The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

II.] SINGAPORE. 17miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry goods are to befound, and where many things are sold wonderfully cheap. Youmay buy gimlets at a penny each, white cotton thread at fourballs for a halfpenny, and i:)enknives, corkscrews, gunjDowder,writing-pajjer, and many other articles as cheap or cheaper thanyou can purchase them in England. The shopkeeiDer is verygood-natured ; he will show you everything he has, and doesnot seem to mind if you buy nothing. He bates a little, but notso much as the Klings, who almost always ask twice Aviiat theyare willing to take. If you buy a few things of him, he willspeak to you afterwards every time you pass his shop, askingyou to walk in and sit down, or take a cup of tea, and youwonder how he can get a living where so many sell the sametrifling articles. The tailors sit at a table, not on one ; and boththey and the shoemakers work well and cheaply. The barbershave plenty to do, shaving heads and cleaning ears ; for whichlatter operation they have a great array of little tweezers, picks,and brushes. In the outskirts of the town are scores of carpentersand blacksmiths. The former seem chiefly to makecoffins and highly jjainted and decorated clothes-boxes. Thelatter are mostly gun-makers, and bore the barrels of guns byhand, out of solid bars of iron. At this tedious operation theymay be seen every day, and they manage to finish off" a gun witha flint lock very handsomely. All about the streets are sellersof water, vegetables, fruit, soup, and agar-agar (a jelly made ofseaweed), who have many cries as unintelligible as those ofLondon. Others carry a portable cooking-apparatus on a polebalanced by a tal)le at the other end, and serve up a meal ofshell-fish, rice, and vegetables for two or three halfi^ence ; whilecoolies and boatmen waiting to be hired are everywhere to bemet with.In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest treesin the jungle, and saw them uj) into planks ; they cultivatevegetables, which they bring to market ; and they grow- pepperand gambir, which form important articles of export. TheFrench Jesuits have established missions among these inlandChinese, which seem very successful. I lived for several weeksat a time with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the centre ofthe island, w^here a pretty church has been built and thei'e areabout 300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who hadjust arrived from Tonquin, where he had been living for manyyears. The Jesuits still do their work thoroughly as of old. InCochin China, Tonquin, and China, where all Christian teachersare obliged to live in secret, and are liable to persecution, expulsion,and sometimes death,' every jDrovince, even those farthestin the interior, has a permanent Jesuit mission establisliment,constantly kept up by fresh aspirants, who are taught the languagesof the countries they are going to at Penang or Singapore.In China there are said to be near a million converts ; in1 Since the French settlement in Cochin China this is no longer the case.C