The river front of Calcutta is one long wharf with vessels moored in columns of twos, threes, and fours for a couple of miles. The steamer traffic is large, nearly 1,000 foreign ships coming and going within a year, and as many coasting steamers. The import trade is principally in cotton goods, metals, and malt liquors; the exports are borax, rice, opium, gums, gunny-cloth, etc.
From Calcutta several short sea routes may be taken to strange countries: the British India ships go to Rangoon, in Burmah, and then down the Malay Peninsula to Penang, one of the Strait Settlements. Penang is on the road from Ceylon to Singapore, and some of the great liners stop for a couple of hours to take in a mail, some tin, and a few spices. The harbor is one of singular beauty, but not otherwise of much interest to the traveller, hurrying on through the picturesque Straits of Malacca to Singapore.
Singapore is the half-way house on the great highway between India and China, where all ships, large and small, stop. Its position is a most important one, not only as a large coaling and docking station, but to a greater extent as an immense entrepôt for goods, the trade being largely one of transit. The shipping business done is enormous; the docks and streets are full of bustle and activity, of hurrying, running, hard-working Chinese, Javanese, Moluccans, and Europeans, unmindful of a temperature averaging 86° Fahrenheit.
This town of such activity and go lies almost under the equator, in latitude 1° 17´ north; its longitude is nearly 104° east; just 12 hours and 9 minutes ahead of New York, from which city it is separated by 12,000 miles of water, requiring about 43 days of ocean navigation.
Singapore has steam communication with 152 different ports, far and near. During the year, 3,600 foreign ships enter the harbor, and nearly the same number clear, representing a shipping movement of over 5,500,000 tons. The regular liners make connection at Singapore with the Netherland-India Steamship Company—“De Nederlandsch-Indische Stoomvaart Maatschappij”—an efficient organization with headquarters at Batavia, Java. Some of the by-ways of travel over which the tourist can agreeably saunter by means of the 30 or more good steamers of this company lead to all the ports on the coasts of the islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, to the Moluccas, Philippines, Celebes, and so back to Singapore, where the traveller boards the steamer bound for Hong-Kong.