300 



AMBOYNA. 



yellowisli and purple, the bill and feet being entirely 

 bLick 



The native Amboynesc wlio reside in the city are a 

 strange half-civilized lialf-savage lazy people, who seem 

 to be a mixture of at least three races, Fortnguese, Malay, 

 and Fapnan or Ceminese, with an occasional cross of 

 Chinese or Dutch. The Portuguese element decidedly 

 predominates in the old Christian popnlation, as indicated 

 by features, habits, and the retention of many Portuguese 

 words in the Malay, wliich is now their language. They 

 have a peculiar style of dress which they wear among 

 themselves, a close-fitting white shirt with black trousers, 

 and a black frock or upper shirt. The women seem to 

 pref'ur a dress entirely black. On festivals and holy 

 days eveiy man wears the swallow-tail coat, chimney- 

 pot hat, and their accompaniments, displaying all the 

 absnrdity of our European fashionable dress. Though 

 now Protestants, they preser%'e at feasts and weddings the 

 processions and music of the Catholic Church, curiously 

 mixed up with the gongs and dances of the aborigines of 

 the country. Their language has still much more ) Por- 

 tuguese than Dutch io it, although tiiey have been in close 

 communication with the latter nation for more than two 

 hundred and fifty years; even many names of birds, trees 

 and other natural objects, as well as many domestic terms, 

 being plainly Portuguese/ This people seems to have had 

 i\ marvellous power of colonization, and a capacity for 

 impressing their national characteristics on every countiy 

 they conquered, or in which they etfected a merely tem- 

 po rarj' settlement. In a suburb of Amboyna there is a 

 village of aboriginal J-Ialays who are Mahometans, and 

 who .speak a peculiar language allied to those of Ccram, as 

 well as Malay. They are cliiefly fishermen, and are said 

 to be both more industrious and more honest than the 

 native Cluistians. 



* The fij]lo%ving are a few of tho Porttigucse worda in common use by 

 tlie Malay-speaking natives of Amboyna and tbe oth&r Molucca islaadB : 

 Pombo (pij^n); milo (maLte); testa (foreheftd); lioraa (lionrs); allineto 

 Ipiu); cadeira (chair); lon?o (hamikerchiof) ; fri^sco (cool); trigo (flour); 

 miw (aleep); familia (family); histori (talk); vosjmj (you); meamo 

 (t'ven) ; cmlhudo (brothtr-in-law) ; aenhor (sir); nyom for fiignora 

 (iTiadura). — None of them, howover, have the least notiim that thesff 

 wurda belong to a Eurojieau language. 



