ch. xi.] Slavery. 219 



parents, although formerly they were not unfrequently 

 captured during piratical excursions. St. John* men- 

 tions an instance where a pirate chief from Tawi-Tawi 

 captured a Spanish schooner in 1859, and finding the 

 captain's daughter on board, he made her his principal 

 wife and treated her with every attention ; she subse- 

 quently bore him a child, the Spanish authorities having 

 failed in their attempts to recover her. 



As I have before intimated slavery is still common in 

 Sulu, although there is no regular great slave mart such 

 as existed only a few years ago at Sugh, the former 

 capital. It is no uncommon occurrence for parents to 

 sell their daughters, and visitors to Sulu are solicited 

 even now to purchase wives at prices varying from fifty 

 to two hundred dollars. I knew of one instance in which 

 a trading captain presented his native wife, a Sulu girl, 

 to the captain of another steamer, and the officers of 

 Dutch vessels trading here in the Malay Archipelago 

 nearly always keep native wives on board, and as a rule 

 I believe these women are kindly treated. Throughout 

 Malasia woman's position is unfortunately a very low one. 

 If possessed of personal attractions she is directly or 

 indirectly sold to the highest bidder, and while her 

 youthful charms last she may be spared actual toil, while 

 her less attractive sister labours daily in house or field, 

 but eventually a younger, fairer wife supplants her, and 

 during her declining years she is — 



" In daily labours of the loom employed, 



Or doom'd to deck the lied she once enjoyed.'' 



All this is, of course, a very unsatisfactory state of 

 things here as in other nations eastward, nor is it likely 



* " Life in the Forests of the Far Fast," 2d. ed., vol. i. p. 404. 



