gleaming teeth. They were quite as much at home in water as out, and that at the time we met them they chanced to be in a boat was a pure accident. We got up a race for them, six boats entering for a good long course round a buoy and back. The tide was running very strongly, and as they got into its course they were swept off, making the goal seem hopeless. One boat, caught abeam by a wave, filled, and was on the point of sinking. But the young Malays abated not one jot of their efforts with the sculls. As they tugged with their arms, they kicked out the water with their feet, and having thus baled the boat dry, soon made up the way they had lost whilst water-logged. The race was as fine a one as I ever saw, not a boat's length between any as they came back still fighting with the mighty current. The prizes were delivered in unusual fashion. The money was chucked into the sea, and the youngsters darting overboard appropriated it.

The Malays are natives of Singapore, but it is the Chinese who work the place. Since the business of pirating has been discountenanced, the Malay seems to have lost all taste and energy for work. If need be he will labour for his daily bread, but as his necessities are cheaply provided for, the amount of work

got out of him is not exhaustive. What he likes to do best, or rather the kind of work which he least abhors, is fishing, a gentlemanly avocation in which occur long pauses for rest. When he has caught enough fish to provide himself with a meal, and a little over to barter for rice, he goes home, having reached the utmost limits of the day's work. His home is a dark and dirty hut, built upon piles over water, if water be conveniently at hand; if not, then over mud. The notion of building a house with its foundations set in dry land is an incomprehensible thing to the Malay. Well-to-do people of his race live down by the wharfs, with the piles standing in real water. That is the West End of the Malay social settlement. Poor people, who live where they must, still have their houses built on piles, but there is only mud underneath, or, with the lowest scale of all, absolutely dry land.

The Chinese have overrun the whole of the Malay peninsula and adjacent parts. But for them British interests in the Straits of Malacca, which on the eve of the general election of 1874 excited Mr. Disraeli's misgiving (and were never after alluded to), would be in straitened circumstances. Englishmen cannot live and labour in these tropical climes.

The Malay lives and will not labour. The Chinese does both, with cheerful shining countenance, and prospers exceedingly. Chinamen work in the coffee and sugar plantations, and own some of them. They keep the shops, sail the ships, and own these too. Looking out over the busy harbour of Penang from the verandah of the club-house, a resident specially well informed in the matter told me that nearly all the fleet then at anchor belonged to Chinamen. The P. and O., the British India, and other sea-going fleets appropriate the big loaves. The Chinamen pick up the crumbs that fall from their tables, and thrive upon them. They have coasting steamers running to places, the precise locality of which is more absolutely unknown to the average Englishman than was that of the Straits of Malacca, when Mr. Disraeli sprung the sounding phrase on a bewildered nation and an astonished Government. If there is no trade to begin with, they make it, foster its growth, and when once they get a hold on the place, no one can get them out.

A marvellous people, the Chinese, who now quietly and unobtrusively play an important part in the history of the world, and are doubtless destined to fulfil more striking ones. They are a nation without the distinction fatal else

where, of round pegs and square holes, square pegs and round holes. The hole may be square or round; the Chinaman will fit it if there is any money to be got out of it.

Singapore is the emporium of the Malay peninsula. Hither come the spices, gambia, tin, and the buffalo hides which Chinese merchants, some of them not above the status of a pedlar, buy in the interior, and which Chinese ships bring to the great port of call for English steamers. Just now they are watching with keen interest an experiment being tried in the neighbouring principality of Jahore. The Maharajah is one of the few princes left hereabouts who is not under British rule. But whilst preserving his independence, his Highness is a devoted ally and friend of England. He has visited the country, speaks its language, and is even more sedulous in imitating its customs and institutions than the present ministry of Japan.

His palace is at Jahore, the capital of his principality. But he has a house at Singapore, .where he lives in English style, and, as far as he can control his surroundings, with English people. He has been twice married, and both his wives are alive. His second wife has borne him children, but it appears to be against the law that they should inherit the throne, and

accordingly a nephew has been declared heirapparent. This young gentleman has just returned from England, where he was educated. The Maharajah is a Mahomedan, and a strict observer of religious rites. When, as sometimes happens, he goes out to dinner, his cook marches in advance to see that no meat comes to table unless the beast has died by having its throat cut. Yet, in imitation of the religious liberty prevalent in England, the Maharajah tolerates all religions, and the other day presented eight acres of land as a site for a Roman Catholic mission.

In one respect his Highness has improved upon his model, since he rules his people and dwells in the comity of nations without the assistance of a standing army. A body of police keep the peace among the Malays, and in the Chinese communities the head man is made to answer for order. The Maharajah's revenues, which are variously estimated at from sixty to a hundred thousand a year, come chiefly from licences for the sale of opium, which is consumed by the Chinese. There is also a tax on the export of agricultural products, and every pig or other animal that is killed in the principality pays tribute to the Maharajah. Still the mainstay of his revenue is the opium tax, and thus the Chinese