Wanderings in the Orient Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: PART OF A CHINESE FUNERAL PROCESSION.]

An excellent race course provides entertainment of that sort at frequent intervals. For the more serious-minded the extensive Raffles Museum and Library is centrally and beautifully located.

The beautiful Anglican Cathedral is the largest church in the city, and many other denominations possess smaller but attractive churches.

The central building of all is the beautiful Victoria Memorial Hall with its tall clock tower and chimes. In front of this white building is the black statue of an elephant, presented to the city by the king of Siam to commemorate the first visit ever paid to a foreign city by a Siamese monarch. In the neighborhood of the Cathedral and Memorial Hall are the hotels, which are good in most respects but whose charges to transient guests are usually exorbitant: here is also the main recreation field where cricket, tennis and football are played every afternoon by both natives and Europeans.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HINDU TEMPLE.

Rickishas pa.s.sing.]

While these churches, residences and parks (including the well-known botanical gardens) are interesting, it is the oriental element that has the greatest charm for those from other lands. A rickisha ride through the teeming streets of the Chinese or Malay quarters, especially at night, is most interesting. If taken during the day a Chinese funeral procession with its banners, bands and tom-toms may be met; in fact the death-rate among the squalid Chinese residents is so high that funerals are of very frequent occurrence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MOSQUE AT JAh.o.r.e.]

At the docks and other gathering places one is fascinated by the constantly s.h.i.+fting sea of strange faces and costumes; sometimes the lack of costume is more noticeable than the costume, as among the coolies or laborers from India or Arabia. Chinese, j.a.panese, various races of Malays and East Indians, jostle elbows with Englishmen, Americans and every other race under the sun except perhaps, the American Indian. It is surely a motley throng and the tower of Babel was nowhere compared to this conglomeration of tongues.

The oriental is a rather mild individual as a rule and wrangling and fighting is probably less common than among occidental communities.

Several interesting temples are to be seen in Singapore; their quaint architecture is always interesting to the occidental tourist, and the hideous images to be seen within will repay the trouble of removing one's shoes, which must be done before admittance is granted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ca.n.a.l AND MARKET PLACE AT JAh.o.r.e.]

When the sights of the city have been exhausted a visit to Jah.o.r.e on the mainland (Singapore is on a small island) of the Malay Peninsula will be interesting. Here is the summer palace of H. H. the Sultan of Jah.o.r.e; also a large and handsome mosque. Here is also a wide-open gambling establishment where hundreds of Chinese may be seen playing "fantan."

On the return from Jah.o.r.e, if interested in such things, a visit to a rubber estate may be made, and the whole process in the manufacture of rubber may be seen in a few hours; it is a strange and fascinating process and is, perhaps, the most important industry of the Federated Malay States.

It is interesting to compare Singapore which has been a British colony for nearly a century with Manila, a city of about the same size, that has been under American rule for less than two decades. The results that have been accomplished in the latter place along the lines of sanitation, education, and other civilizing influences should make an American proud of his native land.

VI. HOW RUBBER IS MADE.

One of the princ.i.p.al products of the Malay Peninsula is rubber. Like most people who have never happened to investigate the matter my ideas as to the way in which an automobile tire is extracted from a tree were very hazy; so, with another American, who had charge of a mission school in Singapore, I boarded the Jah.o.r.e express on the F. M. S. R. R.

(F. M. S. meaning Federated Malay States) and after a run of half an hour arrived at the Bukit Timar rubber estate some ten miles northwest of Singapore.

The Bukit Timar is an up-to-date plantation of more than one hundred thousand trees, and here we saw the whole process, from tree to sheet rubber, as s.h.i.+pped to all parts of the world and sold by the pound.

Rubber trees grow to a considerable size, but this being a young plantation most of the trees were not over six or eight inches in diameter. In the middle of the estate was a very attractive bungalow where lived the manager and his wife, a young English couple, and the former very courteously showed us about his place and explained the different processes.

"Tapping" begins at daybreak, and all the juice or _latex_ is collected before noon. Dozens of native and Chinese men and boys are employed in this process, some of the latter being so small that they can scarcely carry the two buckets of latex on the bamboo stick over the shoulder.

In tapping, a very thin and narrow piece of bark is gouged off, just deep enough to make the tree bleed, but not deep enough to kill it; so that by the time the bark on one side of the tree has been cut away that on the opposite side has had time to regenerate. The process is thus a perpetual one and the tree lasts indefinitely.

The exact method of tapping varies, but usually it is begun as two slanting grooves that converge to form a V. The latex oozes from the freshly cut bark, runs down the converging grooves to their point of union, and is caught in a small gla.s.s cup or other vessel suspended under a tiny spout at the apex of the V. The method of tapping shown in the photograph is different from this somewhat, though the principle is the same. The latex that oozes from the grooves is a pure white, sticky fluid resembling milk; about a tablespoonful is obtained each day from each tree.

By the time each man has tapped or gouged all of the trees a.s.signed to him (perhaps two or three hundred) the first-tapped trees have bled all they will for that day, so that collecting is begun at once. In each cup is a little water to prevent the latex from coagulating and sticking to the bottom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOME OF THE MANAGER OF THE BUKIT TIMAR RUBBER ESTATE NEAR SINGAPORE.]

The first V is cut several feet from the ground, and the amount that is gouged from each side of the V each day is so very thin that it will be months before the apex of the V reaches the ground, by which time the regeneration of the first cuts will be well under way.

After the flow of latex has ceased for the day a narrow strip hardens along each groove, like gum on a cherry tree. These little strips of rubber, with bits of adherent bark, as well as any drops that may have fallen to the ground, are collected in bags and carried to the factory to be made into sheets of cheap grades of commercial rubber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A YOUNG RUBBER TREE SHOWING ONE METHOD OF TAPPING.

The white lines are the latex running down the grooves into the gla.s.s cup at the bottom. Above the two slanting lines is seen the scarred tissue where the bark has been gouged away. When the lower end of the lower line reaches the ground the tree will be tapped on the opposite side. The amount of latex in the cup seems greater than it really is because of the water upon which it floats. The size of the tree may be judged from the kodak case at its foot.]

After the trees have been tapped the latex is collected in carefully cleaned tin buckets, brought to the factory and strained into huge earthenware tubs. It is then put into enamelware pans about twelve by thirty-six inches in size and three inches deep, and a very weak acid (usually acetic) is stirred into it. In about half an hour the acid coagulates the latex (like rennet in making junket from milk) into a soft, pure white ma.s.s, about two inches thick and of the area of the pan. This soft ma.s.s of rubber is carefully floated out of the pan onto a table, where it is rolled on both sides for a few minutes with a wooden rolling-pin to squeeze out the excess of water and acid. It is then carefully lifted into a large vessel of pure water to harden until the next day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE LATEX GATHERERS.

The boy in the middle of the group has the canva.s.s bag over his shoulder in which he carries the sc.r.a.ps of dried rubber from the grooves on the trees.]

The next day it is run several times through smooth steel rollers under dropping water, where it is flattened out into sheets of about an inch or less in thickness and of a proportionately greater area. It is next pa.s.sed through roughened steel rollers that mark it off into ridges and depressions like a waffle.

These sheets, now tough and elastic, are hung in a closed chamber and smoked until they reach a proper shade of brown, when they are ready for s.h.i.+pment. The smoking process, which is to preserve the rubber, often takes many days, though at the time of our visit the manager of the Bukit Timar estate was experimenting with a method that would complete the smoking in a few hours.

The production of rubber in the Malay Peninsula is of rather recent date and it has increased by leaps and bounds. In the various "booms" that have taken place many fortunes have been made--as witnessed by the palatial residences about Singapore--but many have also been lost, though the witnesses to these are not so evident.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRAVELER PALM, AN UNUSUAL TYPE OFTEN SEEN IN THE FAR EAST SINGAPORE AND ELSEWHERE.]

Whether the increased demands for rubber will justify the thousands of young trees that are still being planted, not only on the Malay Peninsula but on Borneo and other islands of the Far East, remains to be seen; but, judging from the opinions of several rubber experts of Singapore, this is quite doubtful.

VII. TWO CHINESE CITIES.

After a voyage (unusually calm for the China Sea) of four days from Singapore, the S. S. "Bulow" slowly steamed among the islands at the entrance and came to anchor just after sunset in the beautiful harbor of Hongkong. There is really no _city_ of Hongkong, though letters so directed will reach their destination, and even the residents of the city in whose harbor we were anch.o.r.ed would have spoken of living in Hongkong. The name "Hongkong" belongs to the small island, ten miles long by three wide, that lies about a mile from the mainland of China.

Along the north or land side of this island lies the city of Victoria, with a population of 350,000, commonly known by the name of the entire island, Hongkong.

Practically the whole island is occupied by mountains of a maximum height of about 1800 feet, so that the town has only a narrow strip of level ground along the beach and extends in scattered fas.h.i.+on to the very top of the ridge.

As we came to anchor the twinkling lights of the streets and houses were just beginning to appear, and in a little while, when the short tropical twilight had changed to darkness, the sh.o.r.e line was a ma.s.s of lights which gradually became more scattered toward the hill-tops, where often a single light marked the location of some isolated residence. Across the harbor another smaller group of lights showed the position of Kowloon, a small seaport on the mainland and the southern terminus of the Kowloon and Canton Railroad. On the water between the two towns, really one great harbor, were thousands of lights, indicating the position of invisible steams.h.i.+ps, junks, tugs, launches and sampans.

Most of these lights were stationary, showing that the vessels to which they belonged were at anchor, but some of them were in motion, and hardly had we come slowly to a standstill and dropped anchor before we were besieged by a swarm of launches and sampans all clamoring for pa.s.sengers to take ash.o.r.e.

As is customary in the East, steamers usually anchor in the harbor at Hongkong at some distance from sh.o.r.e, so that the larger hotels, as well as Cook's Agency, have private launches to take pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e. Since it was rather late to see anything of the town most of the cabin pa.s.sengers preferred to remain on board for the night, and the view of the lights of the harbor and town as seen from the s.h.i.+p was well worth enjoying for one evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW ON "THE PEAK"; GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE IN THE LEFT BACKGROUND.]

The next morning we were able to see the meaning of the lights of the night before. The business part of the town, with its crowded Chinese sections and its fine munic.i.p.al and office buildings, lies as a narrow strip along the sh.o.r.e, while struggling up the mountain side are the residences, churches, schools, etc. of the English and wealthy Chinese residents. On this mountain side is also a most beautiful and interesting botanical garden. On the highest point of "The Peak," as the main peak of the range is called, is a weather observatory and signal station, and from this point one of the most beautiful views in the world may be obtained; to the south, the open China Sea, with numberless green islands extending almost to the horizon; to the north, the mainland of China, fringed with low mountains; between the mainland and the island the long, narrow strait forming the harbors of Victoria and Kowloon; at the foot of the mountain the densely crowded business streets; and extending up the almost precipitous northern slopes of the mountain the beautiful, often palatial homes of the wealthy residents.

Winding along the mountain sides a number of fine roads and paths give access to these homes, but to reach the higher levels, especially, there may be seen the cable tramway, going so straight up the side of the mountain that it is almost alarming to look forward or back from the open cars. The homes nearer the foot of the mountain are usually reached by means of sedan chairs carried by two, three or even four coolies, while in the level business section the usual means of travel are the electric cars and the ever-ready rickishas. Horses are practically unknown except for racing purposes; carts are pulled by Chinese coolies instead of by horses, and merchandise is carried by coolies in baskets or bales on the shoulders. It is an interesting though unpleasant sight to see strings of Chinese men and women toiling up the steep sides of the mountain, carrying stones, cement, window frames, timbers, and all other material used in building the palaces in which the wealthy people live. For a day of this back-breaking labor they are paid about what one of their rich employers would give for one of his best cigars. Every stick, stone and nail in all of these houses has been carried up all these hundreds of feet on the backs of men and women, chiefly the latter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINESE JUNKS IN THE HARBOR OF CANTON.]

In a beautiful little level valley between the bases of two of the mountains is the play ground of Hongkong, known as "Happy Valley"; here are tennis courts, a golf course, etc. overlooked on either side, rather incongruously, by a Chinese and a Christian burial ground.