GAMBLING. COCK-FIGHTING. 257 



occasionally visited by them. The Borneans, from being so 

 harassed by these freebooters, who yearly take a considerable 

 number of this un warlike people into slavery, call the easterly 

 monsoon ' the pirate wind.' Their own native governments 

 are probably without exception participators in or victims to 

 piracy, and in many cases both — purchasing from one set of 

 pirates and enslaved and plundered by another ; and whilst 

 their dependencies are abandoned, the unprotected trade goes 

 to ruin. Thus piracy rests like a blighting curse upon lands 

 pre-eminently blessed by Nature, and proves as ruinous to the 

 welfare of the Eastern Archipelago as the black stain of the 

 African slave trade to that of the Negroes. 



The Malays are inveterate gamblers, and, perhaps for want of 

 some nobler object on which to expend their mental energies, 

 carry the mania of betting at cock-fights to a ruinous excess. 

 Passionately addicted to this favourite amusement, they will 

 lose all their property on a favourite bird, and having lost that, 

 stake their families, and after the loss of wife and children, 

 their own personal liberty, being prepared to serve as slaves in 

 case of losing. Whole poems are devoted to enthusiastic 

 descriptions of cock-fighting, which is regulated by universally 

 acknowledged laws as minute as those of the Hoyleian Code. 



The birds are not trimmed as in England, but fight in full 

 feather, armed with straight or curved artificial spurs, sharp as 

 razors and about two and a half inches long. Large gashes are 

 inflicted by these murderous instruments, and it rarely happens 

 that both cocks survive the battle. One spur only is used, and 

 is generally fastened near the natural spur on the inside of the 

 left leg. Cocks of the same colour are seldom matched. The 

 weight is adjusted by the setters-to, passing them to and from 

 each other's hands as they sit facing each other in the cock-pit. 

 Should there be any difference, it is brought down to an 

 equality by the spur being fixed so many scales higher on the 

 leg of the heavier cock, or as deemed fair by both parties. In 

 t^adjusting these preliminaries the professional skill of the 

 £etters-to is called into action, and much time is taken up in 

 grave deliberation, which often terminates in wrangling. The 

 birds, after various methods of irritating them have been practised , 

 are then set to. During the continuance of the battle the 

 jxcitement and interest taken by the gambling spectators in 



