IN THE TROPICS.
We are among the dark-skinned races here. Chinamen are a darker yellow than those seen farther north, the Malays are a dark brown and Tamils are quite black, while the Singalese and Indians are between a black and brown. Mark Twain pays a high compliment to these dark-skinned people at the expense of the white races, contending that their complexion is always good, while the white face has freckles, pimples and moles to mar it.
There are two great seaports near the equator which every traveler visits, viz.: Singapore and Colombo, and most of the boats also stop at Penang, a thriving city on the Malay peninsula, some four hundred miles north of Singapore. Singapore is on a small island of the same name not far from the mainland, and its harbor is full of sea-going vessels of all nations. The ships from Europe to China and Japan call here, as do also the boats between Europe and Java and between India and Australia. Here, too, are to be found representatives of many nationalities, twenty-nine distinct languages being spoken in this one city. The Portuguese were the pioneers, and there are still some descendants of the early traders living on the island. Next in point of time came the Dutch, and their nation is still more numerously represented among the business firms. England, however, though a later arrival, has largely supplanted both in the control of the commerce of the port, though the Germans seem to be numerous.
Singapore and Penang are the great export ports for tin, three-fourths of the world's output for that product being mined near by. The United States takes ten and a half million dollars of tin from the Straits Settlements and six millions of other products and sells only $1,161,000 worth in return.
I might add in this connection that the trade possibilities of the tropics have been very much overestimated by enthusiastic expansionists. The natives raise their own food at a much lower cost than we could possibly sell it to them, even if our food were suited to their wants. They do not need our building material, and as for clothing, one American is worth more as a customer than a hundred of these natives. While a few wear rich robes, the mass content themselves with a very scanty costume of very cheap cotton—a costume which someone has described as "a handkerchief around the loins and a table cloth around the head." No shoe manufacturer need send a salesman to these parts, for even the coachman and footmen in livery are barefooted. I once supposed that we might work up a trade in breech clouts and fishing rods, but I find the latter grow here in profusion, and the former are not valuable enough to furnish a basis for much trade.
There is one branch of commerce that might be developed if this were not the home of the gem and if the natives were not skillful goldsmiths. Jewelry is the passion here. Women fairly load themselves down with ornaments when they can afford it. They wear rings on the fingers and toes, bracelets and anklets, ear ornaments galore and, strangest of all, jewels in the nose. We noticed one woman yesterday with three enormous pendants hanging from each ear, one from the top, one from the side and one from the lobe, and our coachman at Kandy was resplendent with six in either ear, but his jewelry was more modest in size. The nose ornaments look like shirt studs and are screwed into one or both nostrils; sometimes a ring hangs from the point of the nose. The necklaces vary greatly in style, workmanship and value. The island of Ceylon is rich in gems and furnishes a variety of stones for the jeweler's art. From the fact that nearly all of the precious stones mentioned in the Bible are to be found here it is thought that Ceylon must have been known to the Israelites and that her ships carried wealth to Solomon.