considerable contingent, the women strikingly handsome and graceful.

Western civilization and Eastern habits of dress come again in sharp contrast in the matter of billycock hats. I have often wondered what became of this widely used head-gear when it grew too shabby to wear. The secret is an open one for any who come across the Chinese labouring out of their own country. The old hats are collected in England and forwarded in bales to wherever the Chinese most do congregate.

I noticed the incongruity among among the Chinese who crowded the Coptic in the voyage across the Pacific. It is much more striking here. That a Chinaman on board ship should cover his shaven pate with an old billycock hat stained with hair-grease, buffeted by English winds, and soaked in London fog, looks funny, but is not inexplicable. Anything will do on board ship. To see him here on land dressed all in his best, his spotless white gown and blue trousers, his face shining with soap and worldly prosperity, his pigtail neatly disposed down his back, and on his head a greasy battered billycock, is passing strange. It cannot be simply the form and material that recommend the hat, otherwise they would have them new. I never saw a Chinaman-I won't say with a

new hat on, but-with anything less than one of disreputable old age. I fancy that with the Chinese the ruling passion is strong alike in the matter of eggs and hats. They like them both old.

The jinrikisha is seen at Singapore, but, as at Hongkong, though for a different reason, it does not flourish. It is absolutely too hot for a man, however lightly clad, to run about dragging weights, and the few jinrikishas one meets do not get much beyond walking pace. At Penang the triumphant westward march of the jinrikisha is finally arrested. Both at Singapore and Penang a conveyance called a gharry is in popular use. It is a large black, funereal structure something like a pauper's hearse. It is drawn by a small but masterful and well-made pony, a couple of which would very comfortably stow themselves in the gharry. The Hongkong ponies-splendid little creatures, but apt to wax wroth and kick-are much prized at Singapore. We brought one down for the Maharajah's brother. His Highness was on the wharf with umbrella up awaiting the arrival of his new acquisition.

"He's all right; we have got him here," the friend who had brought him shouted over the bulwarks.

"Is he," asked the prince, with anxious face and bated breath, "is he quiet?"

Being assured on this point, the prince, a portly personage in white ducks, heaved a sigh of satisfaction and turned away.

The traction of heavier goods is accomplished in carts drawn by a yoke of oxen. There is, nevertheless, plenty of work for porters, who under the noonday sun carry stupendous burdens by bamboos borne upon their shoulders. They scorn the interposition of a pad between their bare flesh and the hard bamboo. Accustomed from earliest boyhood to carry weights in this way, the skin and muscle of their shoulders have so hardened as to become insensible to what to an English porter would be pain unbearable for more than ten minutes at a stretch.

It is a long drive from the wharf to the hotel, which is situated in the centre of the town. The highway is bordered with tropical vegetation-palms, cocoa-nut trees, bananas, now fully bearing, and flowers, familiar in English hothouses, here growing by the wayside in wild luxuriance. In the early morning, when life is well worth living in the tropics, we took a drive to the Botanic Gardens at Singapore, which are beautifully kept, and full of choicest tropical plants and trees growing in

perfection. In a pond were a group of the Victoria lilies, the flower not yet out, but a bud, of the size of knobs on a family four-post bedstead, was ready to burst. The leaves floating flat on the water with edges turned up at right angles were large enough to have floated the infant Moses. I had one measured. It was four feet across.

The day after we arrived was Sunday, and in the evening we went to the cathedral, a fine building situated on a bluff overlooking the harbour. The punkahs were in full swing, pulled by natives stationed all round the building. The bishop preached an excellent sermon, pleading for funds to endow mission churches where, in distant parts of his diocese, the natives, resting from their six days' labours, might spend quiet sabbaths. I wondered whether, through the open windows and doors, the perspiring punkah-men heard anything of these kind accents, or took a close interest in the amount of the collection made.

The hotel at Singapore, like all the European buildings, is a roomy place, with cool verandahs and open doors and windows, courting whatever chance breeze may blow. In the office there is a placard, prominently pasted up, curious enough to be worth copying.

are

"Passengers and boarders," it runs, respectfully requested not to ask the manager for any money, as he has strict injunctions not to give same."

This is not an isolated hint of a certain aspect of social life in these parts. In one or two other hotels I have seen a similar intimation, though not so bluntly and quaintly put. Even more common is the edict that the servants of the hotel have instructions to hold on to all baggage till bills are paid.

The harbour at Penang is full of bustling life and colour, to which the sampan men contribute a full share. They cast gay clothes about their dusky forms, and lavish pictorial art upon the stern sheets of their boats. Underneath a stretchy landscape (apparently turned upside down), or a brilliant painting of a steamer with its paddles close to the rudder, the proprietor proudly paints his own name. "Joe" is a favourite cognomen. "London Charley" shows originality, and one boatman advertises himself in a breath as "Bobgoodsampanman."

In most respects Penang is like Singapore, except that its streets are narrower. There is the same vertically shining sun, the same gay colours in the street, and the same long roads in the suburbs lined with cocoa-nut