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They are a willing, hard-working race, though rather given to shut their eyes to the difference between meum and tuum. The original Malay inhabitants of this Island are now the most insignificant, both as to numbers and as to general utility, of the many races that are found on it. From this remark must be excepted, however, the sampan-men, who are of great service to the mercantile community.
The sampan-men, sculling lazily homeward past the black hull of the brig at anchor, could hear far into the night the drawl of the New England voice escaping through the lifted panes of the cabin skylight. Snatches of nasal sentences floated in the stillness around the still craft. "Yes, siree! Mexican war rifles good as new six in a case my people in Baltimore that's so.
They are usually employed to attend a ship during her stay here, few masters choosing to trust their crews on shore in boats. Of late years, reports have been in circulation of a suspected connection between the sampan-men and the Malay pirates in the neighbourhood; but I question their having any foundation in fact.
Those Malay families whose young men are thus employed as sampan-men, are called Orang-Laut, or "People of the sea," from their living entirely afloat. The middle of the river just opposite the town of Singapore, is crowded with boats about twenty feet long by five wide, in which these poor people are born, live, and die.
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