420 On the Indian Archipelago. 



brings representatives of every industrious nation of the Archipe- 

 lago, and of every maritime people in the civilized world. 



Although, therefore, cultivation has made comparatively little im- 

 pression on the vast natural vegetation, and the inhabitants are de- 

 void of that unremitting laboriousness which distinguishes the Chi- 

 nese and European, the Archipelago, in its industrial aspect, pre- 

 sents an animated and varied scene. The industry of man, when 

 civilization or over-population has not destroyed the natural balance 

 of life, must ever be the complement of the bounty of nature. The 

 inhabitant of the Archipelago is as energetic and laborious as nature 

 requires him to be ; and he does not convert the world into a work- 

 shop, as the Chinese, and the Kling immigrants do, because his 

 world is not, like theirs, darkened with the pressure of crowded po- 

 pulation and over-competition, nor is his desire to accumulate wealth 

 excited and goaded by the contrast of splendour and luxury on 

 the one hand and penury on the other, by the pride and assump- 

 tions of wealth and station, and the humiliations of poverty and 

 dependence. 



While in the volcanic soils of Java, Menangkabau and Celebes, 

 and many other parts of the Archipelago, population has increased, 

 an industry suited to the locality and habits of each people prevails, 

 and distinct civilizations, on the peculiar features of which we can- 

 not touch, have been nurtured and developed ; other islands, less 

 favoured by nature, or under the influence of particular historical 

 circumstances, have become the seats of great piratical communities, 

 which periodically send forth large fleets to sweep the seas, and lurk 

 along the shores of the Archipelago, despoiling the seafaring trader 

 of the fruits of his industry and his personal liberty, and carrying 

 off, from their very homes, the wives and children of the villagers. 

 From the creeks and rivers of Borneo and Johore, from the nume- 

 rous islands between Singapore and Banka, and from other parts of 

 the Archipelago, piratical expeditions, less formidable than those of 

 the Lanuns of Sulu, are year after year fitted out. No coast is so 

 thickly peopled, and no harbour so well protected, as to be secure 

 from all molestation, for where open force would be useless, recourse 

 is had to stealth and stratagem. Men have been kidnapped in broad 

 day in the harbours of Pinang and Singapore. Several inhabitants 

 of Province Wellesley, who had been carried away from their houses 

 through the harbour of Pinang and down the Straits of Malacca to 

 the southward, were recently discovered by the Dutch authorities 

 living in a state of slavery, and restored to their homes. But the 

 ordinary abodes of the pirates themselves are not always at a distance 

 from the European settlements. As the thug of Bengal is only 

 known in his own village as a peaceful peasant, so the pirate, when 

 not absent on an expedition, appears in the river, and along the shores 

 and islands of Singapore, as an honest boatman or fisherman. 



When we turn from this brief review of the industry of the Ar- 

 chipelago, and its great internal enemy, to the personal and social 

 condition of the inhabitants, we are struck by the mixture of simpli- 

 city and art, of rudeness and refinement, which characterises all the 

 principal nations. No European has ever entered into free and 



