is much enhanced by the way in which they are moored; not having arrived at the useful little kedge, they content themselves with the ever-present bamboo, which is stuck into the sand for a mooring, and these lines or poles break up the repeated forms of the gunwales of the boats when clustered together the whole crowned by the indispensable little Burmese flags and weathercocks. SINGAPORE. HERE we arrive at a Chinese influence which pervades everything. Pigtails everywhere, whilst the offing presents a spectacle of special interest, namely the great lumbering Chinese junks which come down with the north-east monsoon from Tien-sien with produce from the north of China, and then wait at Singapore for the south-west monsoon to waft them back again. Surely they must be the last of a race of commercial coasting giants, and steam will wipe them out very shortly. The monsoon arrangements were convenient for the pirates of Formosa and the Chinese coast generally, as affording a well defined season biennially for their sport, about the same time as March and October brewing in the good old houses in England. One of these huge Tien-sien monsters came over to this country for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and lay in the West India Docks. The marvel was that she ever got here. The Island of Singapore is the centre of the Straits Settlements, forming a very important and prosperous Crown colony, with a delightful climate, which is blessed with showers of rain such as can hardly be expected when we remember that Singapore is in lat. 1o N. The regular cool wind at night is always refreshing after the heat of the day. The city is very cosmopolitan in appearance, from the curious assortment of Chinese josshouses, Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques, and government buildings, yet with all that there is a prevailing stamp of British energy and prosperity on all sides. The immense extent of wharfage at once stamps it as a centre of English commerce, and the whole is crowned by the White Ensign flying on the top range from the signal station, and with the Union Flag over the fort. Sir Stamford Raffles was the founder of this important colony about 1820, |