little tweezers, picks, and brushes. In the outskirts of the town are
scores of carpenters and blacksmiths. The former seem chiefly to make
coffins and highly painted and decorated clothes-boxes. The latter are
mostly gun-makers, and bore the barrels of guns by hand out of solid
bars of iron. At this tedious operation they may be seen every day, and
they manage to finish off a gun with a flintlock very handsomely. All
about the streets are sellers of water, vegetables, fruit, soup,
and agar-agar (a jelly made of seaweed), who have many cries
as unintelligible as those of London. Others carry a portable
cooking-apparatus on a pole balanced by a table at the other end, and
serve up a meal of shellfish, rice, and vegetables for two or three
halfpence--while coolies and boatmen waiting to be hired are everywhere
to be met with.
In the interior of the island the Chinese cut down forest trees in the
jungle, and saw them up into planks; they cultivate vegetables, which
they bring to market; and they grow pepper and gambir, which form
important articles of export. The French Jesuits have established
missions among these inland Chinese, which seem very successful. I lived
for several weeks at a time with the missionary at Bukit-tima, about the
centre of the island, where a pretty church has been built and there are
about 300 converts. While there, I met a missionary who had just arrived
from Tonquin, where he had been living for many years. The Jesuits still
do their work thoroughly as of old. In Cochin China, Tonquin, and China,
where all Christian teachers are obliged to live in secret, and
are liable to persecution, expulsion, and sometimes death, every
province--even those farthest in the interior--has a permanent Jesuit
mission establishment constantly kept up by fresh aspirants, who are
taught the languages of the countries they are going to at Penang or
Singapore. In China there are said to be near a million converts; in
Tonquin and Cochin China, more than half a million. One secret of
the success of these missions is the rigid economy practised in the
expenditure of the funds. A missionary is allowed about 30. a year, on
which he lives in whatever country he may be. This renders it possible
to support a large number of missionaries with very limited means; and
the natives, seeing their teachers living in poverty and with none of
the luxuries of life, are convinced that they are sincere in what they
teach, and have really given up home and friends and ease and safety,
for the good of others. No wonder they make converts, for it must be a
great blessing to the poor people among whom they labour to have a man
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