MALAY BOY IN THE BIRD-MARKET.
"One of the curious things that we saw was the poultry-market. Poultry includes a great deal more here than at home: as we found not only chickens, ducks, geese, and other familiar things, but a great variety of pigeons, quails, pheasants, and other edible birds from the forest. Then there was an abundance of parrots, lories, cockatoos, and paroquets, besides other birds whose names we did not know. Such a screaming and cackling you never heard in your life. The heat is so great at Singapore that everything to be eaten must be sold alive, as it would begin to decay in a very short time after being slaughtered. Most of the chickens were in coops, or tied together by the legs; and the same was the case with the geese and ducks.
"The parrots, and members of their family, were generally secured by strings to little perches, and they kept up an incessant chattering in the Malay and other Oriental tongues. One was offered to us that spoke English; but, as his vocabulary consisted only of a half-dozen words of profanity, that had been taught to him by a sailor, we declined to purchase. A crowd of men and boys surrounded us with birds in their hands, and on their heads and shoulders; all talked at once, and offered their birds at very low prices. We could have bought paroquets for twenty-five cents; and a talking-parrot, very large, and white as snow, was offered for six dollars, and could have been had for three. How they manage to find a market for all the birds they bring to Singapore it is difficult to imagine.
"You may be interested to know how these birds are brought here, and where they come from. They are from the many islands south of Singapore that form the Malay Archipelago, and they are brought by the natives on speculation. When the south-west monsoon begins, a family starts in its little boat for a voyage of from one to three thousand miles; and the boat is one in which an American would be unwilling to risk a voyage from New York to Boston. They run along from port to port, trading a little wherever they can, and ultimately reach Singapore. The boat has a deck, with a slight awning of woven grass, and is covered with the family and birds—the latter being numbered sometimes by the hundred. In the hold they have shells, feathers, spices, and other products, and they are constantly making exchanges at the places they visit. They sell their cargoes at Singapore, and buy a lot of cotton-cloth, hardware, and other things that are in demand where they live, and then go back as they came. This accounts for the large number of birds exposed for sale in the poultry-market, and the low prices they are held at.
HEAD OF BLACK COCKATOO.
"Among the birds offered to us there was a black cockatoo, with a splendid head and crest. His bill had a point like a needle, and was very large and strong. We wondered how he could eat, and what he lived on, as the shape of his bill and his lower jaw seemed the most awkward that one could imagine. We asked his owner to feed the bird, and gave him a few cents to show us how the operation of eating was performed.
"The man brought a triangular nut which had a smooth surface, and was so hard that we could not crack it without a hammer. The bird took the nut endwise in his bill; he held it in place by pressing his tongue against it, and then began sawing across it with his lower jaw.
"When he had cut a deep notch in this way, he turned the nut a little, and used the underjaw as a wedge to break off the end. Then he held the nut in one claw, and with the sharp point of his bill he picked out the kernel; and as fast as he brought a bit of it to the light, he seized it with his long tongue. Whether the bird was created for the nut, or the nut for the bird, is a question for the naturalists; at all events, each seems to be perfectly adapted to the other. The fitness of the cockatoo's beak to the process of opening this hard product of the forest is as exact as it could be made.