Singapore is a miniature Canton, and the visitor, as he passes through its streets, has an excellent opportunity of comparing the industry of the Chinese with that of other nations. As a free port, Singapore is open to immigration from all parts of the earth, on equal terms. There are no jealous laws, guilds, or monopolies, to shackle the limbs, or dampen the energy or enterprise of any one. Free competition is the presiding genius of the place. The climate is healthy—the English call it the Madeira of the East—and the European artisan can labor in it as well as the East Indian or the Chinese. All nations flock hither to trade, as has already been remarked. Now what is the result? Almost all the business of every description is in the hands of the Chinese. Large Chinese houses monopolize the trade, and the Chinese artisan and day-laborer have driven out all others. Ninety thousand of the one hundred thousand of the population are Chinese.
Now that the exclusiveness of China has been broken in upon, and emigration permitted, what a destiny awaits such a people in the workshops and fields of the western world! Already they are filling up the States on the Pacific coast, and silently, but surely, possessing themselves of all the avenues of industry in those States, thrusting aside the more expensive European and American laborers. They will cross the Rocky Mountains, and effect, in course of time, a similar revolution in the Western and Southern States. In the latter States their success will be most triumphant; for in these States, where the negro is the chief laborer, the competition will be between frugality, forecast, and industry on the one hand, and wastefulness, indifference to the future, and laziness on the other. The negro must, of necessity, disappear in such a conflict. Cheap labor must and will drive out dear labor. This law is as inexorable as any other of Nature’s laws. This is the probable fate, which the Puritan has prepared for his friend the negro, on the American continent. Our system of slavery might have saved his race from destruction—nothing else can.
The Governor of Singapore was a colonel in the British army. He had a small garrison of troops—no more, I believe, than a couple of companies—to police this large population. I sent an officer, as usual, to call on him and acquaint him with my wants and intention as to time of stay. Mr. Beaver, of the firm of Cumming, Beaver & Co., a clever English merchant, came on board, and offered to facilitate us all in his power, in the way of procuring supplies. I accepted his kind offer, and put him in communication with the paymaster, and the next day rode out, and dined, and spent a night with him at his country-seat. He lived in luxurious style, as do most European merchants in the East. The drive out took us through the principal streets of the city, which I found to be laid out and built with great taste—the edifices having a semi-English, semi-Oriental air. The houses of the better classes were surrounded by lawns and flower-gardens, and cool verandahs invited to repose. Mr. Beaver’s grounds were extensive, and well kept, scarcely so much as a stray leaf being visible on his well-mown lawns. His household—the lady was absent in England—was a pattern of neatness and comfort. His bath-rooms, bed-rooms, library, and billiard-room—all showed signs of superintendence and care, there being an air of cleanliness and neatness throughout, which one rarely ever sees in a bachelor establishment. His servants were all Chinese, and males. Chi-hi, and Hu-chin, and the rest of them, ploughed his fields, mowed his hay, stabled his horses, cooked his dinners, waited on his guests, washed his linen, made his beds, and marked his game of billiards; and all at a ridiculously low rate of hire. If there had been a baby to be nursed, it would have been all the same.
On my return to the city, next day, I lunched, by invitation, at the officers’ mess. English porter, ale, and cheese, cold meats, and a variety of wines were on the table. An English officer carries his habits all over the world with him, without stopping to consider climates. No wonder that so many of them return from the east with disordered hepatic arrangements.
When I returned to the ship, in the evening, I found that Kell and Galt had made such good use of their time, that everything was on board, and we should be ready for sea on the morrow. Our coaling had occupied us but ten hours—so admirable are the arrangements of the P. and O. Steamship Company, at whose wharf we had coaled. A pilot was engaged, and all the preparations made for an early start. There was nothing more to be done except to arrange a little settlement between the Queen and myself, similar to the one which had taken place at the Cape of Good Hope. As we were obliged to lie alongside of the wharf, for the convenience of coaling, it had been found impossible, in the great press and throng of the people who were still anxious to get a sight of my black giants, to prevent the sailors from having grog smuggled to them. When an old salt once gets a taste of the forbidden nectar, he is gone—he has no more power of resistance than a child. The consequence on the present occasion was, that a number of my fellows “left” on a frolic. We tracked most of them up, during the night, and arrested them—without asking any aid of the police, this time—and brought them on board. One of the boozy fellows dived under the wharf, and played mud-turtle for some time, but we finally fished him out. When we came to call the roll, there were half a dozen still missing. A number of applications had been made to us by sailors who wanted to enlist, but we had hitherto resisted them all. We were full, and desired no more. Now, however, the case was altered, and the applications being renewed after the deserters had run off—for sailors are a sort of Freemasons, and soon learn what is going on among their craft—we permitted half a dozen picked fellows to come on board, to be shipped as soon as we should get out into the Strait.
The next morning, bright and early, the Alabama was under way, steaming through the Strait of Malacca. At half-past eleven A. M., “sail ho!” was cried from the mast, and about one P. M., we came up with an exceedingly American-looking ship, which, upon being hove to by a gun, hoisted the English colors. Lowering a boat, I sent Master’s Mate Fullam, one of the most intelligent of my boarding-officers, and who was himself an Englishman, on board to examine her papers. These were all in due form—were undoubtedly genuine, and had been signed by the proper custom-house officers. The register purported that the stranger was the British ship Martaban, belonging to parties in Maulmain, a rice port in India. Manifest and clearance corresponded with the register; the ship being laden with rice, and having cleared for Singapore—of which port, as the reader sees, she was within a few hours’ sail. Thus far, all seemed regular and honest enough, but the ship was American—having been formerly known as the Texan Star—and her transfer to British owners, if made at all, had been made within the last ten days, after the arrival of the Alabama in these seas had become known at Maulmain. Mr. Fullam, regarding these circumstances as at least suspicious, requested the master of the ship to go on board the Alabama with him, that I might have an opportunity of inspecting his papers in person. This the master declined to do. I could not, of course, compel an English master to come on board of me, and so I was obliged to go on board of him—and I may state, by the way, that this was the only ship I ever boarded personally during all my cruises.
I could not but admire the beautiful, “bran new” English flag, as I pulled on board, but, as before remarked, every line of the ship was American—her long, graceful hull, with flaring bow, and rounded stern, taunt masts with sky-sail poles, and square yards for spreading the largest possible quantity of canvas. Passing up the side, I stepped upon deck. Here everything was, if possible, still more American, even to the black, greasy cook, who, with his uncovered woolly head, naked breast, and uprolled sleeves in the broiling sun, was peeling his Irish potatoes for his codfish. I have before remarked upon the national features of ships. These features are as well marked in the interior organism, as in the exterior. The master received me at the gangway, and, after I had paused to take a glance at things on deck, I proceeded with him into his cabin, where his papers were to be examined. His mates were standing about the companion-way, anxious, of course, to know the fate of their ship. If I had had any doubts before, the unmistakable persons of these men would have removed them. In the person of the master, the long, lean, angular-featured, hide-bound, weather-tanned Yankee skipper stood before me. Puritan, May-Flower, Plymouth Rock, were all written upon the well-known features. No amount of English custom-house paper, or sealing-wax could, by any possibility, convert him into that rotund, florid, jocund Briton who personates the English shipmaster. His speech was even more national—taking New England to be the Yankee nation—than his person; and when he opened his mouth, a mere novice might have sworn that he was from the “State of Maine”—there, or thereabouts. When he told me that I “hadn’t-ought-to” burn his ship, he pronounced the shibboleth which condemned her to the flames.
The shrift was a short one. When the papers were produced, I found among them no bill of sale or other evidence of the transfer of the property—the register of an English ship, as every seaman knows, not being such evidence. His crew list, which had been very neatly prepared, was a mute but powerful witness against him. It was written, throughout, signatures and all, in the same hand—the signatures all being as like as two peas. After glancing at the papers, and making these mental observations as I went along, I asked the master a few questions. As well as I recollect, he was from Hallowell, Maine. His ship had been two years in the East Indies, trading from port to port; and, as before remarked, had only been transferred within a few days. The freshly painted assumed name on her stern was scarcely dry. The master had sat with comparative composure during this examination, and questioning, evidently relying with great confidence upon his English flag and papers; but when I turned to him, and told him that I should burn his ship, he sprang from his chair, and said with excited manner and voice—“You dare not do it, sir; that flag—suiting the action to the word, and pointing with his long, bony finger up the companion-way to the flag flying from his peak—won’t stand it!” “Keep cool, captain,” I replied, “the weather is warm, and as for the flag, I shall not ask it whether it will stand it or not—the flag that ought to be at your peak, will have to stand it, though.” In half an hour, or as soon as the crew could pack their duds, and be transferred to the Alabama, the Texan Star—alias the Martaban—was in flames; the beautiful, new English ensign being marked with the day, and latitude and longitude of the capture, and stowed away carefully by the old signal-quartermaster, in the bag containing his Yankee flags.
The cargo was bona fide English property, and if the owner of it, instead of combining with the master of the ship to perpetrate a fraud upon my belligerent rights, had contented himself with putting it on board under the American flag, properly documented as British property, he might have saved it, and along with it, the ship; as, in that case, I should have been obliged to bond her. But when I had stripped off the disguise, and the ship stood forth as American, unfortunately for the owner of the cargo, no document could be presented to show that it was English; for the very attempt to document it would have exposed the fraud. Unfortunate Englishman! He had lost sight of the “copy” he had been used to transcribe at school—“Honesty is the best policy.”
It was still early in the afternoon when we resumed our course, and gave the ship steam. After a few hours had elapsed, and Captain Pike—for this was the name of the master of the captured ship—had realized that his ship was no more, I sent for him, into my cabin, and directing my clerk to produce writing materials, we proceeded to take his formal deposition; preliminary to which, my clerk administered to him the usual oath. I felt pretty sure now of getting at the truth, for I had resorted to a little arrangement for this purpose quite common in the courts of law—I had released the interest of the witness. As soon, therefore, as the witness was put upon the stand, I said to him:—“Now, captain, when you and I had that little conversation in your cabin, you had hopes of saving your ship, and, moreover, what you said to me was not under oath. You were, perhaps, only practising a pardonable ruse de guerre. But now the case is altered. Your ship being destroyed, you have no longer any possible interest in misstating the truth. You are, besides, under oath. Be frank; was, or was not, the transfer of your ship a bona fide transaction?” After a moment’s reflection he replied:—“I will be frank with you, captain. It was not a bona fide transaction. I was alarmed when I heard of your arrival in the East Indies, and I resorted to a sham sale in the hope of saving my ship.” Upon this answer being recorded, the court adjourned.