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Updated: May 6, 2025
At the end of the vista the bright sunlight shone on an open space, where appeared a small lake, on the opposite side of which we could distinguish several buildings raised on piles a large one in the centre with a deep verandah, the palm-thatched roof of which extended beyond the walls; the whole surrounded by plantations of mandioca, cacao, peach-palms, and other trees.
In 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles purchased the island on which Singapore now stands from the father of the late Sultan of Johore, the royal palace was a palm-thatched bungalow, the country an unbroken jungle, and the inhabitants pirates and fishermen by turns; the notorious Strait of Malacca was infested with long, keen, swift pirate praus, and the snake-like kris menaced the merchant marine of the world.
A large party had collected under the wide palm-thatched roof of the dyeing shed-pretty and ugly, brown and fair, tall and short; some upright and some bent by toil at the loom from early youth, but all young; not one more than eighteen years old. Slaves were capital, bearing interest in the form of work and of children. Every slave girl was married to a slave as soon as she was old enough.
They dwelt in rude palm-thatched huts, the principal article of furniture being the hammock. Simple agriculture, hunting and fishing provided their means of livelihood. The natives called the island Haiti, signifying "high ground," but the western portion was also called Babeque or Bohio, meaning "land of gold" and the eastern part Quisqueya, meaning "mother of the earth."
There was a Malay kampong, or village, to our right. Under the heavy green and yellow fronds of a cocoanut grove were a half-dozen picturesque palm-thatched houses. They were built up on posts six feet from the ground, and a dozen men and children scampered down their rickety ladders, as a shrill blast from our whistle aroused them from their slumbers.
Even the sharp, insistent whir of the cicada ceases when the thermometer on the sunny side of our palm-thatched bungalow reaches 155°. If I am forced to go outside, I don my cork helmet, and hold a paper umbrella above it. Even then, after I have gone a half-hour, I feel dizzy and sick.
And in spite of everything Orion had won on his affections, for every day, every hour he was struck by some new quality, some greater trait than he had looked for in the young man. Torches were flaring in the inn-yard where, under a palm-thatched roof supported on poles and covering a square space in the middle, benches stood for the guests to rest.
In the largest canoe stood a splendid-looking fellow, evidently a chief. On the shore near a large palm-thatched house a great group was gathered, and the American, levelling his glass, said: "Say, it's a she-queen or something over there." At that moment the canoes drew alongside, and while MacGregor adjured us to show no fear, he beckoned the chief to come aboard.
Malay villages, brown and palm-thatched in the immemorial style, stand on piles above the swampy ground, which seems the approved site of habitation. A barren district devastated by a forest fire, contains the disused pits of ancient tin-mines, but these unsightly hollows have been decorated by Nature's hand with a luxuriant growth of the frilled pink lotus.
Hurlstone were awaiting them in the palm-thatched veranda of a more pretentious cabin, that served as a school-room.
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