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