ord 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