44 • BATCHIAN. [chap. xxiv. 



peninsula of Celebes. These people were brought here at 

 their own request a few years ago, to avoid extermination 

 by another tribe. They have a very light complexion, open 

 Tartar physiognomy, low stature, and a language of the 

 Bugis type. They are an industrious agricultural people, 

 and supply the town with vegetables. They make a good 

 deal of bark cloth, similar to the tapa of the Polynesians, 

 by cutting down the proper trees and taking off large 

 cylinders of bark, which is beaten with mallets till it 

 separates from the wood. It is then soaked, and so con- 

 tinuously and regularly beaten out that it becomes as thin 

 and as tough as parchment. In this form it is much used 

 for wrappers for clothes ; and they also make jackets of it, 

 sewn neatly together and stained with the juice of another 

 kind of bark, which gives it a dark red colour and renders 

 it nearly waterproof. 



Here are four very distinct kinds of people who may all 

 be seen any day in and about the town of Batchian. Now 

 if we suppose a traveller ignorant of Malay, picking up a 

 word or two here and there of the " Batchian language," 

 and noting down the " physical and moral peculiarities, 

 manners, and customs of the Batchian people " — (for there 

 are travellers who do all this in four-and-twenty hours) — 

 what an accurate and instructive chapter we should have ! 

 what transitions would be pointed out, what theories of 

 the origin of races would be developed ! while the next 



