Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
which he had learned from some Jews with whom he had once travelled, and astonished by
joining in their conversation, and had a never-ending fund of tale and anecdote about the
people he had met and the places he had visited.
In most of the villages of this part of Ceram are schools and native schoolmasters, and the
inhabitants have been long converted to Christianity. In the larger villages there are
European missionaries; but there is little or no external difference between the Christian and
Alfuro villages, nor, as far as I have seen, in their inhabitants. The people seem more de-
cidedly Papuan than those of Gilolo. They are darker in colour, and a number of them have
the frizzly Papuan hair; their features also are harsh and prominent, and the women in par-
ticular are far less engaging than those of the Malay race. Captain Van der Beck was never
tired of abusing the inhabitants of these Christian villages as thieves, liars, and drunkards,
besides being incorrigibly lazy. In the city of Amboyna my friends Doctors Mohnike and
Doleschall, as well as most of the European residents and traders, made exactly the same
complaint, and would rather have Mahometans for servants, even if convicts, than any of the
native Christians. One great cause of this is the fact, that with the Mahometans temperance
is a part of their religion, and has become so much a habit that practically the rule is never
transgressed. One fertile source of want, and one great incentive to idleness and crime, is
thus present with the one class, but absent in the other; but besides this the Christians look
upon themselves as nearly the equals of the Europeans, who profess the same religion, and
as far superior to the followers of Islam, and are therefore prone to despise work, and to en-
deavour to live by trade, or by cultivating their own land. It need hardly be said that with
people in this low state of civilization religion is almost wholly ceremonial, and that neither
are the doctrines of Christianity comprehended, nor its moral precepts obeyed. At the same
time, as far as my own experience goes, I have found the better class of 'Orang Sirani' as
civil, obliging, and industrious as the Malays, and only inferior to them from their tendency
to get intoxicated.
Having written to the Assistant Resident of Saparua (who has jurisdiction over the oppos-
ite part of the coast of Ceram) for a boat to pursue my journey, I received one rather larger
than necessary with a crew of twenty men. I therefore bade adieu to my kind friend Captain
Van der Beck, and left on the evening after its arrival for the village of Elpiputi, which we
reached in two days. I had intended to stay here, but not liking the appearance of the place,
which seemed to have no virgin forest near it, I determined to proceed about twelve miles
further up the bay of Amahay, to a village recently formed, and inhabited by indigenes from
the interior, and where some extensive cacao plantations were being made by some gentle-
men of Amboyna. I reached the place (called Awaiya) the same afternoon, and with the as-
