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.

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