Squatting right in the way of all passers is a Chinese travelling restaurant that looks like two flour barrels, one filled with drawers, the other containing a small charcoal fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,--bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump of bird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, "Machen, machen" (eating, eating).
Next to the Arab booth is a Chinese lamp shop, then a European dry-goods store, an Armenian law office, a Japanese bazaar, a foreign consulate.
A babble of strange sounds and a jargon of languages salute the astonished boy's ears.
In the broad well-paved streets about him a Malay syce, or driver, is trying to urge his spotted Deli pony, which is not larger than a Newfoundland dog, in between a big, lumbering two-wheeled bullock-cart, laden with oozing bags of vile-smelling gambier, and a great patient water buffalo that stands sleepily whipping the gnats from its black, almost hairless hide, while its naked driver is seated under the trees in the square quarrelling and gambling by turns.
The gharry, which resembles a dry-goods box on wheels, set in with latticed windows, smashes up against the ponderous hubs of the bullock-cart. The meek-eyed bullocks close their eyes and chew their cuds, regardless of the fierce screams of the Malay or the frenzied objurgations of their driver.
But no one pays any attention to the momentary confusion. A party of Jews dressed in robes of purple and red that sweep the street pass by, without giving a glance at the wild plunging of the half-wild pony. A Singhalese jeweller is showing his rubies and cat's-eyes to a party of Eurasian, or half-caste clerks, that are taking advantage of their master's absence from the godown to come out into the court to smoke a Manila cigarette and gossip. The mottled tortoise-shell comb in the vender's black hair, and his womanish draperies, give him a feminine aspect.
An Indian chitty, or money-lender, stands talking to a brother, supremely unconscious of the eddying throng about. These chitties are fully six feet tall, with closely shaven heads and nude bodies. Their dress of a few yards of gauze wound about their waists, and red sandals, would not lead one to think that they handle more money than any other class of people in the East. They borrow from the great English banks without security save that of their caste name, and lend to the Eurasian clerks just behind them at twelve per cent a month. If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomes a pariah. The caste make up his losses.