of Chinese vessels. The junks come down from the China seas with the northeast
moonsoon, and remain in port, retailing their cargoes of teas, silks, and
other products, until the southwest moonsoon is fairly set in, when they return
to prepare for another voyage, and thus keep up a succession of periodical
trading visits. They bring large numbers of enterprising Chinese emigrants,
together with abundant supplies of dollars, teas, silks, chinaware, tobacco,
cassia, nankeens, gold thread, and the thousand “ nicknackeries ” of cunning
invention for which Chinese ingenuity is famous. They take back the pernicious
opium, edible birds’ nests, and various articles of European manufacture.
The town of Singapore is built upon an island, separated from the Malay
peninsula by a narrow and scarcely navigable strait. The ancient capital of
the Malayan Kingdom, or, as it was sometimes called, the Kingdom of Malacca,
formerly stood upon the site of the present town. This old city was
built in the twelfth century, and conquered by a chief from Java, who transferred
the royal residence to Malacca. From that period its population and
wealth gradually declined, so that in 1819, when the English took possession,
there were but few vestiges of the former city, which indeed had become but
a haunt for pirates, where, as well as in the neighboring islands and passages,
they found a secure retreat from the vessels of the English and the Dutch
sent in pursuit of them. The natives still offer for sale models of the various
descriptions of the Malay war, pirate, and sailing proas; and most of them
present exceedingly beautiful specimens of graceful form. So much was the
Commodore struck with the beauty of the model of the sailing proa that he
purposed sending one home to the New York yacht club.
The town bears all the appearance of being in a most prosperous condition
; its port, as we have said, is always crowded with shipping, and its traders
are thriving and wealthy. Marine storehouses are seen throughout the
place, but chiefly alQng the front of the harbor and upon the quay. The
principal merchants occupy commodious and tasteful residences, built fronting
the bay. There is a striking contrast in the dwellings of those who have
settled in this thriving place, between the elegant and convenient town and
country houses of the colonial officials and merchants, and the ill ventilated
and filthy domiciles of the Chinese, or the frail tenements of the Malays.
The latter ordinarily select some marshy ground in the suburbs, near a road
or pathway, and rear upon piles their wooden houses, the only entrance to
which is by means of temporary bridges, often constructed of a single plank.
The prosperity of Singapore, so apparent even to the casual observer, is
mainly to be attributed to the sagacious and energetic Sir Stamford Raffles,
who pursued with untiring zeal, in spite of the opposition of many in higher
authority, his determined purpose of carrying out his favorite projects
of policy in the administration of the colony.
The population at the period of the Mississippi’s visit was estimated at