In the middle of the year, George Armstrong opened an Exchange Room, Reading and News Room, and Circulating Library in Commercial Square. It was originally intended for the use of captains and supercargoes,[1] but it soon became a popular place for merchants and citizens to congregate, to read the newspapers and discuss the topics of the day, and it quickly became the unofficial general meeting place.
Aside from the vicissitudes of import and export figures, commodity prices and exchange rates, complaints about pirate attacks, the state of disrepair of Presentment Bridge and the regular flooding of South Bridge Road, one of the hot topics of conversation during that year was the tiger attacks. A tiger had attacked two Malays at Tanjong Pagar, and George Armstrong had reported spotting a tiger that had run across his path while he and his wife were out on a drive on the road to Telok Blangah. But most of the attacks were upon workers on the gambier and pepper plantations in the jungle interior of the island.
The Chinese had continued to develop their early investments in pepper and gambier, fuelled by the development of the British dyeing and tanning industries. The two crops were grown together, since the waste from gambier production served as a fertilizer for pepper. The most successful planter was Seah Eu Chin, known as the King of Gambier, who had made a huge personal fortune when he planted a huge acreage of gambier and pepper, just before the price of the crops rose internationally. Although the gambier and pepper plantations brought a fair return on investment, they had certain disadvantages.
The pepper quickly exhausted the soil, and large supplies of wood were required to provide fuel for the vats in which the gambier leaves were boiled, before they were pressed to extract their juices, and then dried into a concentrated paste. The Chinese planters left a trail of devastation in the jungle as they kept moving their plantations further and further inland, and the wasteland they left behind was quickly overgrown with course lalang grass. And as they moved further and further inland, they encroached more and more on the jungle ranges of the tigers, who snatched away increasing numbers of labourers, until it was said that they took at least one Chinese coolie for every day of the year.
Nobody had reported having seen a tiger in the early years following the foundation of the settlement, and some speculated that they must have swam across the narrow strait between Johor and Singapore, since they were common on the Malayan Peninsula. Others maintained that they had been on the island for a long time, but had been content to remain deep in the interior where there were plenty of deer and pig. It was only when the expanding pepper and gambier plantations had begun to encroach on their hunting grounds that they had begun to come into contact with humans, especially when the coolies bent over the gambier and pepper plants presented such an easy opportunity.
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The China trade was brisk and continued to grow. Eighteen junks came down on the northeast monsoon in February, including two from Shanghai, up from ten the previous year. Signor Masoni staged the first public entertainment for Europeans when he played a violin concert. The officers of the 29th Madras Infantry allowed their band to play once a week in the middle of the Padang, when the chain enclosure was taken down to allow carriages to be driven in.
Later in the year the Malaccan merchant Chua Chong Long gave a great dinner for the most prominent residents of the settlement, on the occasion of his forty-fourth birthday. Already a rich man before he had left Malacca to set up business in the new settlement ran by Tuan Farquhar, he had multiplied his fortune by becoming the majority owner of the opium farms, which had proved to be extremely lucrative. He lived in Commercial Square, and was fond of hosting lavish parties to celebrate his good fortune.
Tan Hong Chuan was pleased to be considered one of the prominent residents, when he found himself invited to the dinner along with such distinguished persons as Tan Che Sang, Seah Eu Chin, Alexander Johnston, Alexander Guthrie, John and Ronnie Simpson, Graham McKenzie and George Coleman. He had done very well for himself since he had arrived in Singapore twelve years before. His fruit and vegetable business had expanded rapidly, especially with the help of Siti and her sisters from the sultan’s compound. He now had extensive vegetable plots and paddy fields beyond the town, and a coconut plantation at Tanjong Katong. Hong Chuan had managed to pay off his original loan to the Ghee Hin, and with the profits from his fruit and vegetable business he had set himself up as a ship’s chandler, selling sails, spars and provisions to the ships in the harbour; he had done a roaring trade as the tonnage passing through Singapore increased year after year. He also served as a comprador for some of the European and Chinese merchants, especially in their dealings with the local Malays, whose language he spoke fluently.
He had done so well that he built himself a fine house at Telok Ayer, and had married Tong Swan Neo, the first daughter of Tong Tek Kee, an established Malaccan merchant. His wife was very plain and not very intelligent; her whole life seemed to revolve around her pet dogs. However, she had given him a son, Tan Eng Guan, and he was very grateful to her for that reason alone. He had made Siti his first concubine, on her condition that she could have her sisters from the harem as her maidservants.
Siti knew how to please a man, including ways that his first wife would never have dreamed of, but she also had excellent business sense. It was Siti who had advised Hong Chuan to extend his fruit and vegetable business, and she who had advised him to cultivate coconut, durian and pineapple rather than nutmeg, coffee, and cotton, which were favoured by the other merchants. She said they were much better suited to the soil and climate of Singapore. And it was Siti who was always telling him to buy land––as much land as he could possibly afford.
Thus it was with a great sense of pride in his own achievement and status that he attended Chua Chong Long’s dinner. Toasts were drunk to the health of Mr Ibbetson the resident, who could not attend because he was visiting Penang, and to the memory of Sir Stamford Raffles.
Chua Chong Long made a long speech in which he praised the Duke of Wellington, the hero of Waterloo and the recent prime minister of Great Britain, and proposed a toast in his name. As he raised his glass to toast the duke, Hong Chuan felt himself at the heart of the thriving settlement that was Singapore, and looked forward to a future of continued prosperity. As they all did.