ty-four gilders, and eight stivers; but of this, the planters receive only fifty-que rixdollars, the remaining five being divided among the village-chiefs, three being allotted to the rajah, patti, or oran cayo, one and a half to the oran touas, or elders, and one-half rixdollar to the marinhos. " "For these and other reasons, the offices above alluded to are eagerly sought after, and are only obtained for a certain sum of money, of which some of the governors, who have ruled here in behalf of the company, have not a little availed; I could enumerate some, who have come here with very little property, and in the course of a few years, by these, and other means, have accumulated considerable wealth, and who, immediately upon their return to Batavia, have, in consequence, solicited leave from the government, to transmit large sums of money to Europe. "The sale of thee rejentships is not, however, an innovation of late date; for, from the beginning, every oran cayo paid fifty rixdollars for his nomination, a patti one hundred, and a rajah still more; so that the rajah of Noussanivel was even once obliged to give a gratification of three thousand rixdollars. "The Chinese who frequent this island, as well as all the others in the eastern parts of India, where the company have possessions, are not, however, very numerous at Amboyna, because there is very little trade, and scarcely any agriculture, Two pursuits, to which, in general, that nation are very averse. If a calculation of their number were to be made from the head-money, which they pay, all the Chinese, would scarcely be found to amount to one hundred individuals; but the frauds which are practised in the declarations made in this respect, : are the cause that this: cannot be considered as a proper rule. sa "They dwell here in a street, which is called after them, where they keep their shops, with all sorts of provisions, &c. for sale... They are under the authority of a chief of their own nation, who is called captain, and who has at present a lieutenant under him, which was not formerly the case; but one of the governors was induced to institute this lieutenant's office, by means of a present of five hundred rixdollars. "They do not intermarry with the Amboynese, but marry amongst each other; and if it happen that they are in want of women, they take Macasser or Bouginese girls for concubines. "In the month of April of the year 1775, a Chinese youth came purposely from Batavia to Amboyna, to marry the daughter of one of his countrymen who was sett'ed here, and was a man of property. I went to see the ceremonies that were made use of; I came too late to see the beginning of them, which, I was told, consisted principally in the throwing backwards and forwards of an egg into the wide sleeves of the bridegroom and of the bride. I found them both sitting next to each other in a parlour, with their eyes fixed on the ground, as if meditating on what had been done, without speaking a word to, or looking at each other. An oblong little table stood before them, covered with red silk, which was em• broidered with flowers of gold; upon it were set, before each of them, a little cup with tea, and three or four little china dishes with confectionary and Liled birds' nests, The bridal bed was in the same apartment; it was likewise hung round MANNERS and DIVERSIONS of the EUROPEANS at BATAVIA. [73] round with red silk ; but there was a partition made in it, separating the place where the bridegroom was to, lie, from that of the bride; the former, however, occupied about two thirds of the bed. The bride who was a plump jolly maiden, nearly white, and pretty enough, wore a robe of red silk, with long and wide sleeves; a chain of gold hung round her neck, and down upon her bosom: on her head she wore a black bonnet, tapering upwards to a point, and adorned with three rows of jewels. The bridegroom was dressed in a similar robe of blue silk and cotton. They both kept their arms and hands constantly tucked into the sleeves. When the bridegroom stood up, he did it so slowly and cautiously, and without moving his eyes in the least, that be appeared perfectly like an image of wax, or an automaton moved by invisible mechanism.. * "The young couple were fo.ced to endure the repetition of this te dious ceremony for three successive days, and always in sight of their nuptial bed, before they were' allowed to perform the essential rites of marriage. "There are still many descend-" ants of the Portuguese here, who, when their countrymen were forced to give up the dominion of the island to ours, chose to remain under the government of the Dutch. "The principal Amboynese Christians still bear Portuguese names, which their ancestors received at their baptism; but the Portuguese language is less spoken': here than in any other part of India, and the number of the abovementioned descendants of Portuguese is not large." MODE of LIVING, MANNERS, and DIVERSIONS of the EUROPEANS "EU at BATAVIA. [From the first Volume of the same Work.] UROPEANS, whether Dutch, er of any other nation, and in whatever station they are, live at Batavia, nearly in the same manner. In the morning, at five o'clock, or earlier, when the day breaks, they get up. Many of them then go aud sit at their doors; but others stay in the house, with nothing but a light gown, in which they sleep, thrown over their naked limbs; they then breakfast upon coffee or tea; afterwards they dress, and go out, to attend to the business they may have. Almost all, who have any place or employment, must be at their proper station at, or before, eight o'clock, and they remain at work till eleven, or half past. At twelve they dine; take an afternoon's nap till four, and attend to their business again till six, or take a tour out of the city in a carriage. At six o'clock they assemble in companies, and play, or converse, till nine, when they return home; whoever chooses to stay to supper is welcome; and eleven o'clock is the usual hour of retiring to rest." Convivial gaiety seems to reign among them, and yet it is linked with a kind of suspicious reserve, which pervades all stations, and all "No women are present at these assemblies, they have their own separate companies. "Married men neither give themselves much concern about their wives nor show them much regard. They seldom converse with them, at least not on useful subjects, or such as concern society. After having been married for years, the Jadies are often, therefore, as ignorant of the world and of manners as upon their wedding-day. It is not that they have no capacity to learn, but the men have no inclination to teach. "The men generally go dressed in the Dutch fashion, and often wear black. "As soon as you enter a house, where you intend to stop for an hour or more, you are desired by the master, to make yourself comfortable, by taking off some of your clothes, &c. This is done, by laying aside the sword, pulling off the coat, and wig (for most men wear wigs here), and substituting in the room of the last a little white nightcap, which is generally carried in the pocket, for that purpose. When they go out, on foot, they are attended by a slave, who carries a sunshade (called here sumbreel or payang) over their heads; but whoever is lower in rank than a junior merchant, may not have a slave behind him, but must carry a small sunshade himself. " Most of the white women, who are seen at Batavia, are born in the Indies. Those who come from Eu rope at a marriageable age are very few in number. I shall, therefore, confine my observations to the former. "These are either the offspring of European mothers, or of oriental female slaves, who having first been mistresses to Europeans, have afterwards been married to them, and have been converted to Christianity, or at least have assumed the name of Christians. "The children produced by these marriages, may be known, to the third and fourth generation, especially by the eyes, which are much smaller than in the unmixed progeny of Europeans. "There are likewise children, who are the offspring of Portuguese, but these never become entirely white. "Children born in the Indies are nicknamed liplaps by the Europeans, although both parents may have come from Europe. It "Girls are commonly marriageable at twelve or thirteen years of age, and sometimes younger, seldom happens, if they are but tolerably handsome, have any money, or any to expect, or are related to people in power, that they are unmarried after that age. "As they marry while they are yet children, it may easily be conceived, that they do not possess those requisites which enable a woman to manage a family with propriety. There are many of them, who can neither read nor write, nor possess any ideas of religion, of morality, or of social intercourse. "Being married so young, they seldom MANNERS and DIVERSIONS of the EUROPEANS at BATAVIA. [75 seldom get many children, and are old women at thirty years of age. Women of fifty, in Europe, look younger and fresher than those of thirty at Batavia. They are in general of a very delicate make, and of an extreme fair complexion; but the tints of vermillion, which embellish our northern ladies, are wholly absent from their cheeks; the skin of their face and hands is of the most deadly pale white. Beauties must not be sought amongst them; the handsomest whom I saw would scarcely he thought middling pretty in Europe. "They have very supple joints, and can turn their fingers, hands, and arms, in almost every direction; but this they have in common with the women in the West Indies, and in other tropical climates. "They are commonly of a listless and lazy temper; but this ought chiefly to be ascribed to their education, and the number of slaves of both sexes, that they always have to wait upon them. "They rise about half past seven, or eight o'clock, in the morning. They spend the forenoon in playing and toying with their female slaves, whom they are never with out, and in laughing and talking with them, while a few moments afterwards they will have the poor creatures whipped unmercifully, for the merest trifle. They loll, in a loose and airy dress, upon a sofa, or sit upon a low stool or upon the ground, with their legs crossed under them. In the mean time, they do not omit the chewing of pinang, or betel, with which custom all the Indian women are infatuated; they likewise masticate the Java tobacco; this makes their spittle of a crimson colour, and when they have done it long, they get a black border along their lips, their teeth become black, and their mouths are very disagreeable, though it is pretended that this use purifies the mouth, and preserves from the tooth-ache. "As the Indian women are really not deficient in powers of understanding, they would become very. useful members of society, endearing wives, and good mothers, if they were but kept from familiarity with the slaves in their infancy, and educated under the immediate eye of their parents, who should be assiduous to ineulcate, in their tender minds, the principles of true morality, and polished manners. But, alas! the parents are far from taking such a burthensome task upon themselves. As soon as the child is born, they abandon it to the care of a female slave, who generally suckles it, and by whom it is reared, till it attains the age of nine or ten years. These nurses are often but one remove above a brute, in point of intellect; and the little innocents imbibe, with their milk, all the prejudices and superstitious notions which disgrace the minds of their attendants, and which are ne、 ver eradicated during the remainder of their lives, but seem to stamp them, rather with the character of the progeny of despicable slaves, than of a civilised race of beings. "They are remarkably fond of bathing and ablutions, and they make use of a large tub for this pur pose, which holds three hogsheads of water, and in which they im merge their whole body, at least twice a week. Some of them do this, in the morning, in one of the running streams out of the city. "In common with most of the women in India, they cherish a most excessive jealousy of their husbands, and of their female slaves. If they discover the smallest familiarity between them, they set no bounds bounds to their thirst of revenge against these poor bondswomen, who, in most cases, have not dared to resist the will of their masters, for fear of ill treatment. They torture them in various ways; they have them whipped with rods, and beat with rattans, till they sink down before them, nearly exhausted among other methods of tormenting them, they make the poor girls sit before them in such a posture, that they can pinch them with their toes, in a certain sensible part, which is the peculiar object of their vengeance, with such cruel ingenuity, that they faint away by the excess of pain. "I shall refrain from the recital of instances, which I have heard, of the most refined cruelty practised upon these wretched victims of jealousy, by Indian women, and which have been related to me by witnesses worthy of belief; they are too repugnant to every feeling of humanity, and surpass the usual bounds of credibility. ***Having thus satiated their anger upon their slaves, their next ob. ject is to take equal revenge upon their husbands, which they do in a manner less cruel, and more plea sant to themselves. "The warmth of the climate, which influences strongly upon their constitutions, togetheir with the dissolute lives of the men before mar riage, are the causes of much wantonness and dissipation among the women. "Marriages are always made at Batavia on Sundays, yet the bride never appears abroad before the following Wednesday evening, when she attends divine service; to be sooner seen in public, would be a violation of the rules of decorum, As soon as a woman becomes a-widow, and the body of her hus band is interred, which is generally done the day after his decease, if she be but rich, she has immediately a number of suitors. A certain lady, who lost her husband while I was at Batavia, had, in the fourth week of her widowhood, a fourth lover, and at the end of three months she married again, and would have done it sooner, if the laws had allowed of it, "Their dress is very light and airy; they have a piece of cotton cloth wrapped round the body, and fastened under the arms, next to the skin; over it they wear a shift, a jacket, and a chintz petticoat, which is all covered by a long gown or kabay, as it is called, which hangs loose; the sleeves come down to the wrists, where they are fastened close, with six or seven little gold, or diamond buttons. When they go out in state, or to a company where they expect the presence of a lady of a counsellor of India, they put on a very fine muslin kabay, which is made like the other, but hangs down to the feet, while the first only reaches to the knees. When they invite each other, it is always with the condition of coming with the long or the short kabay. They all go with their heads uncovered; the hair which is perfectly black, is worn in a wreath, fastened with gold and diamond hair-pins, which they call a conde: in the front, and on the sides of the head, it is stroked smooth, and rendered shining, by being anointed with cocoa-nut-oil. They are particularly set upon this head dress, and the girl who can dress their hair the most to their liking is their chief favourite among their slaves. On Sundays they sometimes dress in the European style, with stays and other fashionable incombrances, which however they do not like at all, being accustomed to a dress so much looser |