Directory_and_Chronicle_1907 — Page 1297

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SINGAPORE

Victoria Street, and other smaller churches in the outskirts. There is also a neat Jewish Synagogue in Waterloo Street. The principal schools are those of the Raffles Institute, the Christian Brothers, and the Anglo-Chinese School. The Raffles Girls' School and the Convent also provide for the education of girls of the Protestant and Roman Catholic persuasions.

The Singapore Club has a good building in a central position. There are Recreation, Sporting, Rowing, Shooting, Cricket, Lawn Tennis, Art, and Reading Clubs, and the Celestial (Chinese) Reasoning Association. There is a Country Club with a well-built bungalow situated some three miles out of town, at which dances and amateur theatricals are frequently given. The German community have a similar institution. The Raffles Library and Museum, moved in October 1887, into the new building erected for them, are creditable and well kept institutions, the Museum having made very fair progress since its inception. The Library contains over 16,000 volumes, chiefly of standard modern literature, and includes the valuable philological collection of the late Mr. Logan.

There are several good hotels, of which the Raffles is the best. The Press is repre- sented by the Straits Times and Singapore Free Press with weekly issues of both, the Eastern Daily Mail, and the Government Gazette. There are also two Chinese daily papers called the Lot Pan and Sing Pau, one Malay paper, the Bintang Timor, and one or two papers in Tamil.

Singapore is well off for Docks. The Tanjong Pagar Dock premises, which were taken over from a public limited liability company by the Colonial Government in 1966 at a cost of £3,448,339 fixed by arbitration, lie about a mile to the westward of the fine wharf affording berthage for a large number of vessels at one time, with sufficient water alongside for vessels of the heaviest draught, and protected by a breakwater from the swell from the roads and from the strength of the tides. There are commodious godowns erected on the wharf for the storage of goods, Coal sheds, capable of storing 50,000 tons, adjoin the godowns,. while hand carts on rails essentially aid the labour of unloading vessels. The usual accompaniments are also to be found--two graving docks, the Victoria Dock, 450 feet long and 65 feet broad at entrance, and the Albert Dock, 485 feet long and 60 feet broad at entrance—a machine shop, boiler, and masting shears, &c. Considerable improve- ments are now under construction including a railway running from one end of the wharves to the other. The New Harbour Dock Company's premises, situated about three miles further West, include two docks of 375 and 444 feet in length respectively, with sheds, workshops, &e. These were purchased by the Tanjong Pagar Dock Com- pany in 1900, and were included in the sale to the Government in 1906, as also was the Patent Slip at Tanjong Rhoo, which is 429 feet long and 76 feet broad over piers. The Government contemplate improvements to the docking facilities of the Colony costing £2,092,600.

Singapore is considered to have a big future yet before it. Sir Frank Swettenham, in a speech delivered just before his retirement from the Governorship, indicated the future of Singapore in these words :--“You have in Singapore a city of 200,000 inhabitants, which will one day be a million, and a port reckoned by the tonnage of its shipping as the seventh largest in the world. That is something to begin with. Then you have a magnificent natural harbour on which nothing has yet been spent, but which, if it were protected by works, would afford 1,300 acres of sheltered anchorage. You have wharves and docks which have already fame beyond these shores and are capable of vast improvement. You have the making of a great naval base which we believe is already almost impregnable. Behind you, you have one of the richest countries, well watered and wooded, with no earthquakes or volcanoes, floods or famines or serious epidemics. Something has already been done to develop some portion of this country. Railways have been made, some mines have been opened, and planting has been done, and in the course of less than 30 years the revenue has grown from $5,500,000 to over $20,000,000 and the trade has grown from little or nothing at all to 100 millions of dollars. Then in the Colony you will have next year a revenue half as large again as this year, and united with that of the Federated Malay States it will be far larger than that of any other Crown Colony." To this it has to be added that the Colonial Government has decided upon an improvement of the harbour at a cost of £1,264,000, and a scheme exists for the improvement of the river at a cost of £523,187, but this scheme has been shelved for the present.

The climate of Singapore is remarkable for its salubrity, and the island has been described by medical writers as the "paradise of children," infantile diseases seldom being at all malignant. Despite its proximity to the equator, under normal circumstances

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