tom forbidding the remarriage of
widows to be a national curse exceeded only by that compassed by the
word "caste."

A statistical paper on India issued recently by the British Government
shows that there were killed in that country last year by snakes and
wild beasts 24,034 persons--21,880 by snake bites, 796 by tigers, 399 by
leopards, and the rest by other animals. The number of cattle destroyed
by snakes and wild beasts was 98,582.

The other side of the account shows that 65,146 snakes and 16,121 wild
animals were killed, for which rewards aggregating $37,000 were paid.

CHAPTER XI

ISLAND LINKS IN BRITAIN'S CHAIN OF EMPIRE

If one be a sufferer from anglophobia, a tour of the globe by
conventional paths may produce rather more irritation than is good for
man--to such a traveler the British Empire is a chronic nightmare, for
the red flag is everywhere. Every harbor seems choked with English
shipping, if not guarded by a British warship; and Tommy Atkins is the
first man met ashore. If your prejudice against Great Britain be
unjustly conceived, you will probably revise your judgment before the
earth is half circled; at least you must confess that Britain is great
from the standpoint of area.

A globe-trotter who has had "Britannia Rules the Wave" ringing in his
ears from Gibraltar to Ceylon, connects again with the "thin red line"
the moment his ship emerges from the Bay of Bengal. Penang then is the
link in the interminable chain of colonies upon which the sun never
sets. "Well, this is but an island, and a small one at that;
consequently I won't let it worry me," soliloquizes the anglophobe.

Penang is doubly remarkable. Firstly, the tourist is there made to
understand that he has finished with that great division of the earth
known as "the East," and is at the portal of the Far East, the realm
wherein the Chinaman, Malay and Japanese teem in uncounted millions.
Besides, Penang is the premier tin port of the universe. Seven tenths of
this metal used by the world starts for market from Penang and its
neighboring ports in the Malacca Straits.

"Rule Britannia" is played next at Singapore, likewise an island, and,
as is Penang, a place almost wholly given over to Chinese and their
shops. Few coastal towns in China possess a greater percentage of
Celestials than England's city at the tip end of the Malay peninsula and
abutting on the equator. Sir Stamford Raffles placed Englishmen--and
Chinamen--unde