r everlasting obligation when he brought Singapore into
being. Raffles possessed the empire-building instinct, surely, and
earned the honor of interment in Westminster Abbey.

Singapore harbor commands one of the greatest natural turnstiles of
commerce. Shipping has no other option than to use it. While Englishmen
have administered the port and city since Raffles's time, thousands of
Chinamen have there waxed extremely fat. The 'rickshaw coolie of
Singapore, even, is physically perfect, and consequently in agreeable
contrast to the Indian of calfless legs, and his Cingalese colleague of
weak lungs. The Chinese 'rickshawman whisks a visitor about Singapore
with the stride of a race-horse. For a city only a degree north of the
equator, Singapore offers creature comforts in sufficient number to make
human existence there extremely attractive.

[Illustration: HONG KONG HARBOR]

Nabobs and well-conditioned humanity of Polynesia esteem Singapore much
as Europeans and Americans regard Paris--an estimable place of consort,
and scores of these men there lead a life not based on the simple ideas
of Charles Wagner. Island sultans are usually as numerous in Singapore
as princes in Cairo; and European adepts in equatorial government find
frequent need of repairing to the gay metropolis of the Straits. An
interesting potentate frequently seen is Rajah Brooke, a cultivated
Englishman who is philanthropic despot over a slice of Borneo twice the
area of England and Wales. Sarawak, his country, has been called the
best governed tropical land in the world. Another English celebrity
affecting Singapore is Governor Gueritz, administrator of the North
Borneo Company, destined, maybe, to become as profitable as the East
India Company of old. The Sultan of Sulu (not the hero of George Ade's
comic opera) enjoys a sojourn in Singapore. He is young, wears the garb
of a Mohammedan who has been to Mecca, and is not displeased by the
stare of tourists. The Sultan of Johore, in the hands of money-lenders
through unfortunate turf ventures, spends as much time in the city as in
his Malay sultanate. A prince of the Siamese king's ministry, in
Singapore to bestow orders for bridges and river steamers, goes nightly
to witness a feeble production of "The Girl from Kays," and whistles
"Sammy" as he promenades hotel verandas.

Down at the quays great steamships are fed with coal by Chinese coolies
who toil silently and expeditiously. A Chinese swell is on