Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
it almost every alternate hour, so that it is not a pleasant time. During such weather I can do
little, but am busy getting ready a boat I have purchased, for an excursion into the interior.
There is immense difficulty about men, but I believe the 'Orang-kaya,' or head man of
Wamma, will accompany me to see that I don't run into danger.
Having become quite an old inhabitant of Dobbo, I will endeavour to sketch the sights
and sounds that pervade it, and the manners and customs of its inhabitants. The place is now
pretty full, and the streets present a far more cheerful aspect than when we first arrived.
Every house is a store, where the natives barter their produce for what they are most in need
of. Knives, choppers, swords, guns, tobacco, gambier, plates, basins, handkerchiefs,
sarongs, calicoes, and arrack, are the principal articles wanted by the natives; but some of
the stores contain also tea, coffee, sugar, wine, biscuits, &c., for the supply of the traders;
and others are full of fancy goods, china ornaments, looking-glasses, razors, umbrellas,
pipes, and purses, which take the fancy of the wealthier natives. Every fine day mats are
spread before the doors and the tripang is put out to dry, as well as sugar, salt, biscuit, tea,
cloths, and other things that get injured by an excessively moist atmosphere. In the morning
and evening, spruce Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue trousers,
white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is plaited till it reaches almost to their heels.
An old Bugis hadji regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dignity of flowing green silk
robe and gay turban, followed by two small boys carrying his sirih and betel boxes.
In every vacant space new houses are being built, and all sorts of odd little cooking-sheds
are erected against the old ones, while in some out-of-the-way corners, massive log pigsties
are tenanted by growing porkers; for how could the Chinamen exist six months without one
feast of pig? Here and there are stalls where bananas are sold, and every morning two little
boys go about with trays of sweet rice and grated cocoa-nut, fried fish, or fried plantains;
and whichever it may be, they have but one cry, and that is—'Chocolat—t—t!' This must be
a Spanish or Portuguese cry, handed down for centuries, while its meaning has been lost.
The Bugis sailors, while hoisting the mainsail, cry out, 'Ve¯la à ve¯la,—véla, véla, ve¯la!'
repeated in an everlasting chorus. As 'vela' is Portuguese for a sail, I supposed I had dis-
covered the origin of this, but I found afterwards they used the same cry when heaving an-
chor, and often changed it to 'hela,' which is so much an universal expression of exertion
and hard breathing that it is most probably a mere interjectional cry.
I daresay there are now near five hundred people in Dobbo of various races, all met in
this remote corner of the East, as they express it, 'to look for their fortune;' to get money
any way they can. They are most of them people who have the very worst reputation for
honesty as well as every other form of morality,—Chinese, Bugis, Ceramese, and half-caste
