Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Racquet-tailed kingfisher
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 reten-
tion of many Portuguese words in the Malay, which is now their language. They have a pe-
culiar 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, chimney-pot 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
onization, 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 Am-
boyna there is a village of aboriginal Malays who are Mahometans, and who speak a peculi-
ar 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
