peninsula of Celebes. These people were brought here at
their own request a few years ago, to avoid extermination
by another tribe. They have a very light complexion, open
Tartar physiognomy, low stature, and a language of the
Bugis type. They are an industrious agricultural people,
and supply the town with vegetables. They make a good
deal of bark cloth, similar to the tapa of the Polynesians,
by cutting down the proper trees and taking off large
cylinders of bark, which is beaten with mallets till it
separates from the wood. It is then soaked, and so continuously
and regularly beaten out that it becomes as thin
and as tougli as parchment. In this form it is much used
for wrappers for clothes ; and they also make jackets of it,
sewn neatly together and stained with the juice of another
kind of bark, which gives it a dark red colour and renders
it nearly waterproof.
Here are four very distinct kinds of people who may all
be seen any day in and about the town of Batchian. How
if we suppose a traveller ignorant of Malay, picking up a
word or two here and there of the “ Batchian language,”
and noting down the “ physical and moral peculiarities,
manners, and customs of the Batchian people ”—(for there
are travellers who do all this in four-and-twenty hours)—-
what an accurate and instructive chapter we should have !
what transitions would be pointed out, what theories of
the origin of races would be developed ! while the next
traveller might flatly contradict every statement and arrive
at exactly opposite conclusions.
Soon after I arrived here the Dutch Government introduced
a new copper coinage of cents instead of doits (the
100th instead of the 120th part of a guilder), and all the
old coins were ordered to be sent to Ternate to be changed.
I sent a bag containing 6,000 doits, and duly received the
new money by return of the boat. When Ali went to
bring it, however, the captain required a written order; so
I waited to send again the next day, and it was lucky
I did so, for that night my house was entered, all my boxes
carried out and ransacked, and the various articles left on
the road about twenty yards off, where we found them
at five in the morning, when, on getting up and finding the
house empty, we rushed out to discover tracks of the thieves.
Hot being able to find the copper money which they
thought I had just received, they decamped, taking nothing
but a few yards of cotton cloth and a black coat and
trousers, which latter were picked up a few days afterwards
hidden in the grass. There was no doubt whatever who
were the thieves. Convicts are employed to guard the
Government stores when the boat arrives from Ternate.
Two of them watch all night, and often take the opportunity
to roam about and commit- robberies.
The next day I received my money, and secured it well in
a strong box fastened under my bed. I took out five or six