come the descendants of the Portuguese—a mixed, degraded,
and degenerate race, hut who still keep up the
use of their mother tongue, though ruefully mutilated in
grammar; and then there are the English rulers, and the
descendants of the Dutch, who all speak English. The
Portuguese spoken at Malacca is a useful philological
phenomenon. The verbs have mostly lost their inflections,
and one form does for all moods, tenses, numbers, and
persons. JEu vai, serves for “ I go,” “ I went,” or, “ I
will go.” Adjectives, too, have been deprived of their
feminine and plural terminations, so that the language is
reduced to a marvellous simplicity, and, with the admixture
of a few Malay words, becomes rather puzzling to one
who has heard only the pure Lusitanian.
In costume these several peoples are as varied as in
their speech. The English preserve the tight-fitting coat,
waistcoat, and trousers, and the abominable hat and
cravat; the Portuguese patronise a light jacket, or, more
frequently, shirt and trousers only; the Malays wear
their national jacket and sarong (a kind of kilt), with
loose drawers; while the Chinese never depart in the
least from their national dress, which, indeed, it is impossible
to improve for a tropical climate, whether as
regards comfort or appearance. The loosely-hanging
trousers, and neat white half-shirt half-jacket, are exactly
what a dress should be in this low latitude.
I engaged two Portuguese to accompany me into the
interior ; one as a cook, the other to shoot and skin birds,
which is quite a trade in Malacca. I first stayed a fortnight
at a village called Gading, where I was accommodated
in the house of some Chinese converts, to whom
I was recommended by the Jesuit missionaries. The
house was a mere shed, but it was kept clean, and I made
myself sufficiently comfortable. My hosts were forming
a pepper and gambir plantation, and in the immediate
neighbourhood were extensive tin-washings, employing
over a thousand Chinese. The tin is obtained in the
form of black grains from beds of quartzose "sand, and is
melted into ingots in rude clay furnaces. The soil seemed
poor, and the forest was very dense with undergrowth, and
not at all productive of insects; but, on the other hand,
birds were abundant, and I was at once introduced to the
rich ornithological treasures of the Malayan region.
The very first time I fired my gun I brought down one
of the most curious and beautiful of the Malacca birds,
the blue-billed gaper (Cymbirhynchus macrorhynchus),
called by the Malays the “ Rain-bird.” It is about the
size of a starling, black and rich claret colour with white
shoulder stripes, and a very large and broad bill of the
most pure cobalt blue above, and orange below, while the
iris is emerald green. As the skins dry the bill turns
dull black, but even then the bird is handsome. When