216 THTi ARU ISLANDS. [chap. xxx. / 



into a well-behaved community. All are traders, and all 

 know that peace and order are essential to successful trade, 

 and thus a public opinion is created which puts down all 

 lawlessness. Often in former years, when strolling along 

 the Campong Glam in Singapore, I have thought how wild 

 and ferocious the Bugis sailors looked, and how little I 

 should like to trust myself among them. But now I find 

 them to be very decent, well-behaved fellows ; I walk 

 daily unarmed in the jungle, where I meet them con- 

 tinually ; I sleep in a palm-leaf hut, which any one may 

 enter, with as little fear and as little danger of thieves or 

 murder as if I were under the protection of the Metro- 

 politan police. It is true the Dutch influence is felt here. 

 The islands are nominally under the government of the 

 Moluccas, which the native chiefs acknowledge; and in 

 most years a commissioner arrives from Amboyna, who 

 makes the tour of the islands, hears complaints, settles 

 disputes, and carries away prisoner any heinous offender, jl 

 This year he is not expected to come, as no orders have yet 

 been received to prepare for him ; so the people of Dobbo 

 will probably be left to their own devices. One day a 

 man was caught in. the act of stealing a piece of iron from d| 

 Herr Warzbergen's house, which he had entered by making 

 a hole through the thatch wall. In the evening the chief 

 traders of the place, Bugis and Chinese, assembled, the 

 offender was tried and found guilty, and sentenced to 



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