CUAV. XXX.] 



LJW OR NO LAW 



439 



*' Chocolat — t — 1" Tliis must be a Spanish or Portut^iesu; 

 cry, lianded down fur ceiiturie^j wliile its meaning lias 

 been lost. The Bugis sailors, wliile hoisting the main- 

 sail, cry out, "Vela k viila, — vdla, v^la, vekr* repeated 

 in an everlasting choms. As " vela" is Portuguese, 

 for a sail, I supposed I had discovered the origin of 

 this, but I found afterwards they used the same crj^ 

 when heaving anchor, and often changed it to "he! a," 

 which is so much an universal expression of exertion 

 and hard breatliing that it ia moat probably a mere in- 

 terjectional cry, 



i daresay there are near five hundred people in 

 Dobbo of various races, all met in this remote corner of 

 the Etist, as they express it, *' to look for their fortune ; " to 

 get money any way they can. They are most of them 

 people who have the very woi'st reputation for honesty as 

 well as every other form of morality, — Chinese, Bugis, 

 Ceramese, and half-caste Javanese, witli a sprinklLiig of 

 half-wild Papuans from Timor, Babher, and other islands, — 

 yet all goes on as yet very quietly. Tliis motley, ignojant, 

 bloodthir.sty, thievish population live here witljout the 

 shadow of a govenunent, with no poUce, no courts, and no 

 lawyers ; yet they do not cut each other's throats, do not 

 plunder each other day and night, do not fall into the 

 anarchy such a state of things might be supposetl to lead 

 to. It is very extraordinary I It puts strange thoughts 

 into one's head about the mountain-load of government 

 under wliich people exist in Europe, and suggests the idea 

 that we may be overgoverncd. Think of the hundred 

 Acts of Parliament annually enacted to prevent us, the 

 people of England, from cutting each other's throats, 

 or from doing to our neighbour as "we would 7iot be 

 done by. Think of the thousands of lawyers and Kar- 

 risters whose whole lives are spent in telling us what 

 the hundred Acts of Parliament mean, and one would be 

 led to infer that if Dobbo has too little law England has 

 too much. 



Here we may behold in its simplest form the genius of 

 Commerce at the work of Civilization. Trade is the magic 

 that keeps aU at peace, and unites these discordant element-j 

 into a weD*behaved community. Aii are traders^ and all 



