ing at all times as nearly naked as
would be permitted among white people. They give up nearly all branches
of occupation, trade, and industries to the Chinamen, and content
themselves with lying all day in the sun, eating bananas and other cheap
fruits, and chewing betel-nuts. Some of them make good sailors, taken
away from their home and put under discipline. The P. & O. Steamship
Company, as well as many others, often recruit their crews here. Is it
because surrounding nature is so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific in
spontaneous food, that these, her children, are lazy, dirty, and
heedless? Does it require a cold, unpropitious climate, a sterile soil
and rude surroundings, to awaken human energy and put man at his best?
There is compensation always. With luxury comes enervation, effort is
superfluous; while with frugality and labor we have strength,
accompanied with development of mind and body. The former produces
slaves, the latter heroes.

Humanity and the lower grades of animal life seem here to change places.
While the birds and butterflies are in perfect harmony with the
loveliness of nature about them, while the flowers are glorious in
beauty and in fragrance, man alone seems out of tune and out of place.
Indolent, dirty, unclad, he adds nothing to the beauty or perfection of
the surroundings, does nothing to adapt and improve such wealth of
possibilities as nature spreads broadcast only in these regions. The
home of the Malay is not so clean as that of the ants, or the birds, or
the bees; the burrowing animals are much neater. He does little for
himself, nothing for others, the sensuous life he leads poisoning his
nature. Virtue and vice have no special meaning to him. There is no sear
and yellow leaf at Penang, or anywhere on the coast of the Straits.
Fruits and flowers are perennial: if a leaf falls, another springs into
life on the vacant stem; if fruit is plucked, a blossom follows and
another cluster ripens; nature is inexhaustible. Unlike most tropical
regions, neither Penang nor Singapore are troubled with malarial fevers,
and probably no spot on earth can be found better adapted to the wants
of primitive man.

The native women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in figure, and
very fond of ornament. Indeed both sexes pierce their ears, noses, and
lips, through which to thrust silver, brass, and gold rings, also
covering their ankles and arms with metallic rings, the number only
limited by their