October 12th.—The heat is something dreadful, and I had to converse with Mr. Rousseau. After tiffin I shut myself up, having decided to keep to my cabin for the remainder of the voyage, until we reached Singapore.
Towards evening we approached the great Hindoo-Chinese city. We are now in the neighbourhood of the equator, at the distance of half a degree only. We have the pilot on board, because this port is dangerous, many vessels having perished here. We entered the bay with some difficulty, and passed before the wreck of a ship. We dropped anchor amongst a number of steamers of different nationalities. The harbour is beautiful and traversed in all directions by canoes mounted by natives, whose want of dress amused me: it was a mere fig-leaf of coloured rag.
CHAPTER LXXXI
SINGAPORE
Our captain had sent a boat ashore to warn the authorities of our arrival. We were afraid we should be in quarantine owing to the plague raging at the time in India. We had to undergo a sanitary inspection and waited a long time for the doctor. At last, a boat flying a yellow flag, bearing the inscription: “Health Officer,” came off to us. It contained the port-doctor. It is dreadful if we have to perform a quarantine! It’s all right. The native passengers only passed the ordeal of medical examination. They showed their tongues and their eyelids to the doctor, and after he had examined the state of their health, we were permitted to land. We were instantly surrounded by a whole fleet of junks full of howling natives, who attacked our boat offering their different wares insistingly in funny English: “You bye laidee, veree nice, you bye!” Naked bronze-coloured boys, screaming out “A la mer!” dived into the water after the coins dropped overboard by passengers, and came to the surface smiling, holding the coins between their teeth. They won’t trouble themselves to search for coppers, and discover them in the deep with their lynx eyes.
We were in a dense crowd of Hindoos, Negroes and half-castes, when we stepped on shore. Enterprising natives attacked us, each of them seeming determined to carry some portion of us away with them. They were not ruffians demanding our money or our lives, as they seemed doing, but were simply peaceable porters and guides, hoping to earn an honest penny. An elegant victoria drawn by a pair of fine horses, with a native coachman—wearing a red fez—on the box, was placed at our disposal by a rich rajah, but I preferred to drive to the Hôtel d’Europe in a carriage belonging to our Consul,—Mr. Kleimenoff,—drawn by a pacific pony. The Consul’s “Kawass,” a negro of the blackest black, wearing on his shoulder a belt with the Russian arms—the double eagle—embroidered on it, was sitting on the box. We are again on British territory. The names of the streets and all the sign-boards are written in English. Every nationality seemed to be represented in the streets: all shades of black, brown and yellow—Chinese, Malays, Hindoos and Europeans from all countries. The Hindoos are slender and handsome men, with firm polished bodies like bronze statuettes. The negroes are also splendid specimens of manhood, robust and square-built; they wear round their necks, arms and legs silver bands ornamented with coral beads. Both sexes walk about in the streets in the primitive simplicity of nature, naked and unashamed. The women with silver rings in their nostrils and clinking bangles round their arms and ankles, wear nothing above the waist and not much below. They grow old very early, and at the age of twenty look forty at least. Little black children, resembling each other as two drops of ink, are playing in the tropical sunlight in the dust. Good-looking English soldiers promenade, stick in hand, and English officials drive importantly in victorias.
The Hôtel d’Europe is composed of several separate pavilions, with high ceilinged bare rooms, with white-washed walls and mat-covered floors. The hotel is draughty and perfectly adapted to the tropics. The doors do not touch the floor and the ceilings and the walls between each room are also open at the top, leaving an interval for the air to circulate freely; every sound, therefore, is heard in the next apartment.
October 13th.—After tiffin, we went to the Botanic Gardens, the most wonderful in the world, a vision of loveliness. I had not eyes enough to admire it properly. On our way back we passed the race-courses and saw a line of smart carriages standing on the road. The race days in Singapore resemble Sunday in London, nothing can be got in the city, all the shops and banks are closed.
October 14th.—Our Consul gave us to-day a first rate dinner. His house is very stylish: all his servants are christened Chinamen, who have come from Pekin, where they form a large colony. Their ancestors were Cossacks taken prisoners by the Chinese in the seventeenth century.
October 15th.—To-day, we start for Java, in the Dutch East Indies, on the Godavéri a steamboat of the Méssageries Maritimes. The ship makes the trip in thirty-six hours. What a chance to see the most beautiful country in the world! The voyage will not be a pleasant one however, because we are sure to be roasted alive, our cabin being on the sunny side. The captain, fat and jovial, is a weather-beaten experienced old seaman, who has had long practice in these far away waters; it is twenty-five years already that he has plied between Singapore and Java, fighting with the waves. The gallant old mariner has hoisted the Russian flag in our honour. The passengers for the greater part are Dutchmen, and half-castes (a cross-breed between Dutch colonists and Japanese.)