map and look
at the long stretch of the Malay Peninsula,--a thousand miles southerly
it runs, does it not?--whereon Penang, Malacca, and Singapur are so
modestly underlined in red ink. See, now. We have our Residents at every
one of the Malay native States of any importance, and right up the line
to Kedah and Siam our influence regulates and controls all. Into this
land God put first gold and tin, and after these the Englishman, who
floats companies, obtains concessions and goes forward. Just at present,
one company alone holds a concession of two thousand square miles in the
interior. That means mining rights; and that means a few thousand
coolies and a settled administration such as obtains in the big Indian
collieries, where the heads of the mines are responsible kings.

With the companies will come the railroads. So far the Straits papers
spend their space in talking about them, for at present there are only
twenty-three or twenty-four miles of narrow-gauge railway open, near a
civilised place called Pirates' Creek, in the Peninsula. The Sultan of
Johore is, or has been, wavering over a concession for a railway through
his country, which will ultimately connect with this Pirates' Creek
line. Singapur is resolved ere long to bridge over the mile or
mile-and-a-half Straits between herself and the State of Johore. In this
manner a beginning will be made of the southerly extension of
Colquhoun's great line running, let us say, from Singapur through the
small States and Siam, without a break, into the great Indian railway
systems, so that a man will be able to book from here to Calcutta
direct. Anything like a business summary of the railway schemes that
come up for discussion from time to time would fill a couple of these
letters, and would be uncommonly dry reading. You know the sort of
"shop" talk that rages among engineers when a new line is being run in
India through perfectly known ground, whose traffic-potentialities may
be calculated to the last pie. It is very much the same here, with the
difference that no one knows for a certainty what the country ahead of
the surveys is like, or where the development is likely to stop. This
gives breeziness to the conversation. The audacity of the speakers is
amazing to one who has been accustomed to see things through Indian
eyes. They hint at "running up the Peninsula," establishing
communications here, consolidating influence there, and Providence only
knows what else; bu