S60 The Present Comlition of the Indian Archipelago. 



of the Arcliipelago in the mountains of the interior, where ho has 

 lived for probably more than two thousand years secluded from all 

 foreign influence, and where wo 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 a^id 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 do- 

 scribes how, at his merry-makings, his neighbours assemble, the ar- 

 rack 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 bambn of arrack by his side, when the dance 

 gives place to song, we are foi'cibly reminded of the free and jovial, 

 if rude, manners of the lower rural classes of the west. Freed from 

 the repellant prejudices and ai-tificial trappings of Hindu and Maho- 

 medan civilisation, we see in the man of the Archipelago more that 

 is akin than the reverse to the unpolished man of Europe. 



When we turn to the present political condition of the Archipe- 

 lago, we are struck by the contrast which it presents to that which 

 characterised it three or four centuries ago. The mass of the people, 

 it is true, in all their private relations, remain in nearly the samo 

 state in which they were found by the earliest European voyagers, 

 and in which they had existed for many centuries previously. But, 

 as nations, they have withered in the presence of the uncongenial, 

 greedy, aud relentless spirit of European policy. They have been 

 subdued by the hard and determined will of Europeans, who, in gene- 

 ral, have pursued the purposes for which they have come into the 

 Archipelago, without giving any sympathy to the inhabitants. The 

 nomadic spirit, never extinguished during all the changes which they 

 underwent, had made them adventurous and warlike when they rose 

 into nations. But now, long overawed and I'estrained by the power 

 of Europeans, the national habits of action have, in most parts of 

 the Archipelago, been lost, or are only faintly maintained in the 

 piratical expeditions of some. Their pride has fallen. Their living 

 literature is gone, with the power, the wars, and the glory which in- 

 spired it. The day has departed when Singapore could be invaded 

 by Javanese, — when Johore could extend its dominion to Borneo on 

 the one side, and Sumatra on the other, — when the fleets of Acheen 

 and Malacca could encounter each other in the straits, to dispute the 

 dominion of the eastern seas, — when the warrants of the Sultan of 

 Menangkabaii were as potent over the Malayan nations as the bulls 

 of Rome ever were over those of Christendom, — when a champion of 

 Malacca could make his name be known all over the Archipelago, — 

 and when the kings of the Peninsula sent their sons, escorted by 

 celebrated warriors, to demand the daughters of the emperors of 

 Majapaliit in marriage. The Malayan princes of the present day 



