7es f 68,? 11, land about the tropics, and down as far as to 10° from the equator. The
whole Malayan Archipelago is excluded from their sphere, while the whole of the
Philippine is within it, the island of Mindano alone excepted. The following account
of °ne of these visitations is by an eye-witness. “ The change of the monsoons does
not take place peacefully. The two [winds seem, as it were, to struggle with each
“®r, until one of them yields the ground. The tornados, on such occasions, are
sudden and violent. Torrents of rain fall so copiously, that he who is overtaken by
them in the open country can hardly draw his breath. If the tempest take place at
« g * the scene presented is grand. The obscurity is intense, the flashes of
lightning, broad and bright, overspreading earth and sky. The thunder-claps are
tremendous, some of them bursting within doors with a force which strikes one
dumb. Others resound in the firmament with a report prolonged for eight and ten
minutes, with various sounds, now diminishing, and now redoubling, and finally
dymg away in the noise of the storm. Sometimes the tornados continue with little
interruption for fifteen days. When these storms are of the most violent kind, they
take the name of hurricanes (huracan), which the Chinese call ti-fan, and the Philippine
islanders bagui. Towards the end of the year 1831, one of these took place,
when several ships were east far inland from the beach, and the frigate ‘Union ’ of
600 tons, was driven from her anchors in the harbour of Cavité, and thrown on the
ramparts of the fort. Whole galleries were torn from the houses of Manilla, and
sheets of lead from their roofs carried by the force of the wind across the river
v • ■ 4°°4 ™ Srea*' was such as to carry off houses on its banks, along
with their inhabitants, sweeping them into the river. On such occasions, the ends
of posts and canes are seen with a flame playing on them, as if they were so many
torches ; this magnificent illumination proving the vast quantity of electricity with
which the air is charged.”—Informe sobre el estado de las Mas Pilipinas.
u .
tTJUNG, in Malay and Javanese, signifies point, or sharp end, and is also frequently
applied to a point of land, or head-land, promontory, or tongue. I t occurs frequently
m the geography of the Malay Archipelago, as in Ujung-tanah, which is frequently
applied to the land s end of the Malay Peninsula, or at least to the most salient point
t i n i ® a llo th .e r example of it in the name of the island called by Europeans
’ 2?^ which is in reality the name of a promontory of that island, called
by the Malays Ujung-Salang, or the point of Salang.
UMBRELLA, in Malay and Javanese, payung, and in the latter, also, songsong.
1 o use an umbrella at all, or rather to have it carried over one, for no native carries
an umbrella himself, is a mark of rank, and its quality implies the degree of that rank
The sovereign alone uses one which is gilt throughout. In Java, a small umbrella,'
called a bawat, is the special badge of the higher nobility, called by the Sanscrit title
of bopati. This is not made use of to screen from sun or rain, but carried bv a
retamer, before the party.
UNGSANG is the name of the most southern easterly part of the island of Borneo
which is a kind of peninsula, a large bay to the north, and a still larger to the south
making of the intervening land a kind of isthmus. Very little ia'known of this
peninsula, which has hardly ever been visited by an European, but it seems to be a
barren wilderness, claimed by tbe Sultans of Sulu, wbose insular dominions approach,
within twenty miles of it. The elephant, escaped most probably from the domesticated
state, is now well known to exist in this remote comer, although in no other
part of Borneo.
XJPA S i aVanese “ Poison>” or “ venom.” The sap of some plants of the Malay
and Philippine Islands yields poisonous juices, which, by concentration, produce a
poison of considerable activity, which has been sometimes employed by the ruder
natives to render their weapons deadly. The most potent of these plants in Java are
the Anchar, the Antiaris toxicaria, a large forest tree, and the Chetek, strichnos tiente',
a climbing shrub. In all these cases, the poison, even when fresh, is far less active
than that of the cobra snake, for the most powerful will take an hour to kill a dog,
which the venom of the hooded snake would certainly accomplish in half the time,
lo effect a fatal purpose, too, it is necessary that the poisoned weapon should be
left in the wound, and not withdrawn, so that the probability is that few human
beings have ever lost their lives by means of these poisons.
y.
YALENTYN (FRANCIS). The author of the great work on the Dutch Possessions
in India, was a clergyman of the Lutheran church, and born in Dordrecht, about
the year 1660. In the year 1686 he proceeded to India, in his capacity of minister,
and in the following year reached Batavia. After exercising for a short time his professional
functions at Japara, on the northern coast of Java, he was transferred to
Amboyna, the future field of his ministry and literary labours. He applied himself
diligently to the study of the native languages, and with such success that in a few
months’ time he was able to preach in Malay. After twelve years’ residence in
Amboyna and the other Spice Islands, his health obliged him to return to Europe in
1694. After a stay in Holland of eleven years, he returned a second time to India in
1705. On this occasion, he remained in Java two years, and then proceeded to
Amboyna, where he continued for seven years, and finally returned to Holland in
1714. He then began to arrange for publication the vast mass of materials which,
during his Indian residence, he had so industriously collected. His work was published
from 1724 to 1726, in eight folio volumes, with plates. It embraces not only an
account of the Dutch possessions in the islands of the Archipelago, but of all those
from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan. The most valuable part of it is that which
relates to those places of which he had personal experience, Java and the Spice
Islands, but especially the last. The rest consists of mere compilation, and relates
to matters now obsolete, and never of much public interest. The time of the death
of this eminent person is unknown, but he must have been in his sixty-sixth year
when he completed the publication of his most laborious work.
YARELA (Pulo). This is a name given by navigators to several islets in the
western part of the Malayan Archipelago,—one, for example, in the group of islands
at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Malacca, another on the north-eastern side
of Sumatra, and a third in the little chain which lies close to the Malay Peninsula on
its eastern coast, and towards its extremity. The word is a Portuguese corruption of
the Malay b&rala, which signifies an idol, or image.
YENEREAL. There can he no doubt b u t th a t it was the Portuguese who first
introduced this malady into the Malay, and thence into the Philippine Archipelago.
The^ companions of Magellan, on their return from the Moluccas to Spain, touched at
the island of Timur, and Pigafetta thus refers to the subject on quitting i t :—“ In all
the islands of this Archipelago which we visited, the malady of San Giobbe was prevalent,
and more here than anywhere else. They call it For-franchi, that is, the Portuguese
disease.” Some have fancied that the disease of St. Job might mean leprosy,
but that indigenous disease would certainly not have been called a Portuguese malady,
nor would the small number of persons labouring under leprosy, a non-contagious
disease, have attracted the special attention of the companions of Magellan. The
passage in Pigafetta is dated in 1522, and at this time the Portuguese had been already
above ten years in the Archipelago, and frequented many parts of it, from Sumatra
to the Moluccas. During all this time, too, there were no Europeans in the Archipelago
but themselves. In twenty-eight years’ time, then, from the discovery of
America, the malady had already pervaded the remotest islands of the Archipelago,
but had not reached the Philippines, unless left there by the companions of Magellan,
for Pigafetta takes no notice of its existence in that Archipelago.
YILLAGE, in Malay and Javanese d'usun, and desa, the last being from the
Sanscrit. A small village or hamlet is called dukuh. The word kampung is frequently
used for a village, but it properly signifies a close, or place enclosed by a fence, which
the village generally is. The habitations of the Indian islanders, for the obvious
purpose of protection, are grouped into villages, as, indeed, in all other countries of
the east. Each cottage composing it is surrounded by fruit or ornamental trees
and shrubs, so that the village is, as if it were embosomed in an orchard, and the
cottages, in a good measure, hidden from view. Even a town of several thousand
inhabitants is no more than an aggregation of villages, divided into a number of closes
or inclosures, the only conspicuous building in it being the chieftain’s dwelling. In
Java, Bali, and other agricultural countries of the Archipelago, the village is a corporation
almost as complete as in Hindustan. It has its head-man, known by various.