|
Isabella L. Bird - The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
of the betel-nut, which reddens the saliva, which is constantly flowing like blood from the corners of
their mouths. Though not a vigorous, they appear to be a healthy people, and have very large families.
They suffer chiefly from "forest fever" in the forest lands, but the rice swamps, deadly to Europeans, do
not harm them.
I rested for some time at a very beautiful convent, and was most kindly entertained by some very calm,
sweet-looking sisters, who labor piously among the female Anamese, and have schools for girls. The
troops are stationed at Saigon for only two years, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate, but these
pious women have no sanitarium, and live and die at their posts. Various things in the convent chapel
remind one of the faithfulness unto death both of missionaries and converts. In this century alone three
successive kings rivaled each other in persecuting the Christians, both Europeans and native, over and
over again murdering all the missionaries. In 1841 the king ordered that all missionaries should be
drowned, and in 1851 his successor ordered that whoever concealed a missionary should be cut in two.
The terrible and sanguinary persecution which followed this edict never ceased, till years afterward the
French frightened the king into toleration, and put an end, one hopes forever, to the persecution of
Christians. The sisters compute the native Christians at seven thousand, and have sanguine hopes for the
future of Christianity in French Cochin China, as well as in Cambodia, which appears to be under a
French protectorate.
I do not envy the French their colony. According to my three informants, Europeans cannot be
acclimatized, and most of the children born of white parents die shortly after birth. The shores of the sea
and of the rivers are scourged by severe intermittent fevers, and the whole of the colony by dysentery,
which among Europeans is particularly fatal. The mean temperature is 83 degrees F., the dampness is
unusual, and the nights are too hot to refresh people after the heat of the day.*
[*The chief production of the country is rice, which forms half the sum total of the exports. The other
exports are chiefly salt-fish, salt, undyed cotton, skins of beasts, and pepper. About seven hundred
vessels enter and leave Saigon in a year.]
After leaving the convent I resumed my gharrie, and the driver took me, what I suppose is the usual
"course" for tourists, through a quaint Asiatic town inhabited by a mixed, foreign population of Hindus,
Malays, Tagals, and Chinese merchants, scattered among a large indigenous population of Anamese
fishermen, servants, and husbandmen, through the colonial district, which looked asleep or dead, to the
markets, where the Chinamen and natives of India were in the full swing and din of buying and selling all
sorts of tropical fruits and rubbishy French goods, and through what may be called the Government town
or official quarter. It was getting dark when I reached the wharf, and the darkness enabled me to hobble
unperceived on board on my bandaged feet. The heat of the murky, lurid evening was awful, and as
thousands of mosquitoes took possession of the ship, all comfort was banished, and I was glad when we
steamed down the palm-fringed Saigon or Donnai waters, and through the mangrove swamps at the
mouths of the Me-kong river, and past the lofty Cape St. Jacques, with its fort, into the open China Sea.
I. L. B.
LETTER VII
Beauties of the Tropics - Singapore Hospitality - An Equatorial Metropolis - An Aimless Existence - The
Growth of Singapore - "Farms" and "Farmers" - The Staple of Conversation - The Glitter of "Barbaric
Gold" - A Polyglot Population - A Mediocre People - Female Grace and Beauty - The "Asian Mystery" -
Oriental Picturesqueness - The Metamorphosis of Singapore
|
