Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Wallace's Standard wing, male and female
The island of Batchian possesses no really indigenous inhabitants, the interior being alto-
gether uninhabited, and there are only a few small villages on various parts of the coast; yet
I found here four distinct races, which would woefully mislead an ethnological traveller un-
able to obtain information as to their origin. First there are the Batchian Malays, probably
the earliest colonists, differing very little from those of Ternate. Their language, however,
seems to have more of the Papuan element, with a mixture of pure Malay, showing that the
settlement is one of stragglers of various races, although now sufficiently homogeneous.
Then there are the 'Orang Sirani,' as at Ternate and Amboyna. Many of these have the Por-
tuguese physiognomy strikingly preserved, but combined with a skin generally darker than
the Malays. Some national customs are retained, and the Malay, which is their only lan-
guage, contains a large number of Portuguese words and idioms. The third race consists of
the Galela men from the north of Gilolo, a singular people, whom I have already described;
and the fourth is a colony from Tomōré, in the eastern peninsula of Celebes. These people
were brought here at their own request a few years ago, to avoid extermination by another
tribe. They have a very light complexion, open Tartar physiognomy, low stature, and a lan-
guage of the Bugis type. They are an industrious agricultural people, and supply the town
with vegetables. They make a good deal of bark cloth, similar to the tapa of the Polynesians,
by cutting down the proper trees and taking off large cylinders of bark, which is beaten with
mallets till it separates from the wood. It is then soaked, and so continuously and regularly
beaten out that it becomes as thin and as tough as parchment. In this form it is much used
for wrappers for clothes; and they also make jackets of it, sewn neatly together and stained
with the juice of another kind of bark, which gives it a dark red colour and renders it nearly
waterproof.
Here are four very distinct kinds of people who may all be seen any day in and about the
town of Batchian. Now if we suppose a traveller ignorant of Malay, picking up a word or
two here and there of the 'Batchian language,' and noting down the 'physical and moral pe-
culiarities, manners, and customs of the Batchian people' —(for there are travellers who do
all this in four-and-twenty hours)—what an accurate and instructive chapter we should
have! what transitions would be pointed out, what theories of the origin of races would be
developed! while the next traveller might flatly contradict every statement and arrive at ex-
actly opposite conclusions.
Soon after I arrived here the Dutch Government introduced a new copper coinage of
cents
instead of
doits
(the 100th instead of the 120th part of a guilder), and all the old coins were
ordered to be sent to Ternate to be changed. I sent a bag containing 6,000 doits, and duly re-
