Pepper plantations are always to be found near a plantation of the gambir plant, as the former are always manured with the boiled leaves of the latter.
Although all the work on the plantations, as well as every other description of labour at Singapore, is performed by free labourers, I was told that it cost less than if it were done by slaves.

The wages here are very trifling indeed; a common labourer receives three dollars a month, without either board or lodging; and yet with this, he is enabled not only to subsist himself, but to maintain a family.

Their huts, which are composed of foliage, they build themselves; their food consists of small fish, roots, and a few vegetables.

Nor is their apparel more expensive; for, beyond the immediate vicinity of the town, and where all the plantations are situated, the children go about entirely naked, while the men wear nothing more than a small apron about a hand's-breadth wide, and fastened between the legs: the women are the only persons dressed with anything like propriety.
The plantations that we now saw, and which we reached about 10 o'clock, were cultivated by Chinese.

In addition to their huts of leaves, they had erected a small temple, where they invited us to alight.