At Night, When These
Rooms Are Lighted Up With Eight Or Ten Massive Lamps, The Appearance Is
Splendid.
These are the houses of Chinese merchants of the middle
class.
And now I must divulge the singular fact that Malacca is to most
intents and purposes a Chinese city. The Dutch, as I wrote, have
scarcely left a trace. The Portuguese, indolent, for thc most part
poor, and lowered by native marriages, are without influence, a most
truly stagnant population, hardly to be taken into account. Their poor-
looking houses resemble those of Lisbon. The English, except in so far
as relates to the administration of government, are nowhere, though it
is under our equitable rule that the queerly mixed population of
Chinese, Portuguese, half-breeds, Malays, Confucianists, Buddhists,
Tauists, Romanists, and Mohammedans "enjoy great quietness."*
[*By the census of 1881 the resident European population of the
Settlement of Malacca consists of 23 males and 9 females, a "grand"
total of 32! The Eurasian population, mainly of Portuguese mixed blood,
is 2,213. The Chinese numbers 19,741, 4,020 being females. The Malay
population is 67,488, the females being 2,000 in excess of the males,
the Tamils or Klings are 1,781, the Arabs 227, the Aborigines of the
Peninsula 308, the Javanese 399, the Boyanese 212, and the Jawi-Pekans
867. Besides these there are stray Achinese, Africans, Anamese,
Bengalis, Bugis, Dyaks, Manilamen, Siamese, and Singhalese, numbering
174. The total population of the territory is 93,579, viz., 52,059 males
and 41,520 females, an increase in ten years of 15,823. The decrease in
the number of resident Europeans is 31.9 per cent. In "natives of India"
42 per cent., and in "other nationalities" 48.9 per cent. On the other
hand the Chinese population has increased by 6,259 or 46.4 per cent.,
and the Malays by 11,264, or 19.3 per cent. The town of Malacca contains
5,538 houses, and the country districts 11,177. The area of the
settlement is 640 square miles, and the density of the population 146 to
the square mile; only twelve of the population are lunatics.]
Of the population of the town the majority are said to be Chinese, and
still their crowded junks are rolling down on the north-east monsoon.
As I remarked before, the coasting trade of the Straits of Malacca is
in their hands, and to such an extent have they absorbed the trade of
this colony, that I am told there is not a resident British merchant in
Malacca. And it is not, as elsewhere, that they come, make money, and
then return to settle in China, but they come here with their wives and
families, buy or build these handsome houses, as well as large
bungalows in the neighboring cocoa-groves, own most of the plantations
up the country, and have obtained the finest site on the hill behind
the town for their stately tombs. Every afternoon their carriages roll
out into the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to
smoke and gamble.
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