CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE TROPICS.

Ir is a striking thing, when making long journeys by sea in the far East, to notice how the British lion has laid its massive paw upon successive points of strategical importance, till it has girdled Asia, Africa, and Europe with a line of outposts. As in the time of the Armada beacon fires were built around the coast

"Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's embattled pile,

And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle,"

so now, on a larger range, beacon fire answers to beacon fire from the China Seas to the Mediterranean. It is lit at Hongkong, in Southern China. It is flashed from Singapore, on the Malay peninsula, and is taken up almost within sight at Penang. It twinkles at Fort Blair on the lonely Andaman Island.

Rangoon and Moulmein hand on the torch, which blazes throughout British Burmah. Akyab, at the mouth of the Ganges, shows the light, making near connection with India. All Ceylon is British, with its military camp at Colombo, and its naval station in Trincomalee. Aden in Arabia, and Perim on the far side of the Red Sea, hold out the signal, which burns on Sokotra, a little island commanding the Gulf of Aden; whilst in the Mediterranean it shows boldly forth at Cyprus, Malta, and on the Rock of Gibraltar. How it came to pass that these odd corners of the earth should belong to a little island set in northern seas, it would perhaps not be desirable too closely to inquire. But there they are, quietly, unresistingly, and, to tell the truth, prosperously living under British rule, monuments of the activity and the audacity of British enterprise.

Singapore, as we approached, was a long low landmark, lying dark under wet skies, with here and there patches of green showing where the Chinese, having worked a gambia field at high pressure, had exhausted the generous soil, and, leaving it, the coarse long grass had sprung up. We left Hongkong in the Verona, which, on getting clear of the harbour, found itself battling with heavy seas. It was a hot,

close, "muggy," night, good neither for man nor beast. A passenger, impatient of the restraint of his cabin, had a bed made up for him in the saloon. In the dead of the night he woke, dreaming of green pastures and lowing kine. He found he was being walked over by two oxen shipped at Hongkong with ulterior purposes. purposes. They, too, had found their quarters uncomfortable, and, walking out, had strayed into the saloon, round which they sniffed with much melancholy boo-ooing. On the second day we slid into summer seas, the north-east monsoon filling our sails and making the hot ship glad with pleasant breezes. The punkahs began to swing in the saloon, and on deck appeared gossamer dresses and thinnest of flannel suits.

Before the steamer came to her moorings in Singapore she was surrounded by a fleet of small roughly made boats, manned by tawny lads naked save for a loincloth.

"Yessir, yessir!" they shouted in chorus; "have a dive, sir? All right, sir! throw in a piece, sir."

A coin thrown over, the boat nearest to which it fell was suddenly emptied; the lads leaped into the water like a flash of brown thunderbolts, and in a moment were back again, holding the tiny silver coin in their

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.