A. J. Sargent

“ The whole city has an air of dignity and age which we should hardly expect to find in a small and isolated island. Even the great forts suggest mediæval history and romance, armour and swords, rather than bayonets and quick-firing guns. They are very different from the batteries of Gibraltar. In fact, Valetta is far more than a mere fortress; it has a history, a people and a language all its own. The upper classes have been affected by contact with the Latin races of Southern Europe, while there is a strong Arab strain in the mass of the people ”

“ We often come on a whole valley, looking like a huge quarry, turned upside 42 down and desolated in the search for tin. Everywhere we notice the busy Chinese coolie, in his curious sun hat, and in the distance we may catch sight of the barracks where he lives. The ore is dug out and washed, and then for the most part sent to Singapore to be smelted and reduced to the shape in which it reaches our own country. Nearly half the world’s supply of tin comes from this narrow strip of country; and we may say that Malaya has been built up on tin, though now rubber is rapidly overtaking it in value. ”

“ Whatever the exact origin of the Maltese may be, in speaking of Malta and Gibraltar together we are certainly linking the very old with the very new. Gibraltar has no real native people and no continuous history; even from the point of view of naval strategy it is essentially modern. Malta was a naval base in the days when trade and civilization were confined to the Mediterranean; the opening of the Suez Canal has merely added to its former importance. Gibraltar only comes into history when western civilization has spread to the outer seas and the broad Atlantic. ”

“ In Brunei, as all over Borneo, the bamboo, the palm and the creeping rattan provide the builder with material free of charge for posts, flooring, roofs and lashings—for the houses are tied, not nailed together. There is fish in abundance in the river, and we pass a 48 fleet of market boats, with women in large sun hats, bringing the catch for sale in the town; while in the forest all round there is fruit to be had for the picking. Nature has supplied the Malay with most of his necessaries at his very door. ”

“ The whole peninsula is merely the fragment of an extinct volcano. In the white town, with its straight streets, we meet Arabs, Somalis, Indians, Negroes, Greeks, Jews and British soldiers; their presence here, on a barren rock between the desert and the sea, can be understood only in the light of the past history of Aden.
Here, from the remotest antiquity, was without doubt a great port of exchange for the products of India, Arabia, Africa and the Mediterranean, by way of Egypt and the Nile. ”

“ On the land side the Rock was impregnable; the guns of that day were useless against its defences; Gibraltar was ours to hold so long as we could command the sea.
At the peace of Utrecht, which ended the war of the Spanish Succession, we retained Gibraltar, and the people of England, impressed by the siege and the splendid defence of the Rock, resolved to keep it. It was only natural that Spain should wish to recover a fortress which was geographically part of her territory and of little value to us at the time. ”

“ The Chinese are at last beginning to move; a new channel has been cut for traffic on the Hwangpu; the bed of the river has been dredged and its course straightened, and an embankment built to keep out the silt from the main river. But the size of the vessels engaged in trade increases every year and the future of Shanghai is in the balance; it remains to be seen whether modern engineering will win the day against the vast forces wielded by the Yangtse. Any decline in the activity of Shanghai would be likely to result in more business for Hongkong. ”

“ We may realize how far Cyprus is off the main line of traffic by the difficulty of getting back to our route; as it may take us a week to reach Egypt, travelling by slow steamer and touching at ports on the Syrian coast on our way.
We are bound for the Suez Canal and are approaching Port Said at last. The coast ahead looks flat and desolate: on our right a long line of sand and mud banks separates the shallow lake Menzaleh from the open sea; on our left are more mud banks, and beyond them waste marsh and desert. ”

“ Here is a lake in the garden 13 with the magnificent Victoria Regia water-lily growing in it. Everywhere in Singapore the architecture and the people of the East and West are blended in a strange mixture.
In the hilly country, outside the city, there is nothing of very special interest for us. As we are close to the Equator and have heat all the year round, with a heavy rainfall, almost any tropical product can be grown on the island; the Chinese make a speciality of the cultivation of pineapples, which are tinned and exported. ”

“ Let us now see something of the natives and their occupations. It is market day in Port Edward; the streets are alive with crowds, buying, selling and haggling, 56 and crowding round the food stalls with their piles of strange delicacies in bowls and saucers. In one corner they are bargaining for pigs, in another are piled loads of fuel, scrub oak and fir, brought in from the country round on the backs of donkeys and mules. There is no coal, and the peasant has stripped the country of most of its woods, here as in other parts of China. ”

“ The mountain ridges which we have scaled are merely the steep broken edges of a great highland block which falls gently southwards to a broad plateau, without hills or streams, a monotony of stones, red earth, dust and dense thorn scrub. In the dry season we may travel for a week or ten days together and find not a drop of water. On the caravan 18 routes are a few wells, such as we see here, but many of these dry up, and we have to dig for a few mouthfuls of warm, dirty water in the liquid mud at the bottom. ”

“ In our voyage from the Gulf of Aden to Colombo we have made a great circuit of the Indian Ocean, yet from beginning to end we have never lost touch with Indian trade and Indian people. The islands and ports which we have visited are only to be understood as parts of a larger whole, united not divided by the sea. ”

“ Singapore is not only a junction of trade routes and a strongly garrisoned naval base, it is also a meeting point of different races. The population is a strange [79] mixture of Chinese, Malays and Indians, with a handful of Europeans controlling the whole mass. The Chinese, in numbers, industry and wealth, have been the most important factor in the growth of the whole region, and their influence increases every year. The Malays approach them in numbers, but lag far behind in intelligence and capacity for work; while the Indian element, mainly Tamil coolies as in Ceylon, is much smaller. ”

“ As this country develops, it may find a market for part of its products on the coast of Arabia, while the rest will join the main movement through the Canal to Europe. That portion of our high road which runs through the Mediterranean owes much of its importance to the active life of the neighbouring coasts; the Red Sea, by contrast, is a mere passage through the desert which separates Europe from Asia. But the railway is conquering the desert, and in the future this portion also of the chain between West and East will take some share in the busy traffic of the whole. ”

“ Heat and rain, together with a rich volcanic soil, have made Mauritius what it is to-day. Agriculture is the only [52] occupation of the people, and the only important crop is the sugar-cane. This was first introduced from the East India Islands by the Dutch, though little progress was made with its cultivation until the time of the French settlement. The forest which then covered the island was cleared away, and the cultivation of the cane, by means of slave labour on large plantations, became the staple industry of the new colonists. ”

“ None the less we may see an important European settlement develop on the site of the old native fishing village. It is not too far away from Peking and Shanghai; the rainfall in the year is about the same as in London, though there are far fewer rainy days, as the rain falls more in heavy showers; while the summer is dry, and cooler than in most of China. There is already a school for European boys at Port Edward, and it seems well fitted as a summer watering-place for those whose work takes them to the Far East. In winter it is less pleasant. ”

“ The rice field, the coconut palm and the river provide the Malay with an easy living, supplemented in the past by the proceeds of occasional piracy. He was not likely to be industrious so long as his property was liable to be seized at any moment by his rulers or their deputies. The Malay, as we find him all over the East India Islands, will hunt, fish, sail a boat or fight with considerable energy and skill, but he takes ordinary life in an easy [85] fashion. He has no desire for the business of money-making and prefers to live in his simple fashion in his own homestead or kampong. ”

“ We must look for modern progress not in the ruined cities but in the new plantation districts of the hill country. The railway will again carry us in comfort through the slopes of the planting country to Niuwara Eliya, up in the clouds, six thousand feet above the sea, the health resort of the planters and European residents. ”

“ Here is a typical group of natives. The chief wealth of the island lies in the cultivation of cloves, as a large portion of the world’s crop is grown here; but there are also the coconut palm, the rubber vine and many other tropical plants. A great and interesting change is taking place in the ownership of the plantations: the natives of India, shopkeepers, traders and moneylenders, are steadily ousting the Arabs. The Arab has lost much of his wealth, through the emancipation of his slaves, and is slow to adapt himself to the new conditions ”

“ It is hardly surprising that where Nature supplies so much without effort on his part, the Sinhalese is not according to our ideas industrious. To him the coconut palm is a necessary part of his existence, and he well expresses this in the saying that the tree will not grow out of sound of the human voice. But the coconut palm has another aspect in Ceylon. The Sinhalese gentry have discovered its commercial value, and in various parts of the island, especially round Negombo and Batticaloa, there are large estates where the nut is grown on the plantation system for export. ”

“ Over all the lowlands there is no winter and summer in our sense of the terms, but only alternations of wet and dry. In the hills it is cooler than on the plains, though there is even more rain; but mainly owing to the structure of Ceylon the wet and dry seasons occur at different times of the year in different districts. The district near Colombo has most of its rain when the Southwest Monsoon blows from the sea in the summer; in the north and east of the island [72] the winter is the wet season, when the northeast wind comes down from the Bay of Bengal. ”

“ The town of Singapore stands on the south side of the island facing the open sea, and the Old Port is not well adapted to the needs of modern commerce; large 7 vessels, as we see in this picture, must anchor off shore in the roadstead and unload into barges. The coast, where it has not been reclaimed, is low and marshy, and the old wharves bear a look of neglect and decay. 8 But west of the Tanjong Pagar dock, now Government property, is Keppel Harbour, a narrow deep-water channel, protected on the seaward side by two small islands. ”

“ So even to-day, though Europe has proved itself the stronger, we shall find that beyond Malta we enter a new world where the relations of West and East are not yet finally settled. This uncertainty is shown alike in our own position and in that of the other great Powers of Europe. ”

“ Britain is responsible for the government of over three hundred million Asiatics and carries on a great trade with the remainder; in fact, about two-thirds of the merchant shipping passing through the Suez Canal is under the British flag. We have important interests, too, on the eastern side of Africa, while a new Britain, British in race and political organization, is growing up [2] in Australasia. We are the chief users of the main road to this region of the world, and are thus most interested in its condition and control. ”

“ As Brunei decayed, Sarawak grew stronger. Its territory was enlarged from time to time and its prosperity has proved the benefit derived by the native inhabitants from strong and firm control.
An island rather larger than Guernsey, Labuan is the only British territory, as opposed to a Protectorate, which we shall find in this region. Rounding a headland we turn northwards into a broad and deep inlet, and come to anchor opposite a small town of white houses with red roofs and a background of low hills; this is Victoria, the capital and only town. ”

“ We have made a brief survey of British Somaliland, and though much is not yet explored, yet it is not likely to differ greatly from the part which we have seen. There will be the same red dust and monotonous stony plain with its thorn bushes and dry stream-beds. In some parts, by way of variety, the thorn will grow so dense as to be impenetrable; in others it will disappear, and we shall find pure desert. Only a Somali or a camel could live and thrive in such a country. ”

“ The Government is undertaking the work, but the people and the goats are most destructive, so forest 22 guards have to be employed, such as the two picturesque figures who are posing here to our artist for their portraits. Time and money, especially money, are needed to repair centuries of neglect, and the natives will do nothing without European control. Here the climate intervenes; in spring and autumn it is not unpleasant for Europeans, but in the summer months, as in India, they take refuge in the hills, unless, as commonly happens, their duties tie them to the plains. ”

“ In building the aqueduct we merely followed the example of earlier rulers, as the ruins of a similar aqueduct, centuries old, are still to be seen. The aqueduct is not enough; water is also brought in skins laden on the backs of camels, and is manufactured in condensers. In fact, water is perhaps the most rare and valuable commodity to be found in Aden. All food, too, must be imported; and here we must look not only to the back country of the Yemen, but across the sea to the neighbouring coast of Africa. ”

“ A man is handing it up in a jar or skin, while another pours it into a trough for the cattle. The summer rains bring vegetation to the dry steppe, and forthwith the people with their animals migrate to the cooler air and fresh pasture of the plateau. Berbera and the coast towns empty themselves in this way in the hot weather, so that there is a great change in the size of the population at different seasons of the year. There is no real agriculture until we reach the borders of Abyssinia and the river valleys in the far south and west. ”

“ We steam onwards, and across the Equator, passing [46] by the coastline of Italian Somaliland and British East Africa, to where, nearly two thousand miles from Aden, and close in to the mainland, are two other islands coloured red on the map, Pemba and Zanzibar. We are a long way off our course to India, yet Zanzibar and the narrow strip of coast behind it belong by history and development to India and Arabia rather than to the neighbouring continent. ”

“ For pilgrims, the railway will make easier the journey to Mecca which every good Mohammedan strives to take once in his life. For the Government of Turkey it has another use: it will strengthen their control over the southern corner of Arabia, a control which is never too secure. The result must be more people and more trade on the coast strip of Arabia, and need for supplies of food greater than the neighbouring country can produce. We may see here in the future the problem of Aden on a large scale, and again we must look across the sea. ”

“ Hongkong is an excellent instance of the attraction which a free port, under a Government which gives security for life and property, and deals out even-handed justice, has for an industrious native race. The liberality with which the wealthier Chinese support public objects in Hongkong, such as schools and hospitals, is the best proof that they appreciate the methods and value of British rule. ”