ith a rod of iron,
but bows to the earth before the mem, or the master. For his ten
Mexican dollars a month he takes all the burdens from your shoulders,
and stands between you and the rude outside polyglot world. He is
a hero-worshipper, and if you are a Tuan Besar--great man--he will
double his attentions, and spread your fame far and wide among his
brother majordomos.

But a description of each member of the menage and their duties would
be in a large measure the description of the odd, complex life of
the East.

The growth of Singapore since its founding by Sir Stamford Raffles
in 1819 would do honor to the growth of one of our Western cities.

Within three months after the purchase of the ground from the Sultan
of Johore, Raffles wrote to Lord Warren Hastings, the Governor:--

"We have a growing colony of nearly five thousand souls," and a little
later one of his successors wrote apologetically to Lord Auckland,
discussing some project relating to Singapore finance;--

"These details may appear to your Lordship petty, but then everything
connected with these settlements is petty, except their annual surplus
cost to the Government of India."

To-day the city and colony has a population of over one million,
and a revenue of five million dollars--a magnificent monument to its
founder's foresight!

From a commercial and strategic stand-point, the site of the city is
unassailable. When the English and the Dutch divided the East Indies
by drawing a line through the Straits of Malacca,--the English to hold
all north, the Dutch all south,--the crafty Dutchman smiled benignly,
with one finger in the corner of his eye, and went back to his coffee
and tobacco trading in the beautiful islands of Java and Sumatra,
pitying the ignorance of the Englishman, who was contented with the
swampy jungles of an unknown and savage neck of land, little thinking
that inside of a half century all his products would come to this
same despised district for a market, while his own colonies would
retrograde and gradually pass into the hands of the English.

Singapore is one of the great cities of the world, the centre of all
the East Indian commerce, the key of southern Asia, and one of the
massive links in the armored chain with which Great Britain encircles
the globe.

A FIGHT WITH ILLANUM PIRATES

The Yarn of a Yankee Skipper

The Daily Straits Times on the desk before me contained a vivid
word picture of the capture