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performer. A Biola , or one-stringed violin, leads the 
band, which is in constant requisition at all festivals. 
Some of the musical pieces performed are long and 
elaborate, but all are played by ear, the performers 
generally practising from childhood. On grand occasions, 
as at the wedding of a raja’s daughter, the gamelang 
will keep on playing at short intervals day and night for 
several days in succession. 
Besides these three peoples—the Sundanese, Javanese, 
and Madurese—there are probably at least a million 
and a half, if not more, of other nationalities. Not the 
least numerous are the true Malays, the immigrants, that 
is to say, from the Peninsula and elsewhere. They are 
chiefly to be found in the great towns, whither trade and 
commerce attract them. So, too, with the Chinese, who 
act as opium merchants, compradores , money-lenders, and 
middlemen generally, and, as elsewhere in the archi¬ 
pelago, become men of property. According to a recent 
writer their possessions in the island are valued at over 
£11,000,000 sterling. Suspicious of their prosperity, 
the Dutch Government, in the early part of the century, 
forbade absolutely all immigration of Chinese, but this 
decree was rescinded in 1837. Even now some difficul¬ 
ties are made to their settling, and capitation fees, pass¬ 
ports, and liberal taxation place some check upon their 
increase. They number at the present time about 
250,000 individuals, but a large proportion of these are 
Pmalmn , or half-breeds, the children of Chinese fathers 
by native women. Of much the same trades and employ¬ 
ments as the Chinese are the Arabs. In part new arrivals, 
in part the descendants of the “ Moros,” whom the Portu¬ 
guese on their advent found established at all the ports 
of the East, they act as merchants of European goods, as 
pedlars, and so forth, while others, as talebs or scribes, 
