Federated Malay States Railways : pamphlet of ... - Sabrizain.org

Chinese Architecture.
Kuala Lumpur,
kampongs bordering the sea, 'and on the landward
side are the padi-fields. Some of these kampongs
have been bought by wealthy Chinese, who have
erected imposing country villas surrounded by
beautiful gardens. Though the festivities on New
Year's day in Malacca bring in bullock-carts by
hundreds and Malays by thousands, any day in the
year one may see along the Tanjong Kling road
picnic parties of brightly dressed Malays in bullockcarts
drawn by the nimble Malacca cattle. The
Malacca Malay looks happier and is usually of a
handsomer type than that found anywhere else in
the Peninsula, possibly for the reason that for just
four centuries he and his forebears have enjoyed
settled government. The beauty of the women of
the Portuguese community is remarkable.
The streets of Malacca are narrow and noisy.
It is a relief in the evening to hear the last clash
of six on the bell in the signal station on the
hill with the bell of the clock tower -opposite
the Stadthaus, and to climb to Nossa Senhora da
Annunciada. With the echoes of the city's
clamour still in our ears we enter into silence and
the empty hulk which was once a church ; where
once lay, as the inscription records, the body of
Saint Frangois Xavier, S.J., the Apostle of the Far
East, before its translation to Goa in 1553 ; whose
choir's voices have yielded to the twitter of the
swallow, to the rush of the wings of the spine-tailed
swift. As night draws in there settles down in this
old, sad, maimed, misused, abandoned fane a
silence we do not care to break. The place
has been much abused. The east end was
at one time turned into a military magazine.
On the outside of the west end is a very ugly
tower bearing a fixed light. The roof has entirely
disappeared. Windows have been bricked up and
doors opened out to suit the needs of four centuries
of Portuguese and Dutch and EngUsh. Yet some
of them cared for the old place, since repairs,
with small bricks, are visible everywhere, but the
words of Ruskin were written too late for it :
" Watch an old building with anxious care ; guard
it as best you may, and at any cost, from any
influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you
would the jewels of a crown. Set watchers about
it, as if at the gates of a besieged city ; bind it
together with iron when it loosens ; stay it with
timber when it declines. Do not care about the
unsightliness of this aid—better a crutch than a
lost limb ;
and do this tenderly and reverently and
continually, and many a generation will still be
born and pass away beneath its shadow." Many of
the tombstones, chiefly of the Dutch period, have
been removed to Christ Church for preservation,
but many remain " mementoes of mortality unto
living passengers." A soft turf covers the floor
and deadens the sound of any footstep. The old
building stands solitary. At one time there were
a number of others on the hill, now there are
none except the Residency, with its old-world
garden, on the site of the Church of St. Anthony
and Convent of the Augustinians. The steps
which led up the hill have disappeared under the
turf. The south slope outside the east end of the
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