Page 18 - Malaysia by John Russel Denyes

STATE OF CIVILIZATION

The Malay At the southern tip of the Malay
Peninsula Peninsula lies the city of Singapore,
a town of three hundred thousand
people speaking a hundred different languages.
This is one of the great cross-roads of the world.
Here you find the thatched cabin of the native
Malay and the palaces of the wealthy Chinese.
Two-wheeled, man-pulled go-carts, called rick-
shaws, compete with the electric tram and the
motor taxi-cab.
This is the tenth largest shipping port of the
world. Every ship which sails between Asiatic
ports and Europe must pass through the harbor
of Singapore. To this port come thousands of
small steamers and sailing ships from all the
islands clear down to Australia, v/ith their car-
goes of tropical produce to be forwarded to Europe
and America. In turn they carry back to the
islands cheap cotton cloth, hardv/are, machinery,
canned goods, and automobiles.
Stretching out behind Singapore, like the tail
of a comet, is the Malay Peninsula. The eastern
side of this territory has neither good harbors nor
railroads. Therefore the country has been back-
ward in development. Here and there are the be-
ginnings of settlements where plantations are
growing and where mines have been opened. But
for the most part the land is covered with jungle.
Some twenty-five years ago the British began
to build a railroad system on the western side of
the peninsula. Just as the transcontinental rail-
roads of America half a century ago opened our
great western prairies to civilization, so this rail-
way in Malaysia opened to cultivation the hinter-
land of Singapore. Within the memory of Euro-

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