254 PIRACY IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
force that never captured a Chinese junk!! 
We have however other testimony. 
In the Possessions Neerlandaises by Mon. Teraminck, it is 
stated (voi. II p. 233) that the pirate prahus of Billiton in 
1821 amounted to 200. 
In 1822 (p. 233) the Royal frigate Melampus, and five ves¬ 
sels of the Colonial Marine with a 1,000 auxiliary native 
troops, in an expedition captured 50 pirate prahus. In 1823 
on the same authority, it is stated that a certain Rfija Djilolo 
—venant meme exercer ses violences jusque sous le feu du 
fort Victoria £ Amboine—this Raj£ was attacked and eighty 
of his prahus captured. In the Moniteur des Indes vol. II p. 
20, it is stated that on the 28th of June, 1839, on the Eastern 
Coast of Sumatra, the Dutch troops were attacked by 200 
pirate prahus; the troops were near the shore, nevertheless 
they were enabled to repel the enemy. This fact is re-stated 
and corroborated by Monsieur Temminck at p. 259 vol II. 
Numerous other examples might be adduced, from these 
and other authors ; Kolf, in the voyage of the Dourga, gives 
an account, that from two places in New Guinea, The Papuas 
“ send out every year from one hundred to one hundred and 
twenty small vessels, on piratical excursionsand on the 
authority of Sir James Brooke, we have the fact, that 100 
Dyak boats passed up the Sarawak river to the attack of 
some interior tribes, and it is now fully established, that the 
rivers of Sambas and Sakarran can send to sea 200 boats, or 
even more, and that the crews cannot be calculated at a 
smaller average than 30 men to each boat, thus giving at a 
moderate computation a body of 6,000 marauders on the high 
seas. It is true that these “ herring boats” rarely attack 
European vessels, but the amount of bloodshed, of trading 
prahus captured, of villages burnt, is as great, as though they 
were Northern Sea Kings or Buccaneers, or Lanuns, and if 
we are to confine our sympathy—as the writer in the Ex-* 
aminer seems to do—*to Europeans and their vessels, and 
allow the sources of commerce to be destroyed—we should 
much resemble the man who killed the goose with the golden 
egg; the destruction of the producing class, and the capture 
of their prahus has already in some places, destroyed the 
returns on which our trade depends, and together with Eu¬ 
ropean restriction and native oppression and misgovernment, 
will^ ultimately reduce the commerce of these seas, to its 
minimum, and leave undeveloped the riches of islands pro¬ 
nounced by Colonel Farquhar and Sir Stamford Raffles to 
be equal to the riches of Brazil and Mexico, 
