The day before sailing, the bicycle branch of the Dalhousie Athletic Club turns out for a club run around the Maidan, to the number of seventeen.  It is in the evening; the long rows of electric lamps stretching across the immense square shed a moon-like light over our ride, and the smooth, broad roads are well worthy the metropolitan terminus of the Grand Trunk.

My stay of five days in the City of Palaces has been very enjoyable, and it is with real regret that I bid farewell to those who come down to the shipping ghaut to see me off.

The voyage to the Andamans is characterized by fine weather enough; but from that onward we steam through a succession of heavy rain-storms; and down in the Strait of Malacca it can pour quite as heavily as on the Gangetic plains.  At Penang it keeps up such an incessant downpour that the beauties of that lovely port are viewed only from beneath the ship’s awning.  But it is lovely enough even as seen through the drenching rain.  Dense groves of cocoa-nut palms line the shores, seemingly hugging the very sands of the beach.  Solid cliffs of vegetation they look, almost, so tall, dark, and straight, and withal so lovely, are these forests of palms.  Cocoa-nut palms flourish best, I am told, close to the sea, a certain amount of salt being necessary for their healthful growth.

The weather is more propitious as we steam into Singapore, at which point we remain for half a day, on the tenth day out from Calcutta.  Singapore is indeed a lovely port.  Within a stone’s-throw of where the Wing-sang ties up to discharge freight the dark-green mangrove bushes are bathing in the salt waves.  Very seldom does one see green vegetation mingling familiarly with the blue water of the sea—­there is usually a strip of sand or other verdureless shore—­but one sees it at lovely Singapore.

A fellow-passenger and I spend an hour or two ashore, riding in the first jiniriksha that has come under my notice, from the wharf into town, about half a mile.  We are impressed by the commercial activity of the city; as well as by the cosmopolitan character of its population.  Chinese predominate, and thrifty, well-conditioned citizens these Celestials look, too, here in Singapore.  “Wherever John Chinaman gets half a show, as under the liberal and honest government of the Straits Settlements or Hong-Kong, there you may be sure of finding him prosperous and happy.”

Hindoos, Parsees, Armenians, Jews, Siamese, Klings, and all the various Eurasian types, with Europeans of all nationalities, make up the conglomerate population of Singapore.  Here, on the streets, too, one sees the strange cosmopolitan police force of the English Eastern ports, made up of Chinese, Sikhs, and Englishmen.

CHAPTER XVII.

Through china.