184 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
not without marked characteristics, as is evidenced by 
the vigour of the resistance which the Dutch have 
experienced. Physically the Achenese resemble the 
Malays, but are darker and slightly taller, and with none 
of the good looks of that people. They have long borne 
a bad name, both for treachery and cruelty, but since it 
is impossible to penetrate their country, and since all our 
accounts of them are derived from the accounts of their 
natural enemies the Dutch, it is possible that these char¬ 
acteristics may be exaggerated. They possess, at all 
events, the simpler virtues of courage and industry, and, 
considering the backward condition of their civilisation, 
are rather clever handicraftsmen, weaving cotton and 
other stuffs, and a peculiarly delicate silken fabric, and 
producing gold and silver filagree work of a very remark¬ 
able kind. They are, moreover, good shipwrights, and 
their vessels, which at one time used to sweep the seas 
far beyond Java, are now, whenever they can escape the 
Dutch gunboats, engaged in trade with the Malacca coast 
and Singapore. 
In former days, when Queen Elizabeth and James I. 
sent their duly accredited ambassadors to the court, Ache 
was a great kingdom, and embraced half the island of 
Sumatra. Captain Thomas Best, in his mission of 1613, 
speaks of the king as “ a proper, gallant man of warre, 
strong by sea and land, his country populous, and his 
elephants many, whereof we saw one hundred sixty, or 
one hundred eighty at a time.” He possessed “ gallies 
and frigates carrying in them very good brasse ordnance,” 
and made treaties with great nations. Little or no trace 
of this former greatness now remains, and the country, 
although nominally under a sultan, whose office is heredi¬ 
tary, is largely republican in its form of government. As 
among the Battaks and other peoples of this part of the 
