The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither, page 89 by Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
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h the hands to a good height and bow to each person, naming at the same time the character so continually seen on tea-cups and sake bottles--Happiness,--which is understood to be a wish for happiness in this formula, "May your happiness be as the Eastern Sea;" but the wish may also mean "May you have many sons." It is strange that these Chinamen, who showed all fitting courtesy to Mrs. Hennessey and me, would only have spoken of their wives apologetically as "the mean ones within the gates!" It was a charming Oriental sight, the grand, open- fronted room with its stone floor and many pillars, the superbly dressed directors and their blue-robed attendants, and the immense costumed crowd outside the gate in the sunshine, kept back by crimson-turbaned Sikh orderlies.
If civilization were to my taste, I should linger in Victoria for the sake of its beauty, its stirring life, its costume and color, its perfect winter climate, its hospitalities, its many charming residents, and for various other reasons, and know nothing of its feuds in state, church, and society. But I am a savage at heart, and weary for the wilds first, and then for the beloved little home on the wooded edge of the moorland above the Northern Sea, which gleams like a guiding star, even through the maze of sunshine and color of this fascinating Eastern world. to-day I lunched at (acting) Chief Justice Snowden's, and he urges me to go to Malacca on my way home. I had never dreamed of the "Golden Chersonese;" but I am much inspired by his descriptions of the neighborhood of the Equator, and as he has lent me Newbold's Malacca for the voyage, and has given me letters to the Governor and Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements, you will next hear from me from Singapore!
I. L. B.
LETTER VI
A Cochin China River--The Ambition of Saigon--A French Colonial Metropolis--European Life in Saigon-A Cochin-Chinese Village--"Afternoon Tea" in Choquan--Anamese Children--Anamite Costume--Anamite River-Dwellings--An Amphibious Population-