INDIA TWENTY YEARS AGO.

but even that most thoughtless of all human beings, a British midshipman for such I then was could not but remark the signs of vitality and active commercial enterprise which have since borne such good fruits. Perhaps this struck one all the more when coming from Ceylon and Hindostan, as we had done. There, it was true, the stranger from Europe could not but observe the air of English comfort and well-to-do which pervaded everything; but, somehow or other, it struck one as being wonderfully stagnated: the feeling that India was highly respectable, highly conservative, but very much mildewed and very much astern of the world, forced itself equally on the mind. Steam was still an agent which Indian quid-nuncs questioned the success of in India, whatever it might do elsewhere. A solitary steamer, the "Diana," was almost as much a curiosity to the European residents of the Straits of Malacca as she was to the Malays or Chinese; and poor Lieut. Waghorn, of our navy, had not yet enlightened Leadenhall by showing them the advantages of the Overland Route; indeed, it was nothing unusual, even at that time, to receive letters five months old, and to consider oneself remarkably lucky in getting such late intelligence. Now, if a letter was as many weeks old, the merchant of Sin

SINGAPORE IN THE MONTH OF MAY.

3

gapore would complain of the irregularities of the mail boats.

However, it is with Singapore of the past I have to deal. Before the town, and at the distance of a mile from it, lay numerous huge junks, all glittering with white and red and green and black; their strange eyes staring with all the vacuity of a Chinaman, and apparently wondering how they would ever find their way to China. Thither they were now bound, with the strength of the south-west monsoon to blow them, "viénto a pópa,” into the ports of the provinces of Quantung and Fokien, whence they had come with clandestine emigrants, teas, and silks, and sugars, aided by the north-east monsoon of the previous winter. Many Many a goodly yard of Manchester cottons, and manufactures by the ton of English handicraft, now filled their capacious holds. On their main-mast heads, which mast was, as usual, one long spar of stupendous girth, a most original arrangement in the shape of a dogvane had been fixed, and from it long heavy, silken streamers waved in the hot sky. Around these vessels floated "full many a rood" their long rattan cables, and I began almost to believe in the sailor's story of a Chinaman's anchor floating, when I saw their cables do so, and that the anchors of their

4

PRAHUS. SINGAPORE BOATS.

largest vessels were constructed of wood. Unearthly cries, resembling swine in distress, issued from these ponderous arks, and evidently meant for songs by their sailors, as they hoisted in the long-boats preparatory to going to sea.

Within these junks, in comparison with which we looked uncommonly small, were thousands of prahus of every size and form, stretching away into a narrow and shoal harbour which lies to the right of the town. They were traders from every port of the Archipelago; they had held a constant floating fair until very lately, and had disposed of their wares, completed return cargoes, and would likewise shortly depart for their different destinations. A merchant assured us, that as many as 4000 of these vessels had arrived during the past monsoon; and, but for the Dutch interference and jealousy, many more would visit Singapore yearly. Skimming about amongst these vessels of curious forms and still more curious rigs, there were hundreds of boats in whose shape the ingenuity of man seemed to be exhausted in inventing bodies, intended for propulsion through the water, which should differ as much as possible from each other. The Singapore sampan decidedly carried off the palm for beauty and fleetness, approaching, in sharpness of outline and the chances of drowning

MINIATURE JUNKS.

5

the sitters, to one of our above-bridge racing wherries on the Thames: two Malay rowers, each pulling a single broad-bladed oar, could in these sampans beat our fleetest gig. Then, in contradistinction to these, came the Chinese boat-from which the name "sampan" had, I believe, been derived a perfect miniature junk, except that she had no deck; painted with ports along the side, and green, white, red, and black eyes in the bow. In the large ones of this description, which evidently belonged to the junks in the offing, the crews sometimes amounted to twelve or sixteen persons; but in those which belonged to Singapore, and merely served as a means of communication between the vessels and the shore- or in some cases were owned by fishermen of the place the pigmy junk was invariably rowed by one man. In all, however, whether big Chinese sampans or small ones, the mode of rowing was alike. The descendants of Confucius, differing from the Europeans in that as in every other respect, instead of sitting down to their oars, when rowing they always stand up; instead of being before their oars, they are always abaft them; and instead of the rowers facing aft, they always face forward. The form of the sampan and junk is, of course, that of the model, a slipper ;

6

CHINESE LEGEND.

and that not a lady's one either, but a good broadtoed, broad-heeled, broad-soled one, a good oldfashioned list slipper, in short. In case the reader should not have heard the legend upon the authority of which rests the fact that the slipper became the model for the Chinese ship-builders and waterman's companies, I may as well tell him that, in the time of that wise monarch who walled off China from the rest of the world by land,― between two and three hundred years before the birth of Christ, and about the time Alexander the Great invaded Persia-I like to be particular about dates!-the Chinese shipbuilders gave a great deal of anxiety to the heavendescended monarch by introducing clippers, copper bottomed ships, and other abominable innovations — which quite threatened to subvert his wise intentions of keeping the Flowery Land free from the contamination of strangers. One day the monarch, pressed down with anxiety as to how his plans for the suppression of navigation in general were to be carried out, sat in public divan at Pekin to hear, as was the wont in those days, the petitions of his people. There was a rush through the crowd, and a subject with a wooden model under his arm threw himself at the monarch's feet, rapping his head most devotedly upon the steps of the imperial throne; he