The Town of Dobbo. 443 



Bugis hadji regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dig- 

 nity of flowing green silk robe and gay tnrban, followed by 

 two small boys carrying his sirili and betel boxes. 



In every vacant space new houses are being built, and all 

 sorts of odd little cooking-sheds are erected against the old 

 ones, while in some out-of-the-way corners massive log pig- 

 sties are tenanted by growing porkers ; for how could the 

 Chinamen exist six months without one feast of pig ? Here 

 and there are stalls where bananas are sold, and every morning 

 two little boys go about with trays of sweet rice and grated 

 cocoa-nut, fried fish, or fried plantains ; and whichever it may 

 be, they have but one cry, and that is — " Chocolat — t — t !" 

 This must be a Spanish or Portuguese cry, handed down for 

 centuries, while its meaning has been lost. The Bugis sail- 

 ors, while hoisting the mainsail, cry out "Vela a vela — vela, 

 vela, vela !" repeated in an everlasting chorus. As " vela " 

 is Portuguese for a sail, I supposed I had discovered the ori- 

 gin of this ; but I found afterward they used the same cry when 

 heaving anchor, and often changed it to " hela," which is so 

 much a universal expression of exertion and hard breathing 

 that it is most probably a mere interjectional cry. 



I dare say there are now near five hundred people in 

 Dobbo of various races, all met in this remote corner of the 

 East, as they express it, " to look for their fortune ;" to get 

 money any way they can. They are most of them people 

 who have the very worst reputation for honesty, as well as 

 every other form of morality — Chinese, Bugis, Ceramese, and 

 half-caste Javanese, with a sprinkling of half-wild Papuans 

 from Timor, Babber, and other islands — yet all goes on as yet 

 very quietly. This motley, ignorant, bloodthirsty, thievish 

 population live here without the shadow of a government, 

 with no police, no courts, and no lawyers ; yet they do not 

 cut each other's throats, do not plunder each other day and 

 night, do not fall into the anarchy such a state of things 

 might be supposed to lead to. It is very extraordinary. It 

 puts strange thoughts into one's head about the mountain- 

 load of government under which people exist in Europe, and 

 suggests the idea that we may be overgovemed. Think of 

 the hundred acts of Parliament annually enacted to jirevent 

 us, the people of England, from cutting each other's throats, 



