AFFAIRS IN SINGAPORE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 349, 26 July 1875, Page 3

AFFAIRS IN SINGAPORE.

“The town of Singapore,” writes the correspondent of the Bangalore Spectator, “ has recently been thrown into a state of intense alarm under the following circumstances. A company of jugglers put in an appearance at that place. They had in their train a goodly number of snakes, a bear, and several monkeys. Well, they commenced to show away to the inhabitants in the usual manner, and generally left the town at an early hour every evening and returned to their abode, which consisted of a pretty large tent pitched on a sandy plain distant about two miles from that place. Presently robberies became rife ; ear ornaments, brooches, and lockets were nightly taken from some of the principal inhabitants, and the police could not possibly find a clue to the robbers. The inhabitants really fancied that the devil himself made nightly excursions from the infernal regions, and deliberately took away their property, and a little girl, aged ten, declared to her father that she actually saw that unpleasant individual retire from the drawingroom the night previous, and gave a very minute description of his dress aad stature, fehe said that he had a ghastly face, long eyelashes, bnshy whiskers, wore a red cap, a tightfitting jacket, a pair of knee-breeches, and • that surely she saw his long tail protruding through a hole at the seat of the trousers. Well, the doors of the houses were nightly closed and barred, yet the things were still missed, till one gentleman deliberately swore that he would shoot the delinquent if he attempted to enter his house. Accordingly he slept during the day and sat up at night, with loaded revolver, crouched behind his door. About eleven o’clock p.m. he heard a loud ringing of his bell, which had been deposited on the drawingroom table, and presently he was jostled against the wall by the robber as he imagined; he fired and floored his antagonist, who gave a fearful yell, when lo! lay stretched at full length at his feet an enormous sized monkey attired in the same manner as described by the child aforesaid. He was the principal actor for the jugglers, and was in the habit of ascending a long pole from the top of which he could take a peep at the inside of the houses, and had been trained by the jugglers to fetch to them during the night anything in the shape of gold that he espied during the day; he thus laid hold of the bell, which had all the appearance of gold, the ringing of which brought him to an untimely end. Of course the jugglers immediately disappeared, and can nowhere be found.”