Page images
PDF
EPUB

Smith also died; Mr. Eyseldyck the director, his wife who had accompanied him, Major Segrevisse, and the four merchants, all returned with putrid fevers, which brought them to the brink of the grave. (Tom. 1. p. 325.)

Few of the women of Batavia are Europeans by birth, and those who are descended from European parents are so altered in figure, complexion and manners, as easily to be mistaken for native Indians, or the degenerate offspring of Portugueze. They dress when at home exactly like their slaves, bare headed, bare footed, and wrapt in a loose long gown of red checkered cotton cloth descending to the ancles, with large wide sleeves. They anoint their black hair with cocoa nut oil, and adorn it with the tuberose, and other strong scented flowers. In this manner they sit in the midst of their female slaves, conversing familiarly with them at one moment, and whipping them the next; listening sometimes whole hours to the fairy tales with which the memories of many of the unfortunate daughters of bondage are plentifully supplied. Like the slaves too, they chew the betel leaf and arcea nut mixed with gambir, (the inspissated juice of the cashew nut,) bruised cardamon seeds, pepper, and tobacco. This stimulating masticatory, they pretend, has the effect of sweetening the breath, strengthening the stomach, and giving firmness and tone to the muscles and nerves. But whatever real or pretended advantages the Batavian fair may derive from it, the appearance which it gives to the lips and teeth is nauseous to a stranger and a complete antidote against the passion of love.

The progressive change among the females from the European complexion, character, and manners, to those of the aborigines, would seem to favour the argument of those who derive the whole human race from one common original stock, and make every variety of form, colour, and character, depend upon the influence of climate, local circumstances, and habits of life; but we shall probably come nearer the truth, in the present instance, by ascribing a modifying share of this physical effect to a mixed intercourse with the natives. These ladies soon ripen and soon decay; they are marriageable at eleven or twelve; are accounted old before thirty, and give way to some domestic slave of fresher charms. The wife, however, has her revenge by torturing, in the most excruciating and indecent manner, the suspected female. A Batavian lady has no resourses within herself. Many of them can neither read nor write. Nurtured by slaves, and educated in all their vices and superstitions, without morality, and without religion, they are totally unqualified for the pleasures of social intercourse. Indeed the two sexes rarely meet, except at great entertainments, each having generally their separate co

teries; the men drinking and smoking in one apartment, the women chewing betel with their slaves in another.

When they go abroad, in the cool of the evening, to take an airing, or to some grand assembly, they dress themselves in a magnificent stile. Their jet black hair, twisted close to the head, sparkles with a profusion of diamonds, pearls, and jewels of various kinds, mingled, not without taste, with the flowers of the Arabian jasmine and the tuberose. Each lady has her fe male slave, almost as richly dressed as herself, sitting at her feet. Before supper is announced, they usually retire to put on their loose cotton night gowns; the gentlemen do the same, to exchange their heavy velvets for white cotton jackets, and the elderly gentlemen, their wigs for their night caps. In all these assemblies, a rigid regard is had to rank and precedency. A lady, in particular, would be distressed beyond measure at losing the place assigned her in virtue of her husband's situation in the employ of the East India Company.

It is singular that the same people, who owed their prosperity and independence to the love of liberty, should invariably, in all their foreign settlements, encourage the worst species of slavery, where they found it to exist, and introduce it where it was unknown, and where there seemed to be the least occasion for it. In Java it was no more necessary than at the Cape of Good Hope, yet in both these settlements every Dutch house swarms with slaves. The city of Batavia alone lays under contribution almost all the Asiatic islands, the coast of Malabar, the islands of Madagascar and Mosambique. When a rich proprietor is about to return to Europe it is not unusual to manumit his slaves, but more frequently when he is on the point of death. A manumitted slave general hires a small patch of ground from the servants of government, in which he cultivates flowers, fruits, and vegetables for the market of Batavia, and which are carried to a place of public resort, called Tannabank, about five miles from the city. The prodigious quantity of all kinds of provisions, but especially of vegetables and fruits, which are brought to the 'Land of Friends,' (for so the name implies,) equals that to be found at Covent Garden; in the variety, elegance, and delicacy of their fruits they exceed it beyond all comparison.

The most numerous, expert, ingenious, and industrious of all the slaves, imported into Batavia, are those from Celebes, who are known by the name of Macassars or Buggesses. This brave and high spirited race of men, the victims of wars fomented by the Dutch, deserves to be better known, and to have their virtues better appreciated than they have hitherto been. Even in their degraded state they exhibit such traits of courage, fidelity, and enterprise, as are not to be equalled, perhaps, in the world

besides. Never was a people so grossly misrepresented. Their country scarcely frequented, excepting by avaricious Dutchmen, whose sole views were to accumulate wealth, who had neither the curiosity to inquire, nor the exertion to examine, nor the desire to communicate what little information might have forced itself upon them, we should have known the Macassars only as assassins, had not the acute and accurate observations of our countryman Forrest, and the sound, good sense of Marsden rescued the character of this brave and injured people from the infamy to which their Dutch tyrants would have consigned them. The Buggesses,' says capt. Forrest, are by far men of the most honour of any of the Malay cast I ever met with, are really a distinct people, and have something free and dignified in their manner superior to other Malays.' Both Marsden and he agree, that they are remarkably industrious, skilful in all kinds of curious fillagree work in gold and silver, and in weaving those striped and checked cotton cloths, worn in all the Malay islands; that they excel in making match-locks, firelocks, and all kinds of arms and accoutrements, and in building large proas, and other vessels. They are fond of reading, and have a written character peculiar to themselves: their alphabet, which is perfectly regular, and totally distinct from the Arabic of the neighbouring islands, appears, from an engraving of it, by captain Forrest, to resemble that of the Rejangs of Sumatra. Their ancient history, laws, and mythology are still extant; and even the poor slaves who are carried to Batavia, recite songs and romances, and fairy tales without number, in the original Buggess language.

For what length of time the Chinese have been settlers in the several islands of the east, it would, perhaps, be in vain to inquire; but there are records to trace their establishment in Java, as far back as 1412. Wherever this extraordinary people has colonized, they have in no instance relinquished the manners, customs, religion, and ceremonies, the ancient character and dress, of their native country. The same spirit of activity and industry distinguishes them in Java as in China. In Batavia they are merchants and shop-keepers, butchers and fishmongers, green grocers, upholsterers, tailors and shoemakers, masons, carpenters and blacksmiths. They contract for the supply of whatever may be wanted in the civil, military, or marine establishments; they farm from the Dutch the several imposts, the import and export duties, and the taxes. Their campong or town, close to the walls of the city, is a scene of bustle and business to be equalled only in a town of their native country. It consists of about fifteen hundred mean houses huddled together, and swarming with inhabitants. Mr. Tombe reckons them at 100,000, (they probably amount to 20,000,) and their hogs at 400,000,

[ocr errors]

perhaps his authority for this statement was the old Chinese chief of Bangell, who told him that one of his wives was then pregnant of her sixty-first child, of which twenty-nine were dead, and thirty-one living!-(tom. 2. p. 45.)

The Chinese in Java are severely taxed, even to the very tails they wear, but not for their long nails, as Mr. Tombe says; the learned and the indolent only wear these, and they are too few to repay the trouble of collection. Still, however, these industrious people find resources to pay the sums imposed by the Dutch, and to accumulate wealth. They intermarry with Javanese and Malays, and purchase female slaves, not for sale, but as wives or concubines; and their wives and children invariably become Chinese. Many of them carry on a very considerable trade with their native country and the several islands of the eastern archipelago, as well as a coasting trade from one port to another in Java, in all the principal towns of which the Chinese form the great capitalists, and the most respectable part of the inhabitants. Among so active and so industrious a race of men, it may be thought that the Dutch had no occasion to introduce slaves; but it must always be recollected, that the Chinese are most unwilling to engage as domestic servants, or day-labourers, and that, when so compelled to engage themselves, they are of little use to their employers; they are industrious only when they have an interest in the produce of their labour, in which case their skill and ingenuity, their activity, and persever ance are exerted to the utmost stretch.

The next class we have to notice as inhabitants of Batavia and all the sea coast of Java, is the Malays. From the close resemblance of their features to the Chinese and Tartars, there can scarcely be a doubt of their descent from those nations. Their progress from Malaya or Malacca, across the narrow strait of that name, to Sumatra, from thence to Java, and from Java to all Polynesia, was so easy, even in the frailest vessels, as to occasion no difficulty in accounting for their being found, as they really are, in possession of the sea coasts of almost every island. Mr. Marsden seems, in the last edition of his book, to have retracted the opinion which he once held of Malacca being the original country of the Malays, and to think that they passed thither from Sumatra : so, indeed, they might, just as the descendants of the Normans, after conquering England, returned as Englishmen, and, under our Henrys and Edwards, re-established themselves in France. Not only their physical appearance, but their manners and customs, as well as their language, have undergone a considerable change by the overwhelming influence of the Arabs, who from the 9th to the 14th century, appear to have enjoyed the exclusive commerce and dominion of

[blocks in formation]

the oriental islands, the greater part of which received the sceptre and the religion of Mahomet. The Malay language however is still current in the sea coast of all those islands. The introduction of the Arabic character, in which it is now invariably written, necessarily introduced a change, by mixing with it Arabic sounds, but it still remains an original and distinct language, though containing a considerable number of Sanscrit words, borrowed probably at second hand from the islanders of Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes.

The character of the Malay is of a peculiar cast: indolent yet restless, cowardly yet courageous, ferocious and vindictive, yet apparently cool and placid; remorseless, capricious and treacherous, there is still something about him of pride, dignity and contempt of death that sets him above the ordinary class of Asiatics. It is certain however, that he possesses none of the milder qualities of human nature: careless of life himself, he sets little value upon it in others. The Dutch, who have no great fondness for the Malays, say, that most of them will commit murder for money, and that the common hire of an assassin among themselves is a dollar: that when any one has done them a remarkable favour, nothing is more common than to express their gratitude by asking which of his enemies they shall put to death for him. We must have better proof than the mere assertion of the Dutch inhabitants of Batavia, before we can lend our belief to things so monstrous and improbable. We can readily conceive that this high-spirited people, impatient of insult or injury, may occasionally, with the assistance of opium, work themselves into a delirium, and assault all who have the misfortune to fall in their way; but we have some doubts whether they are assassins of that cool and deliberate stamp the Dutch would have us to believe. It should be observed, also, that the excesses complained of by the Dutch, are generally committed by those Malays who have been trepanned into slavery, and sent to Java from the other islands. The free Malays are an intelligent, active and industrious body of men, engaged, like the Chinese, in trade and foreign commerce; their proas are many of them very fine vessels, and navigated with considerable skill; but they are less numerous in Java than in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and some other of the large islands of Polynesia.

There remains but to mention the Javanese, who compose the great mass of population, which we have stated in round numbers at three millions. Valentyn, who is probably the best authority, supposed it to amount to 3,300,000 souls. General Daendels, we have been assured, by an officer of his staff, caused a census to be taken about two years ago, by the returns of which,

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »