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In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroic statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the English governor who made Singapore possible. To my right, on the veranda, stood a modest, gray-haired little man who cleared the seas of piracy and insured Singapore’s commercial ascendency, Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. A little farther on, surrounded by a brilliant suite of Malay princes, was the Sultan of Johore, whose father sold the island of Singapore to the British.

The first of the sports was a series of foot-races between Malay and Kling boys, almost invariably won by the Malays, who are the North American Indians of Malaysia–the old-time kings of the soil. They are never, like the Chinese, mere beasts of burden, or great merchants, nor do they descend to petty trade, like the Indians or Bengalese. If they must work they become horsemen.

Next came a jockey race, in which a dozen long-limbed Malays took each a five-year-old child astride his shoulders, and raced for seventy-five yards. There were sack-races and greased-pole climbing and pig-catching.

Now came a singular contest–an eating match. Two dozen little Malay, Kling, Tamil, and Chinese boys were seated at regular intervals about an open circle by one of the governor’s aids. Not one could touch the others in any way. Each had a dry, hard ship-biscuit before him. A pistol shot and two dozen pairs of little brown fists went pit-a-pat on the two dozen hard biscuits, and in an instant the crackers were broken to powder.

Then commenced the difficult task of forcing the powdered pulp down the little throats. Both hands were called into full play during the operation, one for crowding in, the other for grinding the residue and patting the stomach and throat. Each little competitor would shyly rub into the warm earth, or hide away in the folds of his many-colored sarong, as much as possible, or when a rival was looking the other way, would snap a good-sized piece across to him.

The little brown fellow who won the fifty-cent piece by finishing his biscuit first simply put into his mouth a certain quantity of the crushed biscuit, and with little or no mastication pushed the whole mass down his throat by sheer force.

The minute the contest was decided, all the participants, and many other boys, rushed to a great tub of molasses to duck for half-dollars. One after another their heads would disappear into the sticky, blinding mass, as they fished with their teeth for the shining prizes at the bottom.

Successful or otherwise, after their powers were exhausted they would suddenly pull out their heads, reeking with the molasses, and make for the ocean, unmindful of the crowds of natives in holiday attire who blocked their way.

Then came a jinrikisha race, with Chinese coolies pulling Malay passengers around a half-mile course. Letting go the handles of their wagons as they crossed the line, the coolies threw their unfortunate passengers over backward.

Tugs of war, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts on the turf finished the land sports, and we all adjourned to the yachts to witness those of the sea. There were races between men-of-war cutters, European yachts, rowing shells, Chinese sampans, and Malay colehs with great, dart-like sails, so wide-spreading that ropes were attached to the top of the masts, and a dozen naked natives hung far out over the side of the slender boat to keep it from blowing over. In making the circle of the harbor they would spring from side to side of the boat, sometimes lost to our view in the spray, often missing their footholds, and dragging through the tepid water.

Between times, while watching the races, we amused ourselves throwing coppers to a fleet of native boys in small dugouts beneath our bows. Every time a penny dropped into the water, a dozen little bronze forms would flash in the sunlight, and nine times out of ten the coin never reached the bottom.

Last of all came the trooping of the English colors on the magnificent esplanade, within the shadow of the cathedral; the march past of the sturdy British artillery and engineers, with their native allies, the Sikhs and Sepoys; then the feu-de-joie, and New Year’s was officially recognized by the guns of the fort.

That night we danced at Government House,–we exiles of the Temperate Zone,–keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year’s Day under a tropic sky and within sound of the tiger’s wail was really January first. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp creak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousand miles away.