This anthology contains 60 short pieces of travel writing spanning the time from the first survey of Singapore in 1819 (by the British captain Daniel Ross) to an account of the Japanese conquest of the city in 1942 (written by the Japanese colonel Masanobu Tsuji).

The compiler mentions that he has been particularly concerned to give adequate coverage to women travellers to Singapore, and to include many passages written by Americans. Although the anthology contains one passage by a Malay, and two passages by Japanese authors, it has proved impossible to include any passage written by a Chinese.

The book is out of print now, which is probably due to the undramatic and mostly descriptive nature of the travellers' accounts. Someone who has never visited Singapore or did not live in the city will find many of these snapshots of Singapore a bit dull and repetitive.

However, this anthology contains three true gems in terms of literary and entertainment value:

(1)The excerpt from Alfred Russel Wallace's description of his visit to Singapore, which is full of finely observed details, and recounted with humane warmth and gentle irony. By the way, as the compiler notes, it was in Singapore that Wallace commenced his momentous natural history explorations of the Malayan and Indonesian region that led to the co-formulation with Charles Darwin of the Theory of Natural Selection. Wallace's overview of Singapore's social structure, written in 1862, is the finest such description to be found in the book. He wrote that

few places are more interesting to a traveller from Europe than the town and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different religions and modes of life. The government, the garrison, and the chief merchants are English; but the great mass of the population is Chinese, including some of the wealthiest merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of the mechanics and labourers. The native Malays are usually fishermen and boatmen, and they form the main body of the police. The Portuguese of Malacca supply a large number of the clerks and smaller merchants. The Klings [a Malay term for Indians from Telinga] of Western India are a numerous body of Mahometans [Muslims], and, with many Arabs, are petty merchants and shopkeepers. The grooms and washermen are all Bengalees, and there is a small but highly respectable class of Parsee merchants. Besides these, there are numbers of Javanese sailors and domestic servants, as well as traders from Celebes, Bali, and many other islands of the Archipelago.

(2)A passage from the Japanese journalist Tatsuki Fujii's book "Singapore Assignment" (1943) in which he fumes at what he sees as the signs of British imperialism. For example, he was of the opinion that "the poverty of the people increased the longer the British remained in Malaya. The slums of Singapore were world famous and in the midst of all this poverty and filth, the British lived in oblivious splendor." This is in nice contrast to the observation of a British press baron, Lord Northcliffe, who visited Singapore in 1921 and was "surprised to find the Chinese living in palaces and the English in very modest houses. The best motor cars are occupied by Chinese - notably the only Rolls-Royce."

(3)A six-page extract about the Raffles Hotel from the travel book "North of Singapore" (1940) by the British civil engineer and travel writer Carveth Wells. It contains one of the best jokes of the anthology, which goes:

It is just as well to know what you are buying, especially when you buy anything with Chinese or Japanese lettering upon it. The wife of a prominent diplomat once bought a very elaborate ricksha, in which she insisted upon riding when doing her downtown shopping. Her husband begged her not to use it, but she insisted until he translated the Chinese lettering which was written prominently but decoratively on the sides and back of the ricksha: 'I am a first-class prostitute. My price is five yen.'