they have not much to dread now. Singapore is on an island separated from the main land by a narrow strip of water, and tigers sometimes swim over, but they are soon despatched, as the government pays a reward of a hundred dollars for each one killed. On my ride to this point I passed some tombs of former rajahs, and also saw a number of wooden houses that were being fitted up for shipment to Australia. We stopped at a factory where that pleasant farina, sago, was being prepared. It is made from the pith of a tree; is first placed in vats that it may become dissolved, then exposed to the sun to dry, after which any foreign substance is removed by sifting, when it is packed, ready for exportation, at three dollars and sixty cents per pecul. The proprietor was a very polite and good-natured old Chinaman; by-the-by, nearly all Chinamen are very good-natured: kick “John Chinaman,” and smile as you do it, and he will smile too; do it with a frown, and he becomes very indignant. The old fellow had the customary number of hogs, whose quarters, whatever may be said of the want of cleanliness of their celestial owner’s house, receive great attention.
Not far from here we went through the ward of a hospital for English sailors, and also another for Chinese, whose inmates were lying on elevated and inclined shelves, the victims of every terrible disease of the climate.
The Joss-house at Singapore is as fine, though it may be not as large, as any to be seen in China. An elaborately-designed and gaudily-ornamented pagoda, of colored porcelain, rises from its centre; its doorway is guarded by two gorgons dire, in a sitting posture, in whose snarling mouths large balls have been ingeniously carved, so that you may place your hand between the teeth and roll them about, yet the whole is cut from a block of blue flinty granite. The court and alley are paved with colored porcelain tiles, while the altar and the sleepy idol that fills its rear, are decorated expensively and fantastically. One of the wings of this temple, from which issued a more cook-shop than savory smell, I noticed was appropriated as a kind of popular restaurant, and filled with Chinamen down to the lower cooly, all seated at small tables, uttering their mushy jargon, and bolting with chop-sticks the boiled paddy. Their proximity to their “Joss-pigeon” neither restrained their appetites nor their noisiness. “John Chinaman” will tell you that “Joss” (a word which they are supposed to have gotten by a corruption of “Dios” from their Portuguese neighbors at Macao) is a very good man, but that there is no reason why he should have a large temple all to himself. Opposite the temple I saw the first Chinese “Sing-Song,” a street-theatre, made by the elevation of a staging of bamboos covered with mats. Upon “these our players,” gaudily attired, and accompanied by caterwauling instruments and “tom-toms,” appear to the infinite delight of their street auditors, who guffaw loud their approval, as they stand protected from the sun under their paper umbrellas.
At Singapore is the prison in which nearly all the convicts from the possessions of the English are confined, and a collection of more villanous visages could not be met with in the walls of any other jail. Those who have been convicted of murder, have the word “Doomga”—Hindostanee for their crime— branded on their forehead. Those who have been guilty of lesser offences are put into chain-gangs, and made to keep the road in order. There was one inmate, in the person of a negro, from Long Island, who had been sentenced for fifteen years.
Singapore was established by the English as a competitor for the trade of the Dutch at Batavia, in the East Indian Archipelago, and being declared a free port, has accomplished the desired result to a very great degree. Numbers of prahus, that can play pirating or trading as the opportunity presents, come there, bringing their commodities, but principally that they may get powder and shot, to play Lambro with neighboring Dyaks. It was founded in 1819, and settled with the consent of the rajah of Johore, a part of whose possessions it was. This rajah still receives a large annuity from the English, and resides in the vicinity of the place. With a friend I drove out to his place. The building was a plain one, fronted with a verandah, and the entrance ornamented with two little brass howitzers. We were received by the rajah’s son, who spoke a little English. He was gaudily attired in turban made by wrapping a parti-colored kerchief about the head, from his side hung a handsomely-mounted dagger, and he also sported a fine gold watch. His features were quite handsome for a Malay. We were ushered into an upper room, at one end of which, on a sofa, with his feet drawn up under him, similarly attired with himself, sat his father the rajah, and his brother whom we understood to be a “sultan” of some neighboring province or country. On the table in front of them lay their krisses, the hilts inlaid with costly jewels. They were quite jolly-looking old fellows, and had a great many questions to ask about the mission on which our ship was bound, &c., but the defective translation of his son made the business of answering a slow one. Before leaving him he caused tea and sweetmeats to be brought in, and joined us quite sociably. The next day his son paid us a visit aboard ship.
On the 29th of March, we left Singapore, and in a short time were heading our course in the China sea. On the 2d of April the heat became very oppressive. What little breeze moved on the water was aft, and the steamer moving faster than it, the windsails which led to the lower quarters of the ship afforded no comfort, and hung collapsed from their halyard. Some of our firemen; whose duties always severely onerous, but particularly so in those burning latitudes, fainted as they stood in the fire-room while feeding their furnaces. Such is the exhausting effect of the climate on those engaged by the peninsular and oriental steamers, that engineers and firemen, it is said, are rotated at intervals, with those engaged on the more healthy part of the route on the other side of the isthmus of Suez. The greatest mortality among them arises from diseases of the liver.
“All Fools’ Day” is not forgotten on shipboard. The better to remember it in the younger messes, it is set apart for the celebration of the caterer’s birthday (of course the caterer is born on that day); the table is spread in the best way, and not until the caterer’s health has been proposed in sherry—“a bumpers and no heel-taps”—and the wine-glasses emptied, does the choking sensation remind the uninitiated that he has bolted a wine-glass of rather strong whiskey.
In two or three days the weather suddenly changed to blanket temperature; we ran into a heavy head sea; the spray was chilly, and the sun sank as if in the cold gray of autumn. On the morning of the 6th April, the Ladrone islands appeared in sight, and we ran into a fleet of some three hundred Chinese fishing boats—we were off the shores of the Middle Kingdom. The sight of these awkward boats, with their build, showing what travellers to Cathay have called the celestial propensity to “reverse” everything, was an interesting one. But why say the Chinese reverse? They had a national existence, when these our moderns were not even in embryo; their laws had an existence long before the code of Lycurgus was promulged, and their hieroglyphic record goes away back to a period which our own sacred revelation does not compass, so it is we who reverse. John Chinaman knows that though the stern of his boat is broad and high; that its bow runs wedge-like and low; that his masts, instead of raking aft, lean forward; and if his boat, under sail, look as if she was going to run under, still that she has borne him safely when many a “ty-fung” blew. We wished a pilot, but in answer to the inquiry whether any could furnish one, they nodded assent, and held up fish and some rice. The weather being thick we ran in under one of the Ladrones and anchored for the night in thirty fathoms water, and fired a gun for a pilot. The next morning at daybreak, we ran in and anchored in the roadstead of the old Portuguese city of Macao, about four miles from the shore. Though the turbid water all around, and the naked islands that encompassed the anchorage, did not afford a prospect calculated to prepossess one with his first glance at the “Flowery Kingdom,” still we had a feeling of gladness that after an almost uninterrupted run of over four months we had reached our goal, or the region which was to be the theatre of our movements—yes, for months.
Our stoppage was short; after communicating with the navy store-keeper and the authorities ashore, receiving an official visit from the Portuguese captain of the port, and procuring a Chinese pilot, we lifted anchor, and stood over for the more flourishing English colonial town of Hong Kong. We reached this place after doubling through denuded steep islands, about seven o’clock in the evening. The ships of the East India squadron lying in the harbor, who having had some intimation of our proximity to the station by the mail-steamers from Ceylon, were on the qui vive for our approach. The old Mississippi, with the broad pennant at her masthead, no sooner emerged from behind the western point of the island, than the “Saratoga” and “Plymouth” sloops-of-war hoisted their numbers and saluted. The storeship, “Supply,” we also found there. Our ship was soon filled by brother American officers from the other ships, come to salute and welcome old friends, and hoping that the mail-bags we had from the United States, had brought each one “good news from home.” The meetings were so joyous and so cordial that we did not remember that they were taking place on the other side of the globe. Officers from the English and French men-of-war also came aboard to pay their respects.
The oriental salute seldom consists of more than three guns, and many of the natives of the East are unable to see why this number should be fired; they can not comprehend why you should burn in compliment the same material, which you would employ in sending deadly missiles at them, if in anger. But we, Christian nations, manage things differently; and the next day after our arrival told it: from the rising to the setting of the sun nearly, it was powder burning. Upon hoisting the colors at eight o’clock we saluted the town with twenty-one guns, and twenty-one were returned by a water-battery; the French saluted us and we saluted them; then came the admiral and commodorial salutes, English and French, which were returned in the old style by letting fall fore-top sails the while; and so that day the noise of one hundred and seventy-nine guns, broke and tumbled along the naked hills of Hong Kong, with nearly as splendid an effect as at St. Helena.