Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia/Series 1/Volume 1/The Present Condition of the Indian Archipelago
THE
JOURNAL
OF
THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO
AND
EASTERN ASIA.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.
We should wish, on the threshold of our labours, to bring into one general popular view some of the most characteristic features of the Indian Archipelago as a whole,—to yield ourselves for a while to the impression which Nature here makes on the senses and feelings of the European,—to trace her more permanent influences on the races who have lived for ages under her power,—to enquire to what condition these have now been brought by their past history,—and to search amongst the elements of change which may be working, or arc about to come into operation, amongst them, at the present day, for those which are most likely to determine their future. But the very; greatness and variety of the subject, which se strongly attract the mind, subdue the hope of being able, within the narrow room allowed us here, to present any adequate picture of if, and compel us to leave to the reader to clothe with the distinctness and freshness of truth, the dry and fragmentary generalities which we must be satisfied to lay before him. It is in no way our design to give a methodical review of the geography and history of the Archipelago. This it would be impossible to do, with any accuracy, in the space to which we must confine ourselves, and we therefore assume that our readers have such a knowledge of these that, in following our remarks, they will recall, or perhaps sometimes approach from new points, facts with which they have already made acquaintance, and even that mere allusions, where we cannot afford more, will expand in their memories into the fullness of reality.
The first and most general consideration in a physical review of the Archipelago is its relation to the Continent of Asia. In the platform, on which the largest and most important lands are distributed, we see a great root which the stupendous mass of Asia has sent forth from its south eastern side, and which, spreading far to the south beneath the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and there expanding and shooting up by its plutonic and volcanic energy, has covered them, and marked its track, with innumerable islands. That there is a real and not merely a fanciful connection between the Archipelago and Asia is demonstrable, although, when we endeavour to trace its history, we are soon lost in the region of speculation. So obvious is this connection that it has been a constant source of excitement to the imagination, which, in the traditions of the natives, and in the hypotheses of Europeans, has sought its origin in an earlier geographical unity. Certainly, if, in the progress of the elevatory and depressing movements which the region is probably undergoing even now, the land were raised but a little, we should see shallow seas dried up, the mountain ranges of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java become continental like those of the Peninsula, and great rivers flowing not only in the Straits of Malacca, whose current early navigators mistook for that of an inland stream, but through the wide valley of the China Sea, and by the deep and narrow Strait of Sunda, into the Indian Ocean. Thus the unity would become geographical, which is now only geological. That the great platform from which only mountains and hills rose above the sea level, till the materials drawn from them by the rains were rolled out into the present alluvial plains, is really an extension of the Asiatic mass, appears evident from the facts: amongst many others which require a separate geological paper for their discussion, and would be less readily appreciated by the general reader:—that its direction, as a whole, is that which a continuation of south-eastern Asia, under the same plutonic action which produced it, would possess;—the mountain ranges, which form the latter, sink into it irregularly in the lines of their longitudinal axes;—in one zone, that of the Peninsula, the connection is an actual geographical one;—the Peninsula is obviously continued in the dense clusters of islands and rocks, stretching on the parallel of its elevation and of the strike of its sedimentary rocks, from Singapore to Banka, and almost touches Sumatra, the mountain ranges of which are, notwithstanding, parallel to it;—Borneo and Celebes appear to represent the broader or eastern branch of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, from which they are separated by the area of the China Sea, supposed to be sinking;—and, finally, nearly the whole Archipelago is surrounded by a great volcanic curve rooted in Asia itself, and the continuity of which demonstrates that the platform and the continental projection with which it is geographically connected are really united, at this day, into one geological region by a still vigorous power of plutonic expansiveness, no longer, to appearance, forming hypogene elevations, but expending itself chiefly in the numerous volcanic vents along the borders where it sinks into the depths of the ocean.
Whether the present platform ever rose above the level of the sea, and surrounded the now insular eminences with vast undulating plains of vegetation instead of a level expanse of water, we shall not hear seek to decide, although we think that Raffles and others who have followed in his steps too hastily connected the supposed subsidence with the existing geological configuration of the region, and neglected the all important evidence of the comparative distribution of the living flora and fauna, which seems to prove that the ancient southern continent, if such there was, had subsided before they came into existence. No conclusive reasons have yet been adduced why we should consider the islands of the Archipelago as the summits of a partially submerged, instead of a partially emerged, continent. But whether it was the sinking of the continent that deluged all the southern lowlands of Asia, leaving only the mountain summits visible, or its elevation that was arrested by the exhaustion of the plutonic energy, or the conversion of its upheaving into an ejecting action, on the opening of fractures along the outskirts of the region, before the feebler action there had brought the sea bed into contact with the atmosphere, the result has been to form an expanse of shallow seas and islands, elsewhere unequalled in the world, but perhaps not greater in proportion to the wide continental shores, and the vast bulk of dry land, in front of which it is spread out, than other archipelagoes are to the particular countries, or continental sections, with which they are connected.
The forms and positions of these islands bear an older date than that of any limited subsidence or elevation of the region after its formation, They were determined by the same forces which originally caused the platform itself to swell up above the deep floor of the southern ocean; and it was one prolonged act of the subterranean power to raise the Himalayas into the atrial level of perpetual snow, to spread out the submarine bed on which the rivers were afterwards to pile the hot plains of Bengal, and to mould the surface of the southern region, so that when it rose above, or sunk. into, the sea to certain levels, the mutual influences of air and sea and land should be so balanced, that while the last drew from the first a perennial ripeness and beauty of summer, it owed to the second a perennial freshness and fecundity of spring. Hence it is that, in the Archipelago, while the bank of black mud, daily overflowed by the tides, is hidden beneath a dense forest, and the polypifer has scarcely reared its tower to the sea’s surface before it is converted into a green islet, the granitic rocks of the highest plutonic summits, and the smoke of the volcanic peaks, rise from amidst equally luxuriant, and more varied, vegetation. Certainly, the most powerfully impressive of all the characteristics of the Archipelago is-its botanical exuberance, which has exercised the greatest influence on the history and habits of its human inhabitants, and which, as the most obvious, first excites the admiration of the voyager, and from its never staling, because ever renewing itself in fresh and changeful beauty, retains its hold upon our feelings to the last.
When we enter the seas of the Archipelago we are in a new world. Land and ocean are strangely intermingled. Great islands are disjoined by narrow straits, which, in the case of those of Sunda, lead at once into the smooth waters and green level shores of the interior from the rugged and turbulent outer coast, which would otherwise have opposed to us an unbroken wall more than two thousand miles in length. We pass from one mediterranean sea to another, now through groups of islets so small that we encounter many in an hour, and presently along the coasts of those so large that we might be months in circumnavigating them. Even in crossing the widest of the eastern seas, when the last green speck has sunk beneath the horizon, the mariner knows that a circle drawn with a radius of two days sail would touch more land than water, and even that, if the eye were raised to-a sufficient height, while the islands he had left would reappear on the one side, new shores would be seen on almost every other. But it is the wonderful freshness and greenness in which, go where he will, each new island is enveloped, that impresses itself on his senses as the great distinctive character of the region. The equinoctial warmth of the air, tempered and moistened by a constant evaporation, and purified by periodical winds, seems to be imbued with penetrating life-giving virtue, under the influence of which even the most barren rock becomes fertile. Hence those groups of small islands which sometimes environ the larger ones like clusters of satellites, or mark where their ranges pursue their course beneath the sea, often appear, in particular states of the atmosphere when a zone of while quivering light surrounds them and obliterates their coasts, to be dark umbrageous gardens floating on a wide lake, whose gleaming surface would be too dazzling were if not traversed by the shadows of the clouds, and covered by the breeze with an incessant play of light and shade. Far different from the placid beauty of such scenes is the effect of the mountain domes and peaks which elsewhere rise against the sky. In these the voyager secs the grandeur of European mountains repeated, but all that is austere or savage transformed into softness and beauty, The snow and glaciers are replaced by a mighty forest, which fills every ravine with dark shade, and arrays every peak and ridge in glancing light. Even the peculiar beauties which the summits of the Alps borrow from the atmosphere, are sometimes displayed. The Swiss, gazing on the lofty and majestic form of a volcanic mountain, is astonished to behold, at the rising of the sun, the peaks inflamed with the same rose red glow which the snowy summits of Mont Rosa and Mont Blanc reflect at its selling, and the smoke wreaths, as they ascend from the crater into mid air, shining in golden hues like the clouds of heaven.[1]
But serene in their beauty and magnificence as these mountains generally appear, they hide in their bosoms elements of the highest terrestrial sublimity and awe, compared with whose appalling energy, not only the bursten lakes and the rushing avalanches of the Alps, but the most devastating explosions of Vesuvius or Etna, cease to terrify the imagination. When we look upon the ordinary aspects of these mountains, it is almost impossible to believe the geological story of their origin, and if our senses yield to science, they tacitly revenge themselves by placing in the remotest past, the era of such convulsions as it relates. But the nether powers though imprisoned are not subdued. The same telluric energy which piled the mountain from the ocean to the clouds, even while we gaze in silent worship on its glorious form is gathering in its dark womb, and time speeds on to the day, whose coming science can neither foretell nor prevent, when the mountain is rent; the solid foundations of the whole region are shaken; the earth is opened to vomit forth destroying fires upon the living beings who dwell upon its surface, or closed to engulph them; the forests are deluged by lava, or withered by sulphureous vapours; the sun sets at noonday behind the black smoke which thickens over the sky, and spreads far and wide, raining ashes throughout a circuit hundreds of miles in diameter; till it seems to the superstitious native that the fiery abodes of the volcanic dewas are disembowelling themselves, possessing the earth, and blotting out the heavens. The living remnants of the generation whose doom it was to inhabit Sumbawa in 1815, could tell us that this picture is but a faint transcript of the reality, and that our imagination can never conceive the dreadful spectacle which still appals their memories, Fortunately these awful explosions of the earth, which to man convert nature into the supernatural, occur at rare intervals; and, though scarcely a year elapse without some volcano bursting into action, the greater portion of the Archipelago being more than once shaken, and even the ancient granitic floor of the Peninsula trembling beneath us, this terrestrial instability has ordinarily no worse effect than to dispel the illusion that we tread upon a solid globe, to convert the physical romance of geological history into the familiar associations of our own lives, and {o unite the events of the passing hour with these which first fitted the world for the habitation of man.
We have spoken of the impression which the exteriour beauty of the Archipelago makes upon the voyager, and the fearful change winch sometimes comes over it, when the sea around him is hidden beneath floating ashes mingled with the charred wrecks of the noble forests which had clothed the mountain sides; but, hurried though we are from one part of our slight sketch to another, we cannot leave the vegetation of this great region without looking upon it more closely. To recall the full charms, however, of the forests of the Archipelago,—which is to speak of the Archipelago itself, for the greater portion of it is at this moment, as the whole of if once was, clothed to the waters edge with frees;—we must animate their solitudes with the tribes which dwell there in freedom, ranging through their boundless shade as unconscious of the presence of man, and as unwitting of his dominion, as they were thousands of years ago, when he did not dream that the world held such lands and such creatures.
When we pass from the open sea of the Archipelago into the deep shade of ifs mountain forests, we have realized all that, in Europe, our fancies ever pictured of the wildness and beauty of primeval nature. Trees of gigantic forms and exuberant foliage rise on every side: each species shooting up ifs trunk to its utmost measure of development, and striving, as it seams, to escape from the dense crowd. Others, as if no room were left for them to grow in the ordinary way, emulate the shapes and motions of serpents, enwrap their less pliant neighbours in their folds, twine their branches into one connected canopy, or hang down, here, loose and swaying in the air, or in festoons from tree to tree, and there, stiff and rooted like the shrouds which support the mast of a ship. No sooner has decay diminished the green array of a branch, than its place is supplied by epiphites, chiefly fragrant orchidaceae, of singular and beautiful forms. While the eye in vain seeks to familiarize itself with the exuberance and diversity of the forest vegetation, the ear drinks in the sounds of life which break the silence and deepen the solitude. Of these, while the interrupted notes of birds, loud or low, rapid or long-drawn, cheerful or plaintive, and ranging over a greater or less musical compass are the most pleasing; the most constant are those of insects, which sometimes rise into a shrill and deafening clangour; and the most impressive, and those which bring out all the wildness. and loneliness of the scene, are the prolonged complaining cries of the únkas, which rise, loud and more loud, till the twilight air is filled with the clear, powerful, and melancholy sounds, As we penetrate deeper into the forest, its animals, few at any one place, are soon seen to be, in reality, numerous and varied. Green and harmless snakes hang like tender branches. Others of deeper and mingled colours, but less innocuous, lie coiled up, or, disturbed by the human intruder, assume am angry and dangerous look, but glide out of sight. Insects in their shapes and hues imitate leaves, twigs and flowers. Monkeys, of many sizes and colours, spring from branch to branch, or, in long trains, rapidly steal up the trunks. Deer, and amongst them the graceful palandoh, no bigger than a hare, and celebrated in Malayan poetry, on our approach fly startled from: the pools which they and the wild hog most frequent. Lively squirrels, of different species, are everywhere met with. Amongst a great variety of other remarkable animals which range the forest, we may, according to our locality, encounter herds of elephants, the rhinoceros, tigers of several sorts, the tapir, the bábírúsa, the orangútan, the sloth; and, of the winged tribes, the gorgeously beautiful birds of paradise, the loris, the peacock, and the argus pheasant. The mangrove rivers and creeks are haunted by huge alligators. An endless variety of fragile and richly colored shells not only lie empty on the sandy beaches, but are tenanted by pagurian crabs which, ta clusters, batten on every morsel of fat seaweed that has been left by the retiring waves. The coasts are fringed with living rocks of beautiful colours, and shaped like stars, flowers, bushes and other symmetrical forms. Of multitudes of peculiar fishes which inhabit the seas, the dugong or Malayan mermaid, most attracts our wonder.
Before we leave this part of our subject, we would assure any European reader who may suspect that we have in aught written too warmly of the physical beauty of the Archipelago, that the same Nature which, in the west, only reveals her highest and most prodigal terrestrial beauty to the imagination of the poet, has here ungirdled herself, and given her wild and glowing charms, in all their fullness, to the eye of day. The ideal has here passed into the real. The few botanists who have visited this region declare, that from the multitude of its noble trees, odorous and beautiful flowers, and wonderful vegetable forms of all sorts, it is inconceivable in its magnificence, luxuriance, and variety. The zoologists, in their turn, bear testimony to the rare, curious, varied and important animals which inhabit it; and the number and character of those already known is such as to justify one of the most distinguished of the day in expressing his belief, that "no region on the face of the earth would furnish more novel, splendid, or extraordinary forms than the unexplored islands in the eastern range of the Indian Archipelago."
Hitherto we have faintly traced the permanent influence of the physical configuration of the Archipelago in tempering the intertropical heat, regulating (he monsoons, determining the distribution of plants and animals, and giving to the whole region its peculiar character of softness and exuberant beauty. But when its rock foundations were laid, the shadow of its future human, as well as natural, history spread over them. Its primal physical architecture, in diminishing the extent of dry land, has increased the variety in the races who inhabit it; while the mineralogical constitution of the insulated elevations, the manner in which they are dispersed throughout its seas, and all the meteoric and botanical consequences, have affected them in innumerable modes.
Again, as we saw that the platform of the Archipelago is but an extension of the great central mass of Asia, and that the direction of the subterranean forces had determined the ranges of the land, so we find that its population is but an extension of the Asiatic families, and that the direction of migration was marked out by the same forces. But, separated by the sea from the great plains and vallies of the continent, having the grand routes of communication covered by mountains and dense and difficultly penetrable forest, the Archipelago could not be peopled by hordes, but must have owed ifs aborigenes to the occasional wandering of small parties or single families. The migrations from one island to another were probably equally limited and accidental; and the small and scattered communinities in such as were inhabited, must, for a long period, have remained secluded from all others, save when a repetition of similar accidents added a few more units to the human denizens of the forests.
We cannot here attempt to retrace in the most concise manner the deeply interesting history of the tribes of the Archipelago, so exciting from the variety of its elements, and its frequent, though not impenetrable, mystery. We can but distinguish the two great eras into which it divides itself,—that, at the commencement of which some of the inhabitants of the table land of Asia, having slowly traversed the south eastern: vallies and ranges, a work perhaps of centuries, appeared on the confines of the Archipelago, no longer nomades of the plains but of the jungles, with all the changes in ideas, habits, and language which such transformation implies, and prepared by their habits to give rise, under the influences of their new position, to the nomades of the sea;—and the second era, that, at the commencement of which the forest and pelagic nomades, scattered over the interior, and along the shores, of the islands of the Archipelago, in numerous petty tribes, each with some peculiarities in its habits and language, but all bearing a family resemblance, were discovered in their solitudes by the earliest navigators from the civilized nations of the continent.
The ensuing, or what, although extending over a period of about two thousand years, we may term the modern, history of the Archipelago, first exhibits the Klings from southern India,—who were a civilized maritime people probably three thousand years ago,— frequenting the islands for their peculiar productions, awakening a taste for their manufactures in the inhabitants, settling amongst them, introducing their arts and religion, partially communicating these and a little of their manners and habits to their disciples, but neither by much intermarriage altering their general physical character, nor by moral influence obliterating their ancient superstitions, their comparative simplicity and robustness of character, and their freedom from the effeminate vanity which probably then, as in later times, distinguished their teachers. At a comparatively recent period, Islamism supplanted Hinduism in most of the communities which had grown op under the influence of the latter, but it had still less modifying operation; and, amongst the great bulk of the people, the conversion from a semi-Hindu condition to that of Mahomedanism was merely formal. Their intellects, essentially simple and impatient of discipline and abstract contemplation, could as little appreciate the scholastic refinements of the one religion, as the complex and elaborate mythological machinery and psycological subtleties of the other. While the Malay of the nineteenth century exhibits in his manner, and in many of his formal usages and habits, the influence which Indians and Arabs lave exerted on his race, he remains, physically and morally, in all the broader and deeper traits of nature, what he was when he first entered the Archipelago; and even on his manners, usages, and habits, influenced as they have been, his distinctive original character is still very obviously impressed.
We cannot do more than allude to the growth of population and civilization in those localities which, from their extent of fertile soil or favorable commercial position, rose into eminence, and became the seats of powerful nations. But it must be borne in mind that, although these localities were varied and wide spread, they occupied but a small portion of the entire surface of the Archipelago, and that the remainder continued to be thinly inhabited by uncivilized tribes, communities, or wandering families.
Prevented, until a very recent date, by stubborn prejudices and an overweening sense of superiority, from understanding and influencing the people of the Archipelago, the European dominations have not directly affected them at all; and the indirect operation of the new power, and mercantile and political policies, which they introduced has been productive of much evil and very little good. While, on the one hand, the native industry and trade have been stimulated by increased demand and by the freedom enjoyed in the English ports, they have, on the other hand, been subjected by the Portuguese, English and Dutch, to a series of despotic restraints, extending over a period of three hundred years: and, within the range of the last nation’s influence, continued, however modified, to this hour: which far more than counterbalance all the advantages that can be placed in the opposite scale.
The effect of the successive immigrations, revolutions and admixtures which we have indicated or alluded to, has been, that there are now in the Archipelago an extraordinary number of races, differing in colour, habits, civilization, and language, and living under forms of government and laws, or customs, exhibiting the greatest variety. The same cause which isolated the aborigenes into numerous distinct tribes and kept them separate,—the exuberant vegetation of the islands,—has resisted the influence, so far as it was originally amalgamating, of every successive foreign civilization that has dominated; and the aboriginal nomades of the jungle and the sea, in their unchanged habits and mode of life, reveal to their European contemporary, the condition of their race at a time when his own fore-fathers were as rude and far more savage. The more civilized races, after attaining a certain measure of advancement, have been separated by their acquired habits from the unaltered races, and have too often turned their superiority into the means of oppressing, and thereby more completely imprisoning in the barbarism of the jungles, such of them as lived in their proximity. So great is the diversity of tribes, that if a dry catalogue of names suited the purpose of this sketch, we could not afford space to enumerate them. But, viewing human life in the Archipelago as a general contemplation, we may recall a few of the broader peculiarities which would be most likely to dwell on the memory after leaving the region.
In the hearts of the forests we meet man scantily covered with the bark of a free, and living on wild fruits, which he seeks with the agility of the monkey, and wild animals, which he tracks with the keen eye and scent of a beast of prey, and slays with a poisoned arrow projected from a hollow bambú by bis breath. In lonely creeks and straits we see him in a small boat, which is his cradle, his house, and his bed of death; which gives him all the shelter he ever needs, and enables him to seize the food which always surrounds him. On plains, and on the banks of rivers, we see the civilized planter converting the moist flats into rice fields, overshadowing his neat cottage of bambú, níbong, and palm leaves with the graceful and bounteous cocoanut, and surrounding it with fruits, the variety and flavour of which European luxury might envy, and often with fragrant flowering trees and shrubs which the greenhouses of the West do not possess. Where the land is not adapted for wet rice, he pursues a system of husbandry which the farmer of Europe would view with astonishment. Too indolent to collect fertilizing appliances, and well aware that the soil will not yield two successive crops of rice, he takes but one, after having felled and burned the forest; and he then sceks a new locality, leaving nature, during a ten years fallow, to accumulate manure for his second crop on the old one, in the vegetable matter elaborated by the new forest that springs up. Relieved from the care of his crop he searches the forests for rattans, canes, timber, fragrant’ woods, oils, wax, gums, caoutchouc, gutta-percha, dyes, camphor, wild nutmegs, the tusks of the elephant, the horn and bide of the rhinoceros, the skin of the tiger, parrots, birds of paradise, argus pheasants, and materials for mats, roof, baskets, and receptacles of various kinds. If he lives near the coast, he collects fish, fish maws, fish roes, slugs (trepang), seaweed (agaragar), tortoiseshell, rare corals and mother of pearl, To the eastward, great fishing voyages are annually made to the shores of Australia for trepang. In many parts, pepper, coffee, or betelnut, to a large, and tobacco, ginger, and other articles, to a considerable, extent, are cultivated. Where the hirundo esculenta is found, the rocks are clomb and the caves explored for its costly edible nest. In different parts of the Archipelago the soil is dug for tin, antimony, iron, gold or diamonds, The more civilized nations make cloths and weapons, not only for their own use but for exportation. The traders, including the Rajahs, purchase the commodities which we have mentioned, dispose of them to. the European, Chinese, Arab, or Kling navigator, who visits their shores, or send them in their own vessels to the markets of Singapore, Batavia, Samarang, Manila, and Macassar. In these are gathered all the products of the Archipelago, whether such as the native inhabitants procure by their unassisted industry, or such as demand the skill and capital of the European or Chinese for their cultivation er manufacture; and amongst the latter, nutmegs, cloves, sugar, indigo, sage, gambier, tea, and the partially cultivated cinnamon and cotton. To these busy marts, the vessels of the first maritime people of the Archipelago, the Bugis, and those of many Malayan communities, bring the produce of their own countries, and that which they have collected from neighbouring lands, or from the wild tribes, to furnish cargoes for the ships of Europe, America, Arabia, India, Siam, China, and Australia. To the bazar of the Eastern Seas, commerce brings representatives of every industrious nation of the Archipelago, and of every maritime people in the civilized world.
Although, therefore, cultivation has made comparatively little impression on the vast natural vegetation, and the inhabitants are devoid of that unremitting laboriousness which distinguishes the Chinese and European, the Archipelago, in its industrial aspect, presents an animated and varied scene. The industry of man, when civilization or over population has not destroyed the natural balance of life, must ever be the complement of the bounty of nature. The inhabitant of the Archipelago is as energetic and laborious as nature requires him to he; and he does not convert the world into a workshop, as the Chinese, and the Kling immigrants do, because his world is not, like theirs, darkened with the pressure of crowded population and over competition, nor is his desire to accumulate wealth excited and goaded by the contrast of splendour and luxury on the one hand, and penury on the other, by the pride and assumptions of wealth and station, and the humiliations of poverty and dependence.
While in the volcanic soils of Java, Menangkabau and Celebes, and many other parts of the Archipelago, population has increased, an industry suited to the locality and habits of each people prevails, and distinct civilizations, on the peculiar features of which we cannot touch, have been nurtured and developed; other islands, less favoured by nature, or under the influence of particular historical circumstances, have become the seats of great piratical communities, which periodically send forth large fleets to sweep the seas, and lurk along the shores, of the Archipelago, despoiling the seafaring trader of the fruits of his industry and his personal liberty, and carrying off, from their very homes, the wives and children of the villagers. From the creeks and rivers of Borneo and Johore, from the numerous islands between Singapore and Banka, and from other parts of the Archipelago, piratical expeditions less formidable than those of the Lanuns of Sulu are year after year fitted out. No coast is so thickly peopled, and no harbour so well protected, as to be secure from all molestation, for, where open force would be useless, recourse is had to stealth and stratagem. Men have been kidnapped in broad day in the harbours of Pinang and Singapore. Several inhabitants of Province Wellesley who had been carried away from their houses through the harbour of Pinang and down the Straits of Malacca to the southward were recently discovered by the Dutch authorities living in a state of slavery and restored to their homes. But the ordinary abodes of the pirates themselves are not always at a distance from the European settlements. As the thug of Bengal is only known in his own village as a peaceful peasant, so the pirate, when not absent on an expedition, appears in the river, and along the shores and islands, of Singapore, as an honest boatman or fisherman.
When we turn from this brief review of the industry of she Archipelago, and its great internal enemy, to the personal and social condition of the inhabitants, we are struck by the mixture of simplicity and art, of rudeness and refinement, which characterises all the principal nations. No European has ever entered into free and kindly intercourse with them, without being much more impressed by their virtues than their faults. They contrast most favourably with the Chinese and the Klings tn their moral characters; and although they do not, like those pliant races, readily adapt themselves to the requirements of foreigners, in their proper sphere they are intelligent, shrewd, active, and, when need is, laborius. Comparing them even with general condition of many civilized nations of far higher pretensions, our estimate must be favourable. Their manners are distinguished by a mixture of caurtesy and freedom which is very attractive. Even the poorest while frank are well bred, and, excluding the communities that are corrupted by piracy or a mixture with European seamen and low Chinese and Klings, we never see an impudent air, an insolent look, or any exhibition of immodesty, or hear coarse, abusive or indecent language. In their mutual intercourse they are respectful, and, while good humoured and open, habitually reflective and considerate. They are much given to amusements of various kinds, fond of music, poetry and romances, and in their common conversation addicted to sententions, remarks, proverbs, and metrical sentiments or allusions. To the first impression of the European, the inhabitants, like the vegetation and animals of the Archipelago, are altogether strange, because the characteristics in which they differ from those to which we are habituated, affect the senses more vividly than those in which they agree. For a time the colour, features, dress, manners and habits which we see and the languages which we hear, are those of a new world, But with the fresh charms, the exagegerated impressions also, of novelty, wear away; and then, retracing our steps, we wonder that people so widely separated from the nations of the west, both geographically and historically, and really differing so much in their outward aspect, should, in their more latent traits, so much resemble them. The nearer we come to the inner spirit of humanity, the more points of agreement appear, and this not merely in the possession of the universal attributes of human nature, but in specific habits, usages, and superstations.
What at first seems stranger still is, that when we seek the native of the Archipelago in the mountains of the interior, where he has lived for probably more than two thousand years secluded from all foreign influence, and where we expect to find all the differences at their maximum, we are sometimes astonished to find him approximating most closely of all to the European. In the Jakún, for instance, girded though his loins are with terap bark, and armed as he is with his sumpitan and poisoned arrows, we recognize the plain and clownish manners, and simple ideas of the uneducated peasant in the more secluded parts of European countries; and when he describes how, at his merry makings, his neighbours assemble, the arrack tampúí flows around, and the dance, in which both sexes mingle, is prolonged, till each seats himself on the ground with his partner on his knee and his bambu of arrack by the side, when the dance gives place to song, we are forcibly reminded of free and jovial, if rude, manners of the lower rural classes, of the West. Freed from the repellant prejudices and artificial trappings of Hindu and Mahomedan civilization we see in the man of the Archipelago more that is akin than the reverse to unpolished man of Europe.
When we turn to the present political condition of the Archipelago, we are struck by the contrast which it presents to that which characterised it, three or four centuries ago. The mass of the people, it is true, in all their private relations, remain in nearly the same state in which they were found by the earliest European voyagers, and which they had existed for many centuries previously. But; as nations, they have withered in the presence of the uncongenial, greedy and relentless spirit of European policy, They have been subdued by the hard and determined will of Europeans, who, in general, have pursued the purposes for which they have come into the Archipelago without giving any sympathy to the inhabitants. The nomadic spirit, never extinguished during all the changes which they underwent, had made them adventurous and warlike when they rose into nations, But now, long overawed and restrained by the power of Europeans, the national habits of action have, in most parts of the Archipelago, been lost, or are only faintly maintained in the piratical expeditions of some. Their pride has fallen. Their living literature is gone with the power, the wars, and the glory, which inspired it The day has departed when Singapore could be invaded by Javanese,—when Johore could extend its dominion to Borneo on the one side, and Sumatra on the other,—when the fleets of Acheen and Malacca could encounter each other in the Straits to dispute the dominion of the Eastern Seas,—when the warrants of the Sultan of Menangkabaú were as potent over the Malayan nations as the bulls of Rome ever were over those of Christendom,—when a champion of Malacca could make his name be known all over the Archipelago,—and when the kings of the Peninsula sent their sons, escorted by celebrated warriors, to demand the daughter of the emperors of Majapahit in marriage. The Malayan princes of the present day, retaining all the feudal attachment and homage of their subjects, and finding no more honorable vent for the assertion of their freedom from restraint and the gratification of their self-will, have almost every where sunk into indolent debauchees and greedy monopolists, and, incited by their own rapacity and that of the courtiers who surround them, drain and paralyse the industry of their people.
The foreign elements at present exercising, or likely toe exercise, great influence on the condition of the Archipelago, are the dominion of the Dutch and Spanish, the commerce and settlements of the English, the educational and missionary efforts of Christendom, the growth of large Chinese communities, and the continued influx of immigrants from China. It is probable, if England does not extend her influence, that the whole Archipelago, with the exception of the Malayan Peninsula (which is always considered a member of it,) the Philippines, and a small portion of Borneo, will, in no long time, become a portion of the Dutch empire; and if the humanizing and liberal influences which, we hope, are now modifying the character of the eastern policy of that nation, receive full effect, and Netherlands India come to he really looked upon as an integral part of Holland, its inhabitants being admitted to a full reciprocity of advantages with those of the European portion of the empire, there will be little to regret, and much to welcome, in the change. England in introducing freedom of trade, and in leaving the inhabitants of Her possessions, small as they are, to the unshackled exercise of their own industry, has set an example of rational government, which, if imitated in every European possession in the Archipelago, would do something to atone for past misgovernment and neglect. It is impossible to foresee how great the influence of the Chinese may become. Large as the Chinese population already is, and numerous as the annual immigrants from China are, they must, in the progress of the change which is working in China itself, greatly increase, and there can be little hazard in looking to the pressure of population in China, as one of the most momentous elements in the future history of the Archipelago.
Broken down as the more civilized and once powerful states are, till their governments, with hardly an exception, have lost all the energy and ambition to be useful, and retain only the power to be hurtful; divided as the greater proportion of the population of the Archipelago is, into separate tribes and communities too small to resist the domineering and exacting spirit of the more covetous, bold and active Malays and Bugis who infest their coasts ; openly robbed and enslaved by their brother islanders; defrauded by the Chinese, King or Arab adventurer, whose superior activity and cunning, enable him to profit more by their industry than they do themselves: neglected by the European who seeks the same end by honest means, and, that attained, returns to bis native country and gives them no second thought; and without any active internal elements of advancement;—it is only by awakening an interest in Europe itself that the inhabitants of the Archipelago can hope for any amelioration. So long as they only know one place of European character,—the ardent, steady and inventive pursuit of gain,—the influence of Europe will remain, what it has hitherto proved, more prejudicial than beneficial. But let the deep human sympathy which dwells in England and overflows on so many sides, once effectually reach the people of this noble region of the worlds let England learn their many virtues, their mild and engaging manners, their freedom from intolerance, their docility, their aptitude for instruction; and let her but take seriously to heart the fact that on the seas where her flag has floated and her commerce largely profitted for two hundred and fifty years, the peaceful trader cannot at this day venture to embark without the risk of being slain or enslaved,—that from the destruction of all national power, in which her own policy aided, a few thousand pirates now keep the coasts of countries numbering millions of inhabitants in a state of insecurisy,—and her energy and resources will soon work out the best means of suppressing these evils at once and for ever, and of implanting fresh and vigorous elements of more development in the now stagnant minds of the inhabitants. Without this we may continue for another hundred years to mingle in the trading communities of the Archipelago, without ever exercising any of that influence which our predecessors, the Hindus and the Mahomedans, exercised. But if we would seek to assimilate the natives of the Archipelago to those of Europe, and take them with us on our path of advancement, we must, like the Hindus and Mahomedans, begin by acquiring a thorough and familiar knowledge of them.
Their political and material wants are so connected that whatever tends to remedy the latter must react on the former. It is no less the duty of the christian and the philanthropist for their ends, than of the economist for his, to take every practicable measure for the improvement of the external condition of the natives of the Archipelago, We need not now suffer our minds to be disturbed by any misgivings as to the benefit derivable from European influence. In the first place, the influence hitherto has not been that of Europe in her noblest characteristics; or the lower and more selfish have so much predominated that they have not yet dreamt of Europe in her earnest devotion to the bettering of humanity, her pure and deep love of ail truth spiritual and physical, and her ever extending knowledge of the secret springs of nature. For, altough we fully appreciate the earnest and noble labours of the missionaries who are found in many of the islands, we cannot be blind to the fact. that their numbers and resources are, as yet, far too limited to make more than a slight impression an the great field which lies around them. In the second place we have no choice. We may deplore that same tribes, happy in their simplicity and guilelessness, should be roused from their repose of peace to pass through the turbulent period which separates man first awaking to a sense of new wants and setting out on his career of dissatisfaction and action, from man when civilization has thrown off its early vices and evils, and is bringing all human wants and desires into harmony. But we cannot, if we would, arrest the march of events; and as the necessities and enterprize of China and Europe are yearly more and more invading the recesses of the Archipelago, and the most secluded tribes must in a short time be brought within the circle of general economical intercourse, we must dismiss from our minds distrust and hesitation, and substitute in their place, the fact that this intercourse is now most extensive, will soon be universal, and is a mighty agent for good as well as for evil.
Unfortunately the Chinese, who are so rapidly spreading, can only corrupt and debase the natives. Living but for gain and merely physical enjoyment, and pursuing these objects with a combination of the most mature patience, laboriousness, duplicity, craft and often fraud, which is the more dangerous from the easy, open, plain and plausible manner with which it is accompanied, the Chinese flow into every opening which European powers effect whether by supplanting or weakening native governments. If every step which European enterprize makes it thus followed by an accession of Chinese corruption, it is the more incumbent on Europe that she no longer stand aloof from the natives, and abandon them to the debasement of a civilization, purely industrial and sensual, to which she contributes to expose them.
It is time that England should see and be shocked by the effects of her past policy or absence of policy in the anarchy, degeneracy, oppressions and vices which largely prevail in many parts of the Archipelago. England would then learn by what a small effort, in comparison with those which she is daily making for objects of far inferior magnitude and moment, she might make herself known in her true character in the Archipelago, and speedily free the slave from his bonds; suppress the trade in men and its associate piracy; mitigate and eventually abolish the heavy monopolies and restraints which depress industry, and nourish oppression, fraud and corruption; and, having thus given to the people freedom in person, property and mind, lead them, through her sympathy and pity and their docility and gratitude, to a willing reception of the humanizing and elevating knowledge of christendom.
- ↑ M. Zollinger in describing Mount Semirú in Java notices this singular resemblance to the mountains of his native country.