On the Indian Archipelago, 421 



kindly intercourse with them, without being much more impressed 

 by their virtues than their faults. They contrast most favourably 

 with the Chinese and the Klings in their moral characters ; and al- 

 though they do not, like those pliant races, readily adapt themselves 

 to the requirements of foreigners, in their proper sphere they are 

 intelligent, shrewd, active, and, when need is, laborious. Com- 

 paring them even with the general condition of many civilized nations 

 of far higher pretensions, our estimate must be favourable. Their 

 manners are distinguished by a mixture of courtesy and freedom 

 which is very attractive. Even the poorest while frank are well-bred, 

 and, excluding the communities that are corrupted by piracy or a 

 mixture with European seamen and low Chinese and Klings, we 

 never see an impudent air, an insolent look, or any exhibition of im- 

 modesty, or hear coarse, abusive or indecent language. In their 

 mutual intercourse they are respectful, and while good-humoured 

 and open, habitually reflective and considerate. They are much 

 given to amusements of various kinds, fond of music, poetry and ro- 

 mances, and in their common conversation addicted to sententious 

 remarks, proverbs, and metrical sentiments or allusions. To the first 

 impression of the European, the inhabitants, like the vegetation and 

 animals of the Archipelago, are altogether strange, because the cha- 

 racteristics in which they differ from those to which we are habi- 

 tuated, affect the senses more vividly than those in which they agree. 

 For a time the colour, features, dress, manners and habits which we 

 see and the languages which we hear are those of a new world. But 

 with the fresh charms, the exaggerated impressions also of novelty 

 wear away ; and then, retracing our steps, we wonder that people 

 so widely separated from the nations of the West, both geographi- 

 cally and historically, and really differing so much in their outward 

 aspect, should, in their more latent traits, so much resemble them. 

 The nearer we come to the inner spirit of humanity, the more points 

 of agreement appear, and this not merely in the possession of the 

 universal attributes of human nature, but in specific habits, usages, 

 and superstitions. 



What at first seems stranger still is, that when we seek the native 

 of the Archipelago in the mountains of the interior, where he has 

 lived for probably more than two thousand years secluded from all 

 foreign influence, and where we expect to find all the differences at 

 their maximum, we are sometimes astonished to find him approxi- 

 mating most closely of all to the European. In the Jakun, for in- 

 stance, girded though his loins are with terap bark, and armed as he 

 is with his sumpitan and poisoned arrows, we recognise the plain and 

 clownish manners and simple ideas of the uneducated peasant in the 

 more secluded parts of European countries ; and when he describes 

 how, at his merry-makings, his neighbours assemble, the arrack 

 tampui flows around, and the dance, in which both sexes mingle, is 

 prolonged, till each seats himself on the ground with his partner on 

 his knee and his bambii of arrack by his side, when the dance gives 

 place to song, we are forcibly reminded of the free and jovial, if 

 rude, manners of the lower rural classes of the West. Freed from 

 the repellant prejudices and artificial trappings of Hindu and Maho- 



