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Bungalows are one story high, with a roof of palm thatch, and are raised above the ground from two to five feet by brick pillars, leaving an open space for light and air beneath. Nearly every day it rains for an hour in torrents. The hot, steaming earth absorbs the water, and the fierce equatorial sun evaporates it, only to return it in a like shower the next day. So every precaution must be taken against dampness and dry-rot.

In every well-ordered bungalow seven to nine servants are an absolute necessity, while three others are usually added from time to time. The five elements, if I may so style them, are the “boy,” or boys, the cook and his helpers, the horseman, the water-carrier, the gardener, and the maid. The adjuncts are the barber, the wash man, the tailor, and the watchman. In a mild way, you are at the mercy of these servants. Their duties are fixed by caste, one never intruding on the work of another. You must have all or none. Still this is no hardship. Only newcomers ever think, of trying to economize on servant bills. The record of the thermometer is too appalling, and you speedily become too dependent on their attentions.

The Chinese “boy”–he is always the “boy” until he dies–is the presiding genius of the house. He it is who brings your tea and fruit to the bedside at 6 A.M., and lays out your evening suit ready for dinner, puts your studs in your clean shirt, brings your slippers, knows where each individual article of your wardrobe is kept, and, in fact, thinks of a hundred and one little comforts you would never have known of, had he not discovered them. He is your valet de chambre, your butler, your steward and your general agent, your interpreter and your directory. He controls the other servants with a rod of iron, but bows to the earth before the mem, or the master. For his ten Mexican dollars a month he takes all the burdens from your shoulders, and stands between you and the rude outside polyglot world. He is a hero-worshipper, and if you are a Tuan Besar–great man–he will double his attentions, and spread your fame far and wide among his brother majordomos.

But a description of each member of the menage and their duties would be in a large measure the description of the odd, complex life of the East.

The growth of Singapore since its founding by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 would do honor to the growth of one of our Western cities.

Within three months after the purchase of the ground from the Sultan of Johore, Raffles wrote to Lord Warren Hastings, the Governor:–

“We have a growing colony of nearly five thousand souls,” and a little later one of his successors wrote apologetically to Lord Auckland, discussing some project relating to Singapore finance;–

“These details may appear to your Lordship petty, but then everything connected with these settlements is petty, except their annual surplus cost to the Government of India.”

To-day the city and colony has a population of over one million, and a revenue of five million dollars–a magnificent monument to its founder’s foresight!

From a commercial and strategic stand-point, the site of the city is unassailable. When the English and the Dutch divided the East Indies by drawing a line through the Straits of Malacca,–the English to hold all north, the Dutch all south,–the crafty Dutchman smiled benignly, with one finger in the corner of his eye, and went back to his coffee and tobacco trading in the beautiful islands of Java and Sumatra, pitying the ignorance of the Englishman, who was contented with the swampy jungles of an unknown and savage neck of land, little thinking that inside of a half century all his products would come to this same despised district for a market, while his own colonies would retrograde and gradually pass into the hands of the English.

Singapore is one of the great cities of the world, the centre of all the East Indian commerce, the key of southern Asia, and one of the massive links in the armored chain with which Great Britain encircles the globe.