gold.—Silver, a foreign metal— Manufacture o f iron__
Description o f tools.— Peculiar scarcity o f iron in the
Archipelago, and its consequences.— Chiefly employed in
the fabrication o f warlike implements Manufacture o f
the subordinate metals.— Carpentery.—Boats and vessels.
— Art o f fsh in g .— Its importance and extent among the
Indian islanders, and how practised.— In what fo rm fish
prepared fo r use— Salt— Manufactured chiefly in Java.
— Description o f the processes by which it is obtained.__
Saltpetre and gunpowder.— General remarks on the arts
practised by the Indian islanders.
I t is not my object, in the present chapter, to
render a laboured detail of each particular art
practised by the people of whom I am furnishing
an account, but to supply such a general picture
as will enable the reader to form a just estimate
of their state of social improvement. In rendering
this account, I shall follow the natural
progress of the arts in the march of civilization,
beginning with those that are most simple and necessary.
In this order, architecture is the first that presents
itself. The wide extent of the Indian Archipelago
affords examples of every species of human
dwelling, from the thicket or tree, which affords
shelter to the savage negroes of the mountains
of the Peninsula and the cannibals of Borneo, to the
comfortable habitation of the Javanese peasant, or
the more splendid one which lodges his chief or