ere of a
stove-house. Chinese and Malay boyhood look on, and listen to the
regimental music. The pallid English occupants of the carriages, in
spite of diaphanous muslins and fluttering fans, appear too limp and
wilted to bestow more than a languid attention to their surroundings,
until the sea-breeze, springing up as the sun declines, revives their
flagging spirits. The smartest turnout and the finest horses generally
belong to John Chinaman, got up in irreproachable English costume, with
his pigtail showing beneath a straw hat, though considerably
attenuated, and lacking those adornments of silken braid and red
tassels, generally plaited into the imposing queue of the orthodox
Celestial. The indefatigable Chinese, frequently arriving on an alien
shore without a dollar in their pockets, continually prove potential
millionaires. Immune from climatic diseases, working early and late,
tolerant and unaggressive, the iron hand in the velvet glove
disentangles and grasps the threads of the most complicated commercial
enterprise, for the idle Malay, "the gentleman of the East," here as
elsewhere, cares for little beyond the sport of hunting and
fish-spearing, which satisfies the personal necessities of his indolent
existence. The wonderful solidarity of domestic life is an important
factor in the Chinese career, for centuries of ancestor-worship, in
spite of their arrestive tendency, have strengthened the bonds of
family union and filial obedience by insisting on the supreme sanctity
of blood-relationship.

The luxuriant Botanical Garden, situated in a green cleft of an angle
formed by encircling hills, is a paradise of dreamland, though but a
miniature when compared with Buitenzorg for extent and variety. In the
restful charm of the Penang garden Art and Nature go hand in hand,
giving it an unique character among the horticultural pleasaunces of
the Eastern world. The rolling lawns of the exquisite valley, the song
of the waterfall which bounds the view as it leaps down the lofty
cliffs, the abundant shade of tamarind and palm, and the gorgeous
flowering shrubs, suggest nothing artificial or conventionalised in the
deep seclusion of the fairy glen. Tall bamboos mirror fluffy foliage
and white or golden stems in stream and pool. Orchids of the Brazils
festoon unknown trees with the rose and purple butterflies formed by
their brilliant blossoms, and colossal traveller's palms, so-called
from the draught of water obtained by i