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Updated: May 11, 2025
I never lost an opportunity of questioning people of all sorts, to learn the movements of the Emu; and from a Bugis trader belonging to Celebes, I heard that some time before, a vessel answering her description had been seen to the north of that island; and also, as some piracies had been committed in the neighbourhood of the Philippine Islands, I suspected that she had gone to cruise among the Spanish settlements in the northern part of the Archipelago.
In the evening the chief traders of the place, Bugis and Chinese, assembled, the offender was tried and found guilty, and sentenced to receive twenty lashes on the spot. They were given with a small rattan in the middle of the street, not very severely, the executioner appeared to sympathise a little with the culprit.
If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomes a pariah. The caste make up his losses. Dyaks from Borneo idle by. Parsee merchants in their tall, conical hats, Chinese rickshaw runners and cart coolies, Tamil road-menders, Bugis, Achinese, Siamese, Japanese, Madras serving-men, negro firemen, Lascar sailors, throng the little square, the agora of the commercial life of the city.
Some ten years ago he had led his people a scratch lot of wandering Bugis to the conquest of the bay, and now in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward, punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and voice.
One of the Bugis traders who had arrived a few days before from Mysol, brought me news of my assistant Charles Allen, with whom he was well acquainted, and who, he assured me; was making large collections of birds and insects, although he had not obtained any birds of Paradise; Silinta, where he was staying, not being a good place for them.
He was now more than ever confirmed in his opinion of the unluckiness of the boat, and in the efficiency of the holy oil which all Bugis praus had poured through their bottoms.
Our settlement of Port Essington has long been a favourite resort of the Bugis trader; and were the Government to encourage Chinese and other settlers, by giving them grants of land, to establish themselves there, there can be no doubt that it would soon become a very important place, instead of a mere military station, or rather place of banishment, for some fifty royal marines.
As it is, a shipwrecked crew landing there, might have to remain a twelvemonth for an opportunity to get away again; consequently, every seaman placed in that unfortunate position, pushes on in his open boat to the Dutch settlements on the island of Timor. Next in importance to the Bugis, I may rank the Siamese and Cochin Chinese traders, who arrive at Singapore during the north-east monsoon.
The Dutch troops, dressed in light-blue and yellow uniforms, and mustering upwards of two thousand infantry, besides artillery and cavalry, consist of Javanese, Madurese, and Bugis, with Negroes and Europeans, frequently Dutch convicts who, to escape punishment at home, have volunteered to serve in the army in Java.
The rocks reported to exist by Horsburgh, and put down on Norie's chart, have no existence. The Bugis prahus always use this channel, and know them not; and the captain of a Dutch cruiser informed me that he had often run through the passage at night, and that it was clear of all danger or obstruction.
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