well as cigars, for on no occasion is smoking prohibited
in Dutch colonies, cigars being generally lighted before the cloth is
withdrawn at dinner, even though half the company are ladies. I here
saw for the first time the rare black lory from New Guinea, Chalcopsitta
atra. The plumage is rather glossy, and slightly tinged with yellowish
and purple, the bill and feet being entirely black.

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 vill