■whole lives in armour, like barbarians. A proof of this is the continuance still, in
some parts of Greece, of those manners which were once general over the whole of
it. The Athenians were the first who passed from this dissolute course of life to
polite and elegant manners.”
If the term, piracy, be restricted, as it ought, to robbery committed on the high or
even the narrow seas, it is necessarily confined to the inhabitants of the sea coast, or
of the rivers debouching upon it ; and to such of these as have, by the possession of
stout vessels, of fire-arms, and of skill in navigation, the power to commit i t : and it
would be an abuse of language to bestow the name on the depredations committed
on each other by rude tribes, without other vessels than paddled canoes, or other
arms than spears, with swords and bucklers. The boldest and most dangerous
pirates of the Indian islands, at present, are two nations of the Philippines, well
known to native traders as the Lanuns and Balaniui; the first being a people of the
great bay on the southern side of Mindano, and the last, of the group of the Sulu
islands. These tribes, centrieally situated and taking advantage of the monsoons,
scorn- the coasts both of the Philippine and Malayan Archipelago from Luzon to
Sumatra, in fleets of stout vessels of from fifty to one hundred tons burden, generally
armed with a few cannon or wall pieces, with some muskets; and having a stout
bulwark, called in Malay an ampilan, a mark by which they are sufficiently distinguished
from merchant praus. IN oxt to these come the Malay pirates, once the most
formidable of all, but now comparatively few and feeble. Their principal seat, ever
since the conquest of Malacca by the Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century,
had been the group of islands at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Malacca; and
the principal parties concerned, the orhng-laut, or “ men of the sea, the same race that
is denounced by Ge Barros, as a people whose habitual occupation was fishing and
robbing.” This class of pirates, if it has not wholly disappeared, has, at least, ceased
to be dangerous, since the establishment, in the very centre of their haunts, of
the British settlement of Singapore, and the Netherland one of Rhio, both of
which localities had themselves, down to the year 1819, been favourite piratical
haunts. .
Besides the piratical tribes now named, there is, hardly any other maritime people
of the Archipelago, that at one time or another, has not had its pirates, such as
those of Celebes and the Moluccas, and even of New Guinea. The people not
addicted to piracy, or, at least, who have committed none in our times, are the
Javanese, the people of Bali and Lomboc, all the nations of Sumatra, except the
maritime Malays, and all the inhabitants of the Philippines subject to the rule
of Spain, and these constitute the great majority of the population of the two
Archipelagos.
The receivers of the stolen goods, or at least the sharers m the booty, have been
many of the native princes, who, far from thinking piracy any discredit, have looked
on its gains as a fair and regular branch of their incomes. Strangely enough, the
government of the Philippines, which has suffered most from piracy, gives the practice,
in one instance at least, a tacit countenance, most probably from necessity.
“ Yligan, in the province of Misamis, and island of Mindano,” says the author of the
Informe’sobre las Islas Filipinas, “ is a kind of stockaded place to which the Moors
resort for trade, bringing, yearly, about 80,000 cavans of rice in the husk, from
20 000 to 30,000 cavans of cacoa, from 1200 to 1400 cavans of coffee, and from 50
to 60 tails of gold dust; with great quantities of fine cloths, mantlets, crises, and
whatever they collect in their incursions in the interior, or their piracies at sea, including
money, on which they set no high value. In return they receive earthen
and hard-ware, chintzes, but above all, coco and areca nuts which are scarce in their
country The inhabitants of this town do not exceed 1500 souls; are constantly
exposed to the attacks of the Moors; and it would be well to fortify the place with
a rampart and fosse.” The pirates here alluded to are the well-known Lanuns.
The only formidable piratical praus are those of the Lanuns and Balanini. These
are vessels of from 40 to 100 tons, have crews of from 40 to 60, and carry half-a-
dozen wall-pieces, with a supply of small arms, spears, cutlasses, and krises. They
are furnished with oars or sweeps, as well as sails, and are made for speed. They
are in fact, the regular native war boats. To the native trading vessels they are
irresistible, but utterly contemptible to the smallest European man-of-war, and it is
seldom they have ventured to attack, even the smallest European merchant ship,—
hardly ever, when manned by Europeans. The larger junks of the Chinese are
equally safe from them, and it is only the smaller or the unarmed junks of the
Cochin Chinese and native trading praus to which they are formidable.
Piracy, as already stated, has existed in the Malay and Philippine Archipelagos
ever since they were known to Europeans, and without doubt had existed for many
ages before. In the annals of the state of Malacca it is asserted, that the trade of
that place was greatly harassed by pirates of Celebes, under the leadership of a
Macassar chief whose name was Kraing Samerluk, in the time of Sultan Mansur Shah,
whose reign commenced in 1374. The Spaniards, when they commenced the conquest
of the Philippines in 1565, found the inhabitants of Mindoro carrying on
piracy; and those of Mindano and Sulu soon after commenced those incursions which
have continued to the present day, and often set the Spanish power at defiance. As
early as the year 1589, or only eighteen years after the foundation of Manilla, the
1 first attempt to conquer the Sulu Archipelago, and to suppress the predatory habits
of its people was made, and many others have followed, the last of them as late as
1851. In reference to the first of these, the historian Zufiiga makes the following
remarks : “ From that time to the present the Moors have not ceased to infest our
colonies. It is incredible what a number of Indians have been made prisoners; what
villages have been destroyed; and what vessels they have captured.”
The Malayan nations are not the only people that have committed, or now commit
piracies in the waters of the Archipelagos. When disorder and civil war prevail in
China, as always happens during its revolutions, it is sure to produce hordes of
pirates ; which, although they usually confine their depredations to the coasts of their
own country, occasionally extend them to the Philippines, and to the northern portion
of the Malayan Archipelago. Such piracies, as already stated, were rife during
the revolution which placed the present Tartar dynasty on the throne; and they are,
at present, rife pending that which threatens to overthrow it. The Chinese pirates,
from the superior size of their vessels, and the superior skill of those that navigate
them, are more formidable to native trading vessels than even the worst of the
Malayan buccaneers. The piracy of the Chinese, a civilised people, will necessarily
cease with the temporary causes which have given rise to i t ; but the utter extermination
of Malayan piracy is as hopeless as that of theft and burglary in the best
ordered states of society. It may, however, be greatly abated, and made not worth
following as a profession, by a vigilant police exercised, not only over the plunderers,
but the receivers of the plunder, by the European nations having territorial possessions
in the two Archipelagos. The obvious means of pursuing the pirates are armed
steam vessels of very small draught, which can pursue them into the shoals to which
they resort, and from whose speed there is no escape. The destruction of the
supposed haunts of the pirates by large and costly expeditions, seems by no means
an expedient plan for the suppression of piracy. In such expeditions the innocent
are punished with the guilty; and by the destruction of property which accompanies
them, both parties are deprived of the future means of honest livelihood, and hence
forced, as it were, to a continuance of their piratical habits. The total failure of
all such expeditions on the part of the Spaniards, for a period of near three centuries,
ought to be a sufficient warning against undertaking them.
PISANG, (PULO), literally “ banana island,” is the name of no fewer than six
different islands, or rather uninhabited islets of the Malayan Archipelago, extending
from Sumatra to the Moluccas. The name, pisang, is one peculiarly belonging to the
Malay language, all the other tongues having their own separate names for this fru it;
so that the word, applied to the names of places, points to the extent of Malay
navigation. Except for navigation, the islands which bear this name are of no importance
whatever.
POETARE, correctly PUTAR, which, in Malay, signifies “ to tu rn ,” or “ re volve,”
is the name of an island lying between Floris and Timur, computed to have
an area of 209 square geographical miles.
POLILLO. The name of a considerable island lying on the eastern coast of the
great island of Luzon. I t is of a triangular form; in length about 25 miles, and in
breadth 20 in its widest part. The chief town lies on its south-western side, bears
the same name, and lies in north latitude 14° 30'. The island is mountainous and
well watered, but seems indifferently cultivated, for its whole population is no more
than 1214.
POLO, MARCO. The celebrated Venetian traveller passed through the Malayan
Archipelago, in a voyage from Fokien in China to the Persian Gulf, performed by
a fleet of fourteen Chinese junks. This happened about the year 1291, or 218 years
before the first appearance of the Portuguese in the waters of the Archipelago. In
a a 2