in every district. As is the case with ourselves, some of these are purely governmental charities, while others are supported by liberal endowments left by deceased citizens. There are depots established to dispense medicines among the poor, and others whence clothing is distributed free of cost. It must be remembered that these societies and organizations are not copied from Western models. They have existed here from time immemorial.
No one has ever been able to trace any affinity between the Chinese language and that of any other people, ancient or modern. It is absolutely unique. No other nation except the Japanese has ever borrowed from it, or mingled any of its elements with its own. It must have originated from the untutored efforts of a primitive people. Like the Egyptian tongue, it was at first probably composed of hieroglyphics, expressing ideas by pictured objects, which in the course of time became systematized into letters or signs expressive of sounds and words.
A CHINESE CART.
Though we may dislike the Chinese, it is not wise to shut our eyes to facts which have passed into history. They have long been a reading and a cultured people. Five hundred years before the art of printing was known to Europe, books were multiplied by movable types in China. Every province has its separate history in print, and reliable maps of each section of the country are extant. The civil code of laws is annually corrected and published, a certain degree of education is universal, and eight-tenths of the people can read and write. The estimate in which letters are held is shown by the fact that learning forms the very threshold that leads to fame, honor, and official position. The means of internal communication between one part of China and another are scarcely superior to those of Africa. By and by, however, railways will revolutionize this. Gold and silver are found in nearly every province of the Empire, while the central districts contain the largest coal-fields upon the globe. Nearly one-fourth of the human race is supposed to be comprised within the Chinese Empire. They look to the past, not to the future, and the word "progress" has apparently to them no real significance.
In travelling through portions of the country a depressing sense of monotony is the prevailing feeling one experiences, each section is so precisely like another. There is no local individuality. Their veritable records represent this people as far back as the days of Abraham, and, indeed, they antedate that period. In two important discoveries they long preceded Europe; namely, that of the magnetic compass and the use of gunpowder. The knowledge of these was long in travelling westward through the channels of Oriental commerce, by the way of Asia Minor. There are many antagonistic elements to consider in judging of the Chinese. The common people we meet in the ordinary walks of life are far from prepossessing, and are much the same as those who have emigrated to this country. One looks in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in their place there is plenty of apparent cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. With the Japanese the traveller feels himself constantly sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters their houses and drinks tea with them; but not so with the Chinese. In place of affiliation we realize a constant sense of repulsion.
We embark at Hong Kong for Singapore by the way of the China Sea and the Gulf of Siam. The northerly wind favors us, causing the ship to rush through the turbulent waters like a race-horse. The Philippine Islands are passed, and leaving Borneo on our port-bow as we draw near to the Equatorial Line, the ship is steered due west for the mouth of the Malacca Straits. Off the Gulf of Siam we are pretty sure to get a view of a water-spout, and it is to be hoped that it may be a goodly distance from us. Atmospheric and ocean currents meet here, from the China Sea northward, from the Malacca Straits south and west, and from the Pacific Ocean eastward, mingling off the Gulf of Siam, and causing, very naturally, a confusion of the elements, resulting sometimes in producing these wind and water phenomena. A water-spout is a miniature cyclone, an eddy of the wind rotating with such velocity as to suck up a column of water from the sea to the height of one or two hundred feet. This column of water appears to be largest at the top and bottom, and contracted in the middle. If it were to fall foul of a ship and break, it would surely wreck and submerge her. Modern science shows that all storms are cyclonic; that is, they are circular eddies of wind of greater or less diameter. The power of these cyclones is more apparent upon the sea than upon the land, where the obstruction is naturally greater. Yet we know how destructive they sometimes prove in our Western States.
Singapore is the chief port of the Malacca Straits, and is an island lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese at Singapore. They dominate the Strait settlements, monopolizing all branches of small trade, while the natives are lazy and listless, true children of the equatorial regions. Is it because Nature is here so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific, that her children are sluggish, dirty, and heedless? It would seem to require a less propitious climate, a sterile soil, and rude surroundings to awaken human energy and to place man at his best. The common people are seen almost naked, and those who wear clothes at all, affect the brightest colors. The jungle is dense, tigers abound, and men, women, and children are almost daily killed and eaten by them.
It is easy to divine the merchantable products of the island from the nature of the articles which are seen piled up for shipment upon the wharves, consisting of tapioca, cocoanut oil, gambia, tin ore, indigo, tiger-skins, coral, gutta-percha, hides, gums, and camphor.
There is no winter or autumn here, no sere and yellow leaf period, but seemingly a perpetual spring, with a temperature almost unvarying; new leaves always swelling from the bud, flowers always in bloom, the sun rising and setting within five minutes of six o'clock during the entire year. Singapore enjoys a soft breeze most of the day from across the Bay of Bengal, laden with fragrant sweetness from the spice-fields of Ceylon.
Each place we visit has its peculiar local pictures. Here, small hump-backed oxen are seen driven about at a lively trot in place of horses. Pedlers roam the streets selling drinking-water, with soup, fruit, and a jelly made from sugar and sea-weed, called agar-agar. Native houses are built upon stilts to keep out the snakes and tigers. The better class of people wear scarlet turbans and white cotton skirts; others have parti-colored shawls round their heads, while yellow scarfs confine a cotton wrap about the waist. Diminutive horses drag heavy loads, though themselves scarcely bigger than large dogs. Itinerant cooks, wearing a wooden yoke about their necks, with a cooking apparatus on one end, and a little table to balance it on the other, serve meals of fish and rice upon the streets to laborers and boatmen, for a couple of pennies each. Money has here, as in most Eastern countries, a larger purchasing power than it has with us in the West. The variety of fruit is greater than in China or Japan, and there are one or two species, such as the delicious mangosteen, which are found indigenous in no other region.
The stranger, upon landing at Singapore, is hardly prepared to find such excellent modern institutions as exist here. Among them are an attractive museum, a public library, a Protestant cathedral, a hospital, public schools, and a fine botanical garden. The island belongs to the English government, having been purchased by it so long ago as 1819, from the Sultan of Johore—wise forethought, showing its importance as a port of call between England and India.
A two days' sail through waters which seem at night like a sea of phosphorescence, every ripple producing flashes of light, will take us to the island of Penang, the most northerly port of the Straits. It resembles Singapore in its people, vegetation, and climate, enjoying one long, unvarying summer. While the birds and butterflies are in perfect harmony with the loveliness of nature, while the flowers are glorious in beauty and in fragrance, man alone seems out of place in this region. Indolent, dirty, unclad, he does nothing to improve such wealth of possibilities as nature spreads broadcast only in equatorial islands. He does little for himself, nothing for others, while the sensuous life he leads poisons his nature, so that virtue