The native Amboynese who reside in the city are a strange half-civilized, half-savage lazy people, who seem to be a mixture of at least three races--Portuguese, Malay, and Papuan or Ceramese, with an occasional cross of Chinese or Dutch. The Portuguese element decidedly predominates in the old Christian population, as indicated by features, habits, and the retention of many Portuguese words in the Malay, which is now their language. They have a peculiar style of dress which they wear among themselves, a close-fitting white shirt with black trousers, and a black frock or upper shirt. The women seem to prefer a dress entirely black. On festivals and state occasions they adopt the 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 preserved in clear spirit in hundreds of glass jars, and the shells were arranged in large shallow pith boxes lined with paper, every specimen being fastened down with thread. I roughly estimated that there were nearly a thousand different kinds of shells, and perhaps ten thousand specimens, while the collection of Amboyna fishes was nearly perfect.
