ce Malayan pirates, separate the island from the mainland and
the Sultanate of Johore.

The shipping that once worked its way through these narrow straits,
in momentary fear that its mangrove-bound shores held a long, swift
pirate prau, now goes further south and into the island-guarded harbor
before Singapore.

Nothing can be more beautiful than the sea approach to Singapore. As
you enter the Straits, the emerald-green of a bevy of little islands
obstructs the vision, and affords a grateful relief to the almost
blinding glare of the Malayan sky, and the metallic reflections of
the ocean.

Some seem only inhabited by a graceful waving burden of strange,
tropical foliage, and by a band of chattering monkeys; on others you
detect a Malay kampong, or village, its umbrella-like houses of attap,
close down to the shore, built high up on poles, so that half the time
their boulevards are but vast mud-holes, the other half--Venice, filled
with a moving crowd of sampans and fishing praus. A crowd of bronzed,
naked little figures sport within the shadow of a maze of drying nets,
and flee in consternation as the black, log-like head and cruel,
watchful eyes of a crocodile glide quietly along the mangrove roots.

On another island you discern the grim breastworks and the frowning
mouth of a piece of heavy ordnance.

Soon the island of Singapore reveals itself in a long line of dome-like
hills and deep-cut shadows, whose stolid front quickly dissolves. The
tufted tops of a sentinel palm, the wide-spreading arms of the banian,
clumps of green and yellow bamboo, and the fan-shaped outlines of
the traveller's palm become distinguishable. As the great, red,
tropical sun rises from behind the encircling hills, the monotony
of the foliage is relieved in places by objects which it all but hid
from view. The granite minaret of the Mohammedan mosque, the carved
dome of a Buddhist temple, the slender spire of an English cathedral,
the bold projections of Government House, and the wide, white sides
of the Municipal buildings all hold the eye.

Then a maze of strange shipping screens the nearing shore--the military
masts and yards of British and Dutch men-of-war, the high-heeled,
shoe-like lines of Chinese junks, innumerable Malay and Kling sampans,
and great, unwieldy Borneo tonkangs.

For six miles along the wharves and for six miles back into the island
extend the municipal limits of the city. Two hundred thousand people
live within