At
This Tedious Operation They May Be Seen Every Day, And They
Manage To Finish Off A Gun With A Flintlock Very Handsomely.
All
about the streets are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup,
and agar-agar (a jelly made of seaweed), who have many cries as
unintelligible as those of London.
Others carry a portable
cooking-apparatus on a pole balanced by a table at the other end,
and serve up a meal of shellfish, rice, and vegetables for two or
three halfpence - while coolies and boatmen waiting to be hired
are everywhere to be met with.
In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest trees
in the jungle, and saw them up into planks; they cultivate
vegetables, which they bring to market; and they grow pepper and
gambir, which form important articles of export. The French
Jesuits have established missions among these inland Chinese,
which seem very successful. I lived for several weeks at a time
with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the centre of the
island, where a pretty church has been built and there are about
300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who had just
arrived from Tonquin, where he had been living for many years.
The Jesuits still do their work thoroughly as of old. In Cochin
China, Tonquin, and China, where all Christian teachers are
obliged to live in secret, and are liable to persecution,
expulsion, and sometimes death, every province - even those
farthest in the interior - has a permanent Jesuit mission
establishment constantly kept up by fresh aspirants, who are
taught the languages of the countries they are going to at Penang
or Singapore. In China there are said to be near a million
converts; in Tonquin and Cochin China, more than half a million.
One secret of the success of these missions is the rigid economy
practised in the expenditure of the funds. A missionary is
allowed about £30. a year, on which he lives in whatever country
he may be. This renders it possible to support a large number of
missionaries with very limited means; and the natives, seeing
their teachers living in poverty and with none of the luxuries of
life, are convinced that they are sincere in what they teach, and
have really given up home and friends and ease and safety, for
the good of others. No wonder they make converts, for it must be
a great blessing to the poor people among whom they labour to
have a man among them to whom they can go in any trouble or
distress, who will comfort and advise them, who visits them in
sickness, who relieves them in want, and who they see living from
day-to-day in danger of persecution and death - entirely for
their sakes.
My friend at Bukit-tima was truly a father to his flock. He
preached to them in Chinese every Sunday, and had evenings for
discussion and conversation on religion during the week. He had a
school to teach their children. His house was open to them day
and night. If a man came to him and said, "I have no rice for my
family to eat today," he would give him half of what he had in
the house, however little that might be. If another said, "I have
no money to pay my debt," he would give him half the contents of
his purse, were it his last dollar. So, when he was himself in
want, he would send to some of the wealthiest among his flock,
and say, "I have no rice in the house," or "I have given away my
money, and am in want of such and such articles." The result was
that his flock trusted and loved him, for they felt sure that he
was their true friend, and had no ulterior designs in living
among them.
The island of Singapore consists of a multitude of small hills,
three or four hundred feet high, the summits of many of which are
still covered with virgin forest. The mission-house at Bukit-tima
was surrounded by several of these wood-topped hills, which were
much frequented by woodcutters and sawyers, and offered me an
excellent collecting ground for insects. Here and there, too,
were tiger pits, carefully covered over with sticks and leaves,
and so well concealed, that in several cases I had a narrow
escape from falling into them. They are shaped like an iron
furnace, wider at the bottom than the top, and are perhaps
fifteen or twenty feet deep so that it would be almost impossible
for a person unassisted to get out of one. Formerly a sharp stake
was stuck erect in the bottom; but after an unfortunate traveller
had been killed by falling on one, its use was forbidden. There
are always a few tigers roaming about Singapore, and they kill on
an average a Chinaman every day, principally those who work in
the gambir plantations, which are always made in newly-cleared
jungle. We heard a tiger roar once or twice in the evening, and
it was rather nervous work hunting for insects among the fallen
trunks and old sawpits when one of these savage animals might be
lurking close by, awaiting an opportunity to spring upon us.
Several hours in the middle of every fine day were spent in these
patches of forest, which were delightfully cool and shady by
contrast with the bare open country we had to walk over to reach
them. The vegetation was most luxuriant, comprising enormous
forest trees, as well as a variety of ferns, caladiums, and other
undergrowth, and abundance of climbing rattan palms. Insects were
exceedingly abundant and very interesting, and every day
furnished scores of new and curious forms.
In about two months I obtained no less than 700 species of
beetles, a large proportion of which were quite new, and among
them were 130 distinct kinds of the elegant Longicorns
(Cerambycidae), so much esteemed by collectors.
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