The Native Amboynese Who Reside In The City Are A Strange Half-
Civilized, Half-Savage Lazy People, Who Seem To Be A Mixture Of At
Least Three Races - Portuguese, Malay, And Papuan Or Ceramese,
With An Occasional Cross Of Chinese Or Dutch.
The Portuguese
element decidedly predominates in the old Christian population,
as indicated by features, habits, and the retention of many
Portuguese words in the Malay, which 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 prefer a dress entirely
black. On festivals and state occasions they adopt the swallow-
tail coat, chimneypot hat, and their accompaniments, displaying
all the absurdity of our European fashionable dress. Though now
Protestants, they preserve 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 Portuguese than Dutch in it, although they
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. [The following are a few of the Portuguese
words in common use by the Malay-speaking natives of Amboyna and
the other Molucca islands: Pombo (pigeon); milo (maize); testa
(forehead); horas (hours); alfinete (pin); cadeira (chair); lenco
(handkerchief); fresco (cool); trigo (flour); sono (sloop);
familia (family); histori (talk); vosse (you); mesmo (even);
cunhado (brother-in-law); senhor (sir); nyora for signora
(madam). None of them, however, have the least notion that these
words belong to a European language.] This people seems to have
had a marvellous power of colonization, and a capacity for
impressing their national characteristics on every country they
conquered, or in which they effected a merely temporary
settlement. In a suburb of Amboyna there is a village of
aboriginal Malays who are Mahometans, and who speak a peculiar
language allied to those of Ceram, as well as Malay. They are
chiefly fishermen, and are said to be both more industrious and
more honest than the native Christians.
I went on Sunday, by invitation, to see a collection of shells
and fish made by a gentleman of Amboyna. The fishes are perhaps
unrivalled for variety and beauty by those of any one spot on the
earth. The celebrated Dutch ichthyologist, Dr. Blecker, has given
a catalogue of seven hundred and eighty species found at Amboyna,
a number almost equal to those of all the seas and rivers of
Europe. A large proportion of them are of the most brilliant
colours, being marked with bands and spots of the purest yellows,
reds, and blues; while their forms present all that strange and
endless variety so characteristic of the inhabitants of the
ocean. The shells are also very numerous, and comprise a number
of the finest species in the world. The Mactras and Ostreas in
particular struck me by the variety and beauty of their colours.
Shells have long been an object of traffic in Amboyna; many of
the natives get their living by collecting and cleaning them, and
almost every visitor takes away a small collection. The result is
that many of the commoner-sorts have lost all value in the eyes
of the amateur, numbers of the handsome but very common cones,
cowries, and olives sold in the streets of London for a penny
each, being natives of the distant isle of Amboyna, where they
cannot be bought so cheaply. The fishes in the collection were
all well preserved in clear spirit in hundreds of glass jars, and
the shells were arranged in large shallow pith boxes lined with
paper, every specimen being fastened down with thread. I roughly
estimated that there were nearly a thousand different kinds of
shells, and perhaps ten thousand specimens, while the collection
of Amboyna fishes was nearly perfect.
On the 4th of January I left Amboyna for Ternate; but two years
later, in October 1859, I again visited it after my residence in
Menado, and stayed a month in the town in a small house which I
hired for the sake of assorting and packing up a large and varied
collection which I had brought with me from North Celebes,
Ternate, and Gilolo. I was obliged to do this because the mail
steamer would have come the following month by way of Amboyna to
Ternate, and I should have been delayed two months before I could
have reached the former place. I then paid my first visit to
Ceram, and on returning to prepare for my second more complete
exploration of that island, I stayed (much against my will) two
months at Paso, on the isthmus which connects the two portions of
the island of Amboyna. This village is situated on the eastern
side of the isthmus, on sandy ground, with a very pleasant view
over the sea to the island of Haruka. On the Amboyna side of the
isthmus there is a small river which has been continued by a
shallow canal to within thirty yards of high-water mark on the
other side. Across this small space, which is sandy and but
slightly elevated, all small boats and praus can be easily
dragged, and all the smaller traffic from Ceram and the islands
of Saparúa and Harúka, passes through Paso. The canal is not
continued quite through, merely because every spring-tide would
throw up just such a sand-bank as now exists.
I had been informed that the fine butterfly Ornithoptera priamus
was plentiful here, as well as the racquet-tailed kingfisher and
the ring-necked lory. I found, however, that I had missed the
time for the former: and birds of all kinds were very scarce,
although I obtained a few good ones, including one or two of the
above-mentioned rarities. I was much pleased to get here the fine
long-armed chafer, Euchirus longimanus.
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