Miram. Finally, he is almost a prisoner in the country, which he cannot leave, however distressed, and however he may be inclined to retrieve his fortune by trade, with out special permission from the sultan, and the immediate and unqualified forfeiture not only of the dowry he gave, but of all the valuables he received in consequence of the honourable alliance.

"Previously to the establishment of Islamism* and kingship, the people of Fur seem to have formed wandering tribes, in which state many of the neighbouring nations to this day remain. In their persons they differ from the negroes of the coast of Guinea. Their hair'is generally short and woolly, though some are seen with it of the length of eight or ten inches, which they esteem a beauty. Their complex. ion is for the most part perfectly black. The Arabs, who are numerous within the empire, retain their distinction of feature, colour, and language. They most commonly intermarry with each other. The slaves, which are brought from

the country they call Fertit, (land of idolaters) perfectly resemble those of Guinea, and their language is peculiar to themselves.

"In most of the towns, except Cobbé, which is the chief residence of foreign merchants, and even at court, the vernacular idiom is in more frequent use than the Arabic; yet the latter is pretty generally understood. The judicial proceedings, which are held in the monarch'spresence, are conducted in both languages, all that is spoken in the one being immediately translated into the other by an interpreter (Tergimån).

"After those who fill the offices of government, the Fugut, or learned man, i. e. priest, holds the highest rack. Some few of these Faquis have been educated at Kahira, but the majority of them in schools.of the country. They are ignorant of every thing except the Korán. The nation, like most of the north of Africa, except Egypt, is of the sect of the Imam Malek, which however differs not materially from that of Shafei."

་

"Thin adjacent stands belonging to this government, may properly be divided into four class es, viz. the Alforese, the Amboy nese, the Europeans, and the Chi

HE inhabitants of Amboyna,

Dese.

"The Alfoers or Alforese, are, in all probability, the first and most

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want

want of such articles as are not to be met with in the interior parts of the islands, which chiefly consist in iron and salt, against which commodities they give in barter the productions of their mountains.

"The few which I saw of this nation, appeared to me not so dark in colour, and both handsomer and more sinewy than the Amboynese.

"I met with the following account of them, in the description of Amboyna composed by Rumphius, which, having been prohibited by the government at Batavia, has never been printed, but of which a manuscript copy is preserved in the secretary's office at Amboyna.

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Most of the Alforese inhabit the wild mountains and interior parts of Ceram. They are a large, strong, and savage people, in general taller than the inhabitants of the sea shores; they go mostly naked, both men and women, and only wear a thick bandage round their waist, which is called chiaaca, and is made of the milky • bark of a tree, called by them sacka (being the sicamorus alba). They tie their hair upon the head over an cocoa-nut shell, and stick a comb in it; round the neck they wear a string of beads. • Their arms are, a sword made of bamboo, together with a bow ⚫ and arrows.

They are sharp-sighted, and so nimble in running, that they can run down and kill a wild hog, at its utmost speed.

An ancient, but most detestable and criminal custom prevails among them, agreeable to which, no one is allowed to take a wife, before he 6 can show a head of an enemy which £ he has cut off: in order to obtain this qualification for matrimony, six, eight, or ten of them go together to a strange part, where

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they stay till they have an oppor tunity of surprising some one, which they do with great dexterity, springing upon the upwary passenger like tigers; they generally cover themselves with branches of trees and bushes, so that they are rather taken for brakes and thickets than for men; in this posture they lie and wait for their prey, and take the first opportu> nity that presents itself of darling their toran or sagoe (a sort of missile lance) into the back of a passenger, or spring upon him at once and cut off his head, with which they instantly decamp, and fly with speed from the scene of their wan ton barbarity.

If they want to build a new house, or a new balecuw, which is a kind of council-hall, they must equally first go and fetch some human heads. They are not to be broken of this horrid custom; and it is the only objeetion, they make to embracing the Christian religion, that they must then abandon it; for no one altains a higher degree of fame and respect, than he who has brought in the most heads; and in proof of his prowess, he wears as many little white shells round his neck and arms as he has murdered men.

The heads thus brought in are ⚫ shown upon a stone in a village, consecrated to that purpose, and are afterwards heaped together in dark groves, in the recesses of the mountains, where they practise their diabolical rites, for they do not perform the demonolatry they are addicted to, in any temples, but here and there in solitary places, and in dreary woods, where the devil, answers their interroga. tories, and often carries away some of them, especially children, for three or four months, after which

6

They subsist upon the wild animals which they catch in the woods; nor do they even disdain snakes.

• Their women are of a tolerably fair complexion, well proportioned, and altogether by no means disagreeable.

Among these Alforese, there is another kind of savage people, who do not dwel in any houses or * hats, but upon high warinje, and other trees, which spread their • branches wide round they lead and intertwine the branches so close together, that they form an easy resting-place; and each tree is the habitation of a whole family they adopt this mode, because they dare not trust even those of their own nation, as they surprise each other during the night, and kill whoever they take hold of.'

than to brown; both men and wo men have regular features, and among the latter there are very many who are handsome: it seemed very probable to me, that the country or the climate contributed much to this, though how or why I cannot-teff, for the children of Europeans born here, are almost all pretty, and much more so than in Java, or at Batavia. "Neither the thick lips, n nor the depressed noses, which, according to our ideas of beauty, deform the human face divine' in other hot countries, are seen here? but on the contrary, and especially among the females, perfectly symmetrical countenances are the general characteristic of the inhabitants. E

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They are indolent and effeminate, and both want and violence prove but feeble motives to incite them to labour. Yet this is no more than is almost universally the case 'with all nations who bow their necks under a foreign yoke, especially in the Asiatic regions, and other warm countries: and I think it probable, though the heat of the climate is alone sufficient to produce inactivity, and a repugnance to every thing that fatigues the body, that they had been slaves inored to servitude under the dominion of strangers, long before the Europeans came hither. The fervency of the climate, united to the easy mode of procuring subsistence from the sago-tree, and from the copious supply of fish, which was formerly within their reach, in the bay of Amboyna, have been the causes that they have never been obliged to have recourse to the fatiguing labours of agriculture, to administer to the wants of nature. Hence they have easily fallen a prey to the nations who aimed at subduing them, as was manifest in the war with the Ternatese, the Portuguese, and the Dutch. £3

To Ján Neither

Neither were they at all the cause that the princes of Celebes have not extended their dominion so far to the eastward, for the three abovementioned nations have always prevented it; although at that time the kings of Noussanivel took the high sounding and proud title of kings of ten thousand swords.'

"The company must not, therefore, ever think that the Amboynese would be of any help to them, in case a foreign power were to endeavour to wrest these possessions from them; for, were there no other reasons to induce them to look upon any change as being for the better, their indifferent, indolent, and timorous disposition would be suffi cient to prevent them from joining either side. It is true, that those of Hitoe formerly showed a little more courage in the civil commotions which took place in the last century, when they fought for independence, as they could no longer bear the oppression of their inhuman task-masters; but in the case we have supposed, it would be the same to them, beneath which European yoke they had to bend; as, let the event be as it might, they would always have to wear the chains of the conquerors; besides that, as attached to the Mahomedan religion, they are the sworn enemies of all Christians.

"The women, though they are not so indolent as the men, are, on the other hand, excessively lascivious; they possess no chastity, either in a married, or an unmarried state, and there is nothing that can restrain them from satisfying their passionate desires. It is very usual among them, that a girl gives proofs of her fruitfulness before marriage, which is never the least bar to getting a husband; and, on the contrary, frequently is a reason for being prefer

red to others, of whom it is fest certain that they are capable of becoming mothers.

"The Amboynese were în former times, as the Alforese are at present, idolaters; but the Javanese, who began to trade hither in the latter end of the fifteenth, and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, endeavoured to disseminate the doctrines of Mahomet here, and they succeeded so well, that in the year 1515, that religion was generally received.

The Portuguese arriving here in the mean time, endeavoured likewise to make the Roman catholic religion agreeable to the inhabitants, and to propagate it amongst them; which, in particular, took place, according to Rumphius, in the year 1532, on the peninsula of Leytimor, but those of Hitoe have, to the present day, remained firmly attached to the Mahomedan faith, whence, in contradistinction to the Leytimorese, they are called Moors.

"When our people came to Am. boyna, and the Portuguese were expelled from the island, the protestant religion was gradually introduced; yet the unpleasing result of these frequent changes of religion has been, a's might naturally be expected, that, from blind idolators, they have first become bad Roman catholics, and afterwards worse protestants.

"The practice of idolatry cannot yet be wholly eradicated: this, added to the prevalence of the superstitions which disgrace Christianity among the followers of the Roman catholic persuasion, and the almost universal negligence, and want of zeal, of our ecclesiastics in these regions, almost entirely takes away the hope that the salutary doctrines of the gospel will ever be deeply rooted here, and that the Amboy

nese

nese will ever be cured of their deplorable blindness.

"I cannot either say much good respecting their moral conduct; the men are universally unchaste, and I have before-mentioned that the woinen are, in this respect, no better, Theft is likewise one of the most prevalent vices among the Amboynese, and they are not a little dexterous in contriving the means of pilfering; I had twice experience of their adroitness in this respect, during my residence among them. Malice and envy are predominant passions in their breasts, and are carried to great excess; they envy each other the least degree of benefit, or prosperity; yet this is seldom productive of public assassination, or private murder, among them; for being a pusillanimous and superstitious race of men, death is to them more than to any other nation, a king of terrors.

When these Amboynese Christians go in their vessels past a certain hill on the south coast of Ceram, they make an offering to the evil spirit, which they believe resides there, in order that he may not do any harm to them, or to their vessels. This offering is made in the following manner they lay a few flowers, and a small piece of money, into empty cocoa-nut-shells, which they set a-floating in the water: if it be in the evening, they put oil into them, with little wicks, which they set a-light, and let burn out upon the water they are persuaded that, by this means, they have appeased the evil spirit, and that he will not raise any storm against them.

"Valentyn has been sufficiently ample in describing their dress, houses, diseases, customs, &c. to preclude the necepity of my saying more about them; I wish only to observe that that writer has placed

almost every thing in the most ad. vantageous light.

"The inhabitants of Amboyna seem, from time immemorial, never to have been united under one head; but, as the most ancient accounts and traditions relate, each negree, or village, was governed by its own chief. It is true, there have been, and there are at present, uníons of four or five negrees under one chief: but they are the least in number: among these, the principal is Noussanivel, whose rajah, or king, has three other negrees under his dominion.

"These chiefs are distinguished into three classes, or ranks; thus, there are rajahs, or kings; pattis, who may be said to be dukes or earls; and oran cayos, which signifies as much as rich men. Their chiefs, however, do not possess an absolute authority: every negree has given as council to their chief, consisting of the oldest and most respectable men of the village, who, are called oran touas, that is elders; and the rajah, patti, or oran cayo, of the negree is bound to consult with them at the caleeuw, or councilhall, on all the concerns of the community.

"Every negree has likewise its marinhos, who do not assist at the councils, but are exalted above the commonalty, and serve for exhorters and encouragers of the people in every public work.

"Besides several little services which the common people are obliged to perform for these chiefs, the last have likewise an income proceeding from the crops of cloves, which the company have bestowed upon them.

"The company pay, for every bhar of five hundred and fifty pounds weight of cloves, fifty-six Fixdollars, or one-hundred-and-thirEA

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