Although all the work on the plantations, as well as every other description of labour at Singapore, is performed by free labourers, I was told that it cost less than if it were done by slaves.  The wages here are very trifling indeed; a common labourer receives three dollars a month, without either board or lodging; and yet with this, he is enabled not only to subsist himself, but to maintain a family.  Their huts, which are composed of foliage, they build themselves; their food consists of small fish, roots, and a few vegetables.  Nor is their apparel more expensive; for, beyond the immediate vicinity of the town, and where all the plantations are situated, the children go about entirely naked, while the men wear nothing more than a small apron about a hand’s-breadth wide, and fastened between the legs:  the women are the only persons dressed with anything like propriety.

The plantations that we now saw, and which we reached about 10 o’clock, were cultivated by Chinese.  In addition to their huts of leaves, they had erected a small temple, where they invited us to alight.  We immediately spread out upon the altar some refreshments, which Madame Behu, like a good housewife, had given us; but, instead of imitating the Chinese, and sacrificing them to the gods, we were wicked enough to devour them ravenously ourselves.

When we had satisfied our hunger, we skinned the serpent and then made a present of it to the Chinese; but they gave us to understand that they would not touch it, at which I was greatly surprised, since they will generally eat anything.  I was afterwards convinced that this was all pretence, for on returning some hours later from our hunting excursion and going into one of their huts, we found them all seated round a large dish in which were pieces of roast meat of the peculiar round shape of the serpent.  They wanted to hide the dish in a great hurry, but I entered very quickly and gave them some money to be allowed to taste it.  I found the flesh particularly tender and delicate, even more tender than that of a chicken.

But I have quite forgotten to describe our hunting excursion.  We asked the labourers if they could not put us on the track of a tiger; they described to us a part of the wood where one was reported to have taken up his abode a few days previously, and we immediately set off.  We had great difficulty in forcing our way through the forest, having, at every instant, to clamber over prostrate trees, creep through brambles or cross over swamps, but we had, at all events, the satisfaction of progressing, which we certainly should not have had in the forests of Brazil, where such an undertaking would have been impracticable.  It is true that there were creepers and orchids, but not in such numbers as in Brazil, and the trees, too, stand far wider apart.  We saw some splendid specimens, towering to a height of above a hundred feet.  The objects which interested us most were the ebony and kolim trees.  The timber of the first is of two kinds, a layer of brownish-yellow surrounding the inner stem, which composes that portion especially known as ebony.