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Turning our attention now to the remaining portion of the Archipelago, we shall find that all the islands from Celebes and Lombock eastward exhibit almost as close a resemblance to Australia and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to Asia.
The Malays proper inhabit the Malay peninsula, and almost all the coast regions of Borneo and Sumatra. They all speak the Malay language, or dialects of it; they write in the Arabic character, and are Mahometans in religion. The Javanese inhabit Java, part of Sumatra, Madura, Bali, and Bart of Lombock. They speak the Javanese and Kawi languages, which they write in a native character.
And so the Rajah became very rich, and increased the number of his soldiers, and gave golden jewels to his wives, and bought fine black horses from the white-skinned Hollanders, and made great feasts when his children were born or were married; and none of the Rajahs or Sultans among the Malays were so great or powerful as the Rajah of Lombock. And the twelve sacred krisses had great virtue.
A doctrine is this which is very consoling to the bad marksman, and which quite accounts for the facts, but which is yet somehow not altogether satisfactory. It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations.
THE islands of Bali and Lombock, situated at the eastern end of Java, are particularly interesting.
"These brief remarks on the Malayan will, I believe, apply to the language of the Island of Java, which, equally improved and enlarged by the addition of Sanscrit and Arabic words, and differently modified, retains, nevertheless, its radical Polynesian stock and its distinct written character, as do likewise the dialects of the islands of Bally and Lombock.
Neither of these physical differences corresponds with the remarkable change in natural productions which occurs at the Straits of Lombock, separating the island of that name from Bali, and which is at once so large in amount and of so fundamental a character, as to form an important feature in the zoological geography of our globe.
They are now Mahometans in Java, but Brahmins in Bali and Lombock. The Bugis are the inhabitants of the greater parts of Celebes, and there seems to be an allied people in Sumbawa. They speak the Bugis and Macassar languages, with dialects, and have two different native characters in which they write these. They are all Mahometans.
By this unfortunate event all previous arrangements regarding our future proceedings were anulled. It had been intended by Captain Stanley to return to England by way of Singapore and the Cape of Good Hope, adding to the charts of the Inner Passage as we went along the east coast of Australia, and making a careful survey of the Strait of Alass, between the islands of Lombock and Sumbawa.
But here there are numbers of men killed, and their bodies lie unburied in the fields and by the roadside, and yet you can walk by them at night and never hear or see anything at all, which is not the case in our country, as you know very well." "Certainly I do," said Manuel; and so it was settled that ghosts were very scarce, if not altogether unknown in Lombock.
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