"you forget that we draw an unlimited supply from the
main-land. Tigers swim across the narrow straits continually, and not
until the land is cleared from jungle will our island be free from
them." The natives dig pits as traps for the tigers, similar to the
manner of catching them in India, except that at Singapore a series of
sharp, upright stakes were introduced, upon which the animals fell and
were fatally wounded. This, however, has been forbidden since an English
hunter fell into a trap and was empaled upon them.

The vegetable and fruit market at Singapore affords an amusing scene in
the early morning. In fact a traveler soon learns that it is a resort
not to be neglected in any new city; affording, as it invariably does,
strongly characteristic local pictures, and for the time drawing
together representatives from nearly all classes of the
community,--master, mistress, and servant. The variety of fruit is here
much greater than in Japan or China; and there are one or two species,
such as the delicious mangosteen,--the seductive apple of the
East,--which are found indigenous in no other country. The vegetables
are abundant, and the native women, who transact the market business,
know how to arrange them with an eye to good effect, just as they show
an artistic fancy in the mingled colors of the few clothes they wear.

The cocoanuts ripening in big clusters on the lofty trees, and many
other fruits produced by the family of the palm, are inviting and
handsome to look upon, especially when hanging in clusters forty or
fifty feet skyward. We had often read of the fan-palm, but they are much
more curious to see than to read about, being here presented in their
most thriving aspect. The California specimens are quite meagre and
unsatisfactory in comparison with those grown so near the equator. Here
the tree springs up in the exact shape of an outspread feather-fan, as
though it were artificially trained, and reaches the height of thirty
or forty feet, making a very distinctive feature of the scenery. Fruit
is always cheap in these regions, and forms a very large portion of the
native subsistence; but it was a surprise to us in paying for a dozen
large, ripe, and luscious pine-apples to find that the price was but
sixpence. It was amusing to watch the itinerant cooks, who wear a yoke
over their necks, with a cooking apparatus on one end and a little table
to balance it on the other, serving meals of rice and fish to c