184 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 



not without marked characteristics, as is evidenced by 

 the vigour of the resistance which the Dutch have 

 experienced. Physically the Achenese resemble the 

 Malays, but are darker and slightly taller, and with none 

 of the good looks of that people. They have long borne 

 a bad name, both for treachery and cruelty, but since it 

 is impossible to penetrate their country, and since all our 

 accounts of them are derived from the accounts of their 

 natural enemies the Dutch, it is possible that these char- 

 acteristics may be exaggerated. They possess, at all 

 events, the simpler virtues of courage and industry, and, 

 considering the backward condition of their civilisation, 

 are rather clever handicraftsmen, weaving cotton and 

 other stuffs, and a peculiarly delicate silken fabric, and 

 producing gold and silver filagree work of a very remark- 

 able kind. They are, moreover, good shipwrights, and 

 their vessels, which at one time used to sweep the seas 

 far Ijeyond Java, are now, whenever they can escape the 

 Dutch gunboats, engaged in trade with the Malacca coast 

 and Singapore. 



In former days, when Queen Elizabeth and James I. 

 sent tlieir duly accredited ambassadors to the court. Ache 

 was a great kingdom, and embraced half the island of 

 Sumatra. Captain Thomas Best, in his mission of 1613, 

 speaks of the king as " a proper, gallant man of warre, 

 strong by sea and land, his country populous, and his 

 elephants many, whereof we saw one hundred sixty, or 

 one hundred eighty at a time." He possessed "gallies 

 and frigates carrying in them very good brasse ordnance," 

 and made treaties with great nations. Little or no trace 

 of this former greatness now remains, and the country, 

 although nominally under a sultan, whose office is heredi- 

 tary, is largely republican in its form of government. As 

 among the Battaks and other peoples of this part of the 



