Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1889-05-30
THE LAND OF THE Malay
THE MIXED PEOPLE AND STRANGE
COSTUMES OF SINGAPORE.
Hinge Fans 90 Modify the Tropic Heat
Dress OF Malay Women-An In
dian Bullock Carr.

Hinge Fans 20 Modify the Tropic Heat
Dress OF Malay Women-An In
dian Bullock Cart.
Singapore, writes Frank S. Carpenter,
is just eighty miles north of the Equator.
Its climate is the same the year round.
Its sun rises and sets at the same hours
each day the year through, and its flow
srs ever bloom and its trees are always
green The natives in many cases wear
nothing but waist cloths, and all Euro
peans are dressed in white duck coats and
white pantaloons. They wear hats Of
pith or cork, the rims Of which are as big
around as dish-pan and which rise in
two stories to protect the head from the
sun. attended church at the English
Cathedral last night and listened TO Ser
vice under forty great punkahs or fans,
which were pulled to and fro by men
stationed on the outside of the church.
This Cathedral had an audience room
about 12O feet long and it was, l judge,
seventy-ive feet from the floor to the roof
Below the ceiling there was network of
iron rods and to these, by ropes, were
fastened these huge fans each of which
was about four feet wide and eighteen
feet long. They consisted of strips of
wide cotton cloth, weighted and hung
from black walnut poles, and it was by
ropes attached to these poles and stretched
over pulleys in the windows of the church,
that the natives outside kept them going
and cooled those engaged in devotion.
The dining tables in the hotels have these
punkah fans over them and upon the
steamers there are punkahs in the cabins,
which are pulled during the meals.
Singapore is an island fourteen miles
wide and twenty y-seven miles long 1t
lies just half way around the world from
New York, and it is the halfway station
between the Pacific and the Indian
Ocean. The population of Singapore is
made up of the natives of all these coun-
tries, and you find here mixture of yell
lows and blacks, of Hindoo turbans and
Chinese pigtails, of coffee -colored Malays
and of pale, white Caucasians from Eu-
rope. The costumes are as strange as the
skins, and all the queer outfits of South
ern Asia jostle each other upon the
streets and tramp upon one another's
heels upon the highways.
The women of Singapore are of dozen
different types, ranging from the rosy
checked English girl, in suit made by
Redfern or Worth, to the beauty from
Borneo, whose sole costume is strip Of
cloth. saw black woman to-day who
had holes in the lobes of each of her ears
as big around as my thumb, and ]; noted
that another woman used her ear holes as
bouquet-holders. Both of these women
were Killings and they came from South
ern India. They were straight, graceful,
and by no means bad looking, but their
chief dress consisted of jewelry.
They had great bracelets of gold on
were riveted with gold, and above these
great ring-like lobes little gold nuts and
bolts were put through the ears so that
they were bound with pins of gold from
lobe to tip. One of the maidens had each
of her nostrils riveted with these screw
rings and great ring of gold hanging
down from the centre of the nose. The
gold shone out all the brighter against
the blackness of the skin, and the jew
elry was the more prominent from the
scantiness of their costumes. These were
merely single skirt and sort of scarf
of cotton which was stretched around the
shoulder and under one arm, and tied in
a knot at the side. -Four yards of cloth
would have made the whole suit, and
they wore neither hats nor bonnets. Il
noticed another of these women who had
a large, pear-shaped pearl fastened to a
rivet and hanging down from one nostril
almost to her upper lip.
The Malay women, so far as | have
seen are not as good looking as the In
dians, though this country was originally
populated by them, and there are now
more Malays than any other Asiatic ex-
cept the Chinese. The, Malays live, as a
rule, in the poorest of one-story thatched
huts, and there is Malay village within
three miles of this city which is passed on
the way to the steamers. 1t is the picture
of poverty and desolation. The Malays
will not work, and they live like savages.
Slowly but surely the Chinese are crowd
ing them out of their own country, and
there are now So, 900 Cinnamon here in
Singapore. The population of the city is
139, 900, and the Chinese, the Indians
and the Europeans do the business.
This road across the island of Singa-
pore was lined with Jungle, which was
at times SO thick that you could not see
more than two feet beyond the roadway,
and when it is remembered that about
three hundred people are killed every
year here by tigers, and' that the lower
part of the Malay Peninsula is the home
of the wild beast, it viii be seen that the
possibilities were both numerous and un-
pleasant. We passed through a number
of Malay Chinese villages, and we saw
many black-skinned natives of Java
working upon. the roadway. Now and
then we would meet a cart drawn by
heavy Indian bulIocks with great humps
of fat six inches high above their shonl-
ders and with their black skinned driver
in turban sitting or standing upon the
heavy cart tongue. These bullocks push
the cart along with the. front Of their
shoulders. Their yokes do not come
around the necks as do those of our oxen
and they get over the ground three times
| aS fast They are the heacts nf burden