Grouped about Raffles Square, and facing the Bund, are the great English,
German, and Chinese houses that handle the three hundred million dollars’
worth of imports and exports that pass in and out of the port yearly, and make
Singapore one of the most important marts of the commercial world.
Beyond, and back from the Square, is Tanglin, or the suburbs, where the
government officials and the heads of these great firms live in luxurious
bungalows, surrounded by a swarm of retainers.
Let us drive from Raffles Square through this cosmopolitan city and out to
Tanglin. Beginning at Cavanagh Bridge, at one end of which stands the great
Singapore Club and the Post Office, is the ocean esplanade,—the pride of the
city. It encloses a public playground of some fifteen acres, reclaimed from the
sea at an expense of over two hundred thousand dollars. Every afternoon when
the heat of the day has fallen from 150° to 80°, the European population meets
on this esplanade park to play tennis, cricket, and football, and to promenade,
gossip, and listen to the music of the regimental or man-of-war band.
The drive from the sea, up Orchard Road to the Botanic Gardens, carries you by
all the diversified life of the city. The Chinese restaurant is omnipresent. By its
side sits a naked little bit of bronze, with a basket of sugar-cane—each stick, two
feet long, cleaned and scraped, ready for the hungry and thirsty rickshaw coolies,
who have a few quarter cents with which to gratify their appetites. On every
veranda and in every shady corner are the Kling and Chinese barbers. They carry
their barber-shops in a kit or in their pockets, and the recipient of their skill finds
a seat as best he may. The barber is prepared to shave your head, your face, trim
your hair, braid your queue, and pull the hairs out of your nose and ears.
There is no special quarter for separate trades. Madras tailor shops rub shoulders
with Malay blacksmith shops, while Indian wash-houses join Manila cigar
manufactories.
Once past the commercial part of the ride, the great bungalows of the European
and Chinese merchants come into view. The immediate borders of the road itself
reveal nothing but a dense mass of tropical verdure and carefully cut hedges, but
at intervals there is a wide gap in the hedge, and a road leads off into the
seeming jungle. At every such entrance there are posts of masonry, and a plate
bearing the name of the manor and its owner.