Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1924-02-20

ciety. Washington, D. c.
Singapore is a tip of Asia That
greatest of all continents seemingly
not satisfied with it's own great bulk,
stretches out fingers to every other
continent except South America. The
thinnest finger is the narrow Malay
peninsula reaching for Australia
Singapore, which is an island as well
as a city, is the nail Of the finger.
Though the grasp falls short of Aus
tralia it is long enough to gather at
its tip the ships of the world.
S'pore, it's languid, perspiring resi-
dents call it. The reason for their
abbreviation is only 80 miles away
the equator. Any man who can bring
himself to live ION the bump" is en-
titled to his whims even if he insists
or squeezing the essence out of one
of the most poetic. names ever given
to a city. But S'pore must have its
amenities, for more than 100000 souls
now call this great turnstile of COM
merce their home town.
1t has amassed this population, the
greatest to be found in any city near
the equator, in just 100 years. About
1920 Sir Stamford Raff1es discovered
Singapore and decided to make this
tiny fishing village a world port.
Rallies was a British administrator in
Java during the five-year period Of
British control in that tropical domain
wrested from the Dutch. He died a
broken and disgraced man, but his
vision was sound, as Britain has tar
Oily discovered. The two early COM
petitors of Singapore, Penang and Ma
lacca, have become satellites of the
great port, which may be fortified as
the Gibraltar of the Pacific.
On the Singapore wharf is market
Of models and a life-class for a hun
dred painters; and sculptors, too, may
study there all the tones of living
bronze and more of repose than of
muscular action, perhaps. Japanese
Chinese, Siamese, Malays, Javanese,
Burmese, Cingalese, Tamils, Sikhs,
Parsees, Lascars, Malabars, Malagasy,
and sailor folk of all coasts, Hindus
and heathens of every caste and per-
suasion, are grouped In brilliant con-
fusion of red, white, brown and pat
termed drapery, of block, brown and
yellow skins. Behind them, in ghost
ly clothes, stand the pallid Europeans,
who have brought the law, order and
system, the customs, habits, comforts
and luxuries of civilization to the
tropics and the jungle. All these
alien heathens and picturesque unbe~
levers, these pagans and idolators,
Suddhists, Brahmans, Jews, Turks,
sun and fire worshipers, devil dancers,
and what not, have come with the
white man to toll for him under the
equatorial sun, since the Malays are
the great leisure class Of the world,
and will not work.
WelI-Buit and Clean City.
Singapore today is well-built and
beautifully ordered city, and the mu-
nicipal housekeeping is an example to
many cities of the temperate zone.
Even the untidy Malay and the none
too-clean Chinese, who swarm to this
profitable trading center, are held to
outer cleanliness and strict sanitary
laws in their allotted quarters. The
stately business houses, the marble
palace of a bank, the long iron paviI-
ions shading the markets, the splen-
did RaffleS museum and library, are
all regular and satisfactory sights I;
but the street life is the fascination
and distraction of the traveller above
everything else. The array of turbans
and sarongs gives color to every thor
ougnfare; but the striking and most
unique pictures in Singapore streets
are the Tamil bullock drivers, who,
sooty and statuesque, stand in SPLEEN
did contrast between their bumped
white oxen and the mounds of white
flour-bags they draw in primitive
carts.
Within the last ten years a swift
moving drama of world commerce
has focused attention on Singapore.
All but the most recent school geog-
raphies in American schools, in tell
Ing the story of rubber, describe the
method of obtaining it in the jungle
forests of the Amazon river AS a
matter of fact the source of raw rub
Der has meY~ 4 over to the other side