aper, and many other
articles as cheap or cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The
shopkeeper is very good-natured; he will show you everything he has, and
does not seem to mind if you buy nothing. He bates a little, but not so
much as the Klings, who almost always ask twice what they are willing to
take. If you buy a few things from him, he will speak to you afterwards
every time you pass his shop, asking you to walk in and sit down, or
take a cup of tea; and you wonder how he can get a living where so many
sell the same trifling articles.

The tailors sit at a table, not on one; and both they and the shoemakers
work well and cheaply. The barbers have plenty to do, shaving heads and
cleaning ears; for which latter operation they have a great array of
little tweezers, picks, and brushes. In the outskirts of the town are
scores of carpenters and blacksmiths. The former seem chiefly to make
coffins and highly painted and decorated clothes-boxes. The latter are
mostly gun-makers, and bore the barrels of guns by hand out of solid
bars of iron. At this tedious operation they may be seen every day, and
they manage to finish off a gun with a flintlock very handsomely. All
about the streets are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup,
and agar-agar (a jelly made of seaweed), who have many cries
as unintelligible as those of London. Others carry a portable
cooking-apparatus on a pole balanced by a table at the other end, and
serve up a meal of shellfish, rice, and vegetables for two or three
halfpence--while coolies and boatmen waiting to be hired are everywhere
to be met with.

In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest trees in the
jungle, and saw them up into planks; they cultivate vegetables, which
they bring to market; and they grow pepper and gambir, which form
important articles of export. The French Jesuits have established
missions among these inland Chinese, which seem very successful. I lived
for several weeks at a time with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the
centre of the island, where a pretty church has been built and there are
about 300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who had just arrived
from Tonquin, where he had been living for many years. The Jesuits still
do their work thoroughly as of old. In Cochin China, Tonquin, and China,
where all Christian teachers are obliged to live in secret, and
are liable to persecution, expulsion, and sometimes death, every
province--ev