The Old Portuguese. 307 



surdity of our European fashionable dress. Though now Prot- 

 estants, they preserve at feasts and weddings the processions 

 and music of the Catholic Church, curiously mixed up with 

 the gongs and dances of the aborigines of the country. Their 

 language has still much more Portuguese than Dutch in it, al- 

 though they have been in close communication with the lat- 

 ter nation for more than two hundred and fifty years ; even 

 many names of birds, trees, and other natural objects, as well 

 as many domestic terms, being plainly Portuguese.' This 

 people seems to have had a marvellous power of colonization, 

 and a capacity for impressing their national characteristics 

 on every country they conquered, or in which they eifected 

 a merely temporary settlement. In a. suburb of Amboyna 

 there is a village of aboriginal Malays who are Mohammed- 

 ans, and who speak a peculiar language allied to those of 

 Ceram, as well as Malay. They are chiefly fishermen, and 

 are said to be both more industrious and more honest than 

 the native Christians. 



I went on Sunday, by invitation, to see a collection of shells 

 and fish made by a gentleman of Amboyna. The fishes are 

 perhaps unrivalled for variety and beauty by those of any 

 one spot on the earth. The celebrated Dutch ichthyologist, 

 Dr. Blecker, has given a catalogue of seven hundred and 

 eighty species found at Amboyna, a number almost equal to 

 those of all the seas and rivers of Europe. A large proportion 

 of them are of the most brilliant colors, being marked with 

 bands and spots of the purest yellows, reds, and blues, while 

 their forms present all that strange and endless variety so 

 characteristic of the inhabitants of the ocean. The shells are 

 also very numerous, and comprise a number of the finest spe- 

 cies in the world. The Mactras and Ostreas in particular 

 struck me by the variety and beauty of their colors. Shells 

 have long been an object of trafiic in Amboyna; many of 

 the natives get their living by collecting and cleaning them, 



' The following are a few of the Portuguese words in common use by the Ma- 

 lay-speaking natives of Ambojma and the other Molucca islands : Pombo (Pigeon) ; 

 mile (maize) ; testa (forehead) ; horas (hours) ; alfinete (pin) ; cadeira (chair) ; 

 len(;o (handkerchief) ; fresco (cool) ; trigo (flour) ; sono (sleep) ; familia (family) ; 

 histori (talk) ; vosse (you) ; mesmo (even) ; cunhado (brother-in-law) ; senhor 

 (sir) ; nyora for signora (madam). — None of them, however, have the least notion 

 that these words belong to a European language. 



