We didn’t stay long here, but rode out in what they called a Jherry lookin’ like a dry goods box drawed by a couple of ponies.
Josiah sez to me, “I am glad that the Malay coolers wear a little more than the Japans.” And the coolies here did wear besides their red loin cloth a narrer strip of white cotton cloth hangin’ over their left shoulders. Our hotel wuz a very comfortable one; it consisted of several buildin’s two stories high connected by covered halls; it wuz surrounded by handsome trees and beautiful ornamental shrubbery and flowers.
The wide verandas wuz very pleasant, with their bamboo chairs and couches and little tables where you could have tea served. Birds of the most beautiful plumage soared and sung in the trees, and butterflies that looked like flowers on wings fluttered about. You can’t tell men from wimmen by their clothes. They all wear earrings and bracelets and nose-rings. Josiah sez to me:
“I have always said, Samantha, that men didn’t dress gay enough; a few bracelets and breastpins and earrings would add to a man’s looks dretfully, and I mean to set the fashion in Jonesville. It would take ten years offen my age. Jest see how proud the men walk; they feel that they’re dressed up; it gives ’em a lofty look.”
The men did seem to have a different gait from the females; the wimmen looked more meek and meachin. We didn’t stay long in Saigon, but we visited the Whampoo garders and found that they were perfectly beautiful, made by Mr. Whampoo, a rich Chinaman. There wuz fifty acres under most perfect cultivation. Here the Chinese fad of dwarfing and training trees wuz carried to perfection; there 227 wuz trees trained into all sorts of shapes. One wuz a covered carriage about three feet high, with a horse, all tree, but natural as life; and then there wuz pagodas and men and wimmen and animals and birds all growin’ and havin’ to be trimmed by the patient Chinese gardener. The tree they can use best is a evergreen with a little leaf and a white flower not much bigger than the head of a pin. But there wuz not only every tropical tree you could think on, palm, cocoanut, nutmeg, cinnamon, tea, coffee, and clove bush, but trees and plants from every part of the world, some from America.
Here wuz a Victoria lily in its full beauty, the dark green leaves edged with brown and red, as big round as our washtub, and turned up on the edges about two inches. Each plant has one leaf and one flower. And we see the most lovely orchids here; Dorothy thought them the most beautiful of all. Well, in a day or two we sot out for Ceylon’s isle.
As we drew nigh to Ceylon I sez to Josiah: “Did you ever expect, Josiah Allen, to feel
“‘The balmy breezes
That blow from Ceylon’s Isle
Where every prospect pleases,