BRITISH
.return of the Spanish gentlemen to the house of the governor and their
tV,BeJl vm<ln -' re\.aS descrd>ed t»y Pigafetta, are worth quoting : “ We remounted
the elephants/’ says he, “ and returned to the house of the governor Seven men
r e a c h e d 'th e ^ o u s e T f T * " which had been given to us, and as soon as we had
v , ?’ ®ach ?f us was Slven hls own> th e cloths being laid on th e left
in r e iom r^ .* f T * 7® king’8, Palace- To eaoh ° f these seven men we gave
hanZ ^ I trouble a . t 0Uple of knives- After th is there came to th e
were ten tk e Sov,ernor ten. men’ Wlth as many large wooden trays, in each o f which
were ten o r twelve porcelain saucers with th e flesh of various animals, th a t is, of
S l i t alCoPOn+fc P«»f°wls (?), and others, and various kinds of fish, so that of
meat alone there were thirty or two-and-thirty dishes. We supped on the ground
on mats of palm-lea.. At each mouthful we drank a porcelain cup full, the size of
an egg, of a distilled liquor made from rice. We eat also rice and sweetmeats n sW
th e re S ^ £ 8 our own- In the Pla<*> where we passed the two night
in v e rS S d tdwaJ? hurmng two torches of white wax, placed on tall chandeliers of
thlm w , pa of four Wlcks each> while two men watched to look after
forthwith « m0rûmg w? came on the same elephants to the sea-side, where,
the ships’’ were ready for us two praus, in which we were re-conducted to
J f 8 13 doubt a faithful representation, as far as it goes, of the manners of a
Malay court in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and shows a very considerable
advancement m civilisation. We have cannon, a fortress, courtiers clothed in silk
secretaries preparing court circulars, and a tolerable cookery decently served Thé
tree use of ardent spirits shows plainly enough that the Mahommedanism of the Malavs
¿Ms? ‘¡ f 6’ was no* of a rl8ld character. In another place Pigafetta tells us that thé
distilled liquor was so strong that the Spaniards became inebriated from it and he
<arach’ ”t0 skow from whom it was that the Malays acquired
This auspicious beginning of European intercourse with Borneo had a very unluckv
e“ mg; After the reception at court, the King of Borneo sent a fleet to atiack some
oi his heathen neighbours, and the Spaniards, fancying it came to attack themselves,
opened fire m it. ‘On the 29th of July,” says Pigafetta, (a fortnight after the
reception,) being Monday, we saw coming towards us more than a hundred praus
divided into three squadrons, and with them an equal number of Tungulis «) which
are then- smallest barks. Seeing this, and apprehensive of treason, we anxiously
made sail, and m our haste left an anchor in the ground. Our suspicion increased
when we observed that behind, us, there were certain junchi (jung, junks) which had
come there the day before. Our first business was to disengage ourselves from the
junks, and we opened fire on them, capturing four and killing many persons Three
or four other junks ran aground to save themselves. In one of those which we took
was found the son of the king of the island of Loson (the chief island of the Philippines),
who was the captain-general of the King of Burnfi, and who had come with
the junks from the conquest of a great city called Laoe, situated at the end of that
island opposite to Java Maggiore (probably some place in Banjarmasin). He had
made that expedition and sacked that city, because the inhabitants wished to obev
the King of Java in preference to the Moorish King of Brand. The Moorish king
having heard of our bad treatment of his junks, made haste to inform us through
one of our people who was ashore trading, that the praus went by no means to do us
harm, but to make war on the Gentiles, in proof of which they showed us some
heads of those of them whom they had killed.” I have thus quoted at some length
from Pigafetta, because his account of the Malays is the first authentic one we have
by an European eye-witness, and because it contains abundant internal evidence of
intelligence and truthfulness.
BRITISH. We ourselves and our country are called by the natives of the
Malayan Islands, Ingris or Inglis, a corruption, the origin of which is obvious The
word is an adjective, and for the first, requires to be preceded by a word signifying
men or people, and for the second, by one signifying land or country. The English
first appeared m the Archipelago in 1602, the last year of the reign of Elizabeth six
years after the Dutch and 107 after the Portuguese. The first place visited bv
us was Achm, under Sir James Lancaster, the same commander having in 1603
visited Bantam. °
The great superiority of the Dutch of the 17th century in commercial and
nautical enterprise, and in fact in substantial power over the Portuguese, Spaniards,
French, and English, is shown by results in India. They expelled the Portuguese
ana ¡Spaniards out of almost all their possessions in the Malay Archipelago drove
ourselves out of the Spice Islands in 1620, and from Bantam and Jaratra, in Java, in
1686. Expelled by their influence from Bantam we established ourselves in the
sterile land of Bencoolen in Sumatra in 1685, our sole and humble object being to
secure a share in the pepper trade. Bencoolen, with some neighbouring establishments,
continued for a hundred years, or up to the foundation of Penang in 1785 to
be our sole terntorial possessions in the Malay Archipelago ; for our other attempts
at such acquisitions were ephemeral. In 1819 we founded Singapore and in 1821
we received by convention Malacca and its territory from the Dutch, giving them
Bencoolen and our other possessions in Sumatra in return.
At present our whole territorial possessions embrace four small settlements onlv
namely Penang Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, containing between them 1300
geographical or 1496 square statute miles, with a population of about 225,000 souls
that is, about 166 to the square statute mile. But the great mass of this populatioé
is concentrated m three commercial towns, the rest of the territory being either
thinly peopled, or an uninhabited jungle. Our possessions are, indeed, only valuable
as commercial emporia, and in this sense are eminently so, as maybe seen bv the
t a aoloo£ lmp?r*8 a,ud exP°rts, the first of which in the year to 4,923,2372., and the last to 4,347,2192. 1854-55 amounoeteda
BUCKLER. In the Malay language there are six different names for a buckler
or shield, according to form or material, a fact which proves the importance ancientlv
uUsS *thhaafcf bB0p SPBI lW ewaep°ren l,°afr gdeflye necme-p ilo Pyiegda fwethtean a nEdu rtohpee aBnosr tfuigrsute sb Pechaismtoer iaacnqs^uSaifnotremd
with the Malayan nations, a sufficient proof that fire-arms had then been but little
used. At present they are only used by a few of the rudest tribes.
BUDDHA. The name of this Indian deity, either in this its most frequent
form, or as Gautama or Sakya, or any other shape, is not found either in the ancient
language of Java, or m any of the livipg languages of the Archipelago. The nearest
approach to it in form is the Sanscrit word Buda, “ old or ancient,” which is a n a tu r aW
one in Javanese. Coupling this with the facts that neither the sécular nor sacredTraTof
Buddha are known to the Javanese, whilethey have anera purely Hindu, that of Salivana
and moreover that the images, which seem to be those of Buddha are fmmd iv l ’
- p E f e i ï ‘C , ' p , r i ’. ' ï ï î
■ S M K w ï s a a b 1' 1 * « F * BUFFALO, the Bos bubalus of naturalists, the same useful powerful no-lv
sluggish, and unwieldy animal which exists in all the warm countries of
pii v ”
dociL°falI hgavé sel?aaL y o T te n ave“ st0 f trangerS; ^ U® ^ « ^ S r o u g h l y
mount that which was his own ^iv nn°P enraged bulls with a switch,
thm,3p r e f e r a b l e f ^ found“
is also found in the wild one - and this l i found in the domestic state, it
whether this animal be a native of the lt1exceedmS1y d ^ u l t to determine
Naturalists, I know not on what ornrmfl , ArcblPeklS0> °r a domesticated stranger.
natives of the countryy wwoouulida sseeeemm ttoo eenntteJrrtta in the same laotpti.enri ocno,n fcolur stihoeny, acnadll tahlel