About The Middle Of
December I Removed To The Village, In Order More Easily To
Explore The District To The West Of It, And To Be Near The Sea
When I Wished To Return To Ternate.
I obtained the use of a good-
sized house in the Campong Sirani (or Christian village), and at
Christmas and the New Year had to endure the incessant gun-
firing, drum-beating, and fiddling of the inhabitants.
These people are very fond of music and dancing, and it would
astonish a European to visit one of their assemblies. We enter a
gloomy palm-leaf hut, in which two or three very dim lamps barely
render darkness visible. The floor is of black sandy earth, the
roof hid in a smoky impenetrable blackness; two or three benches
stand against the walls, and the orchestra consists of a fiddle,
a fife, a drum, and a triangle. There is plenty of company,
consisting of young men and women, all very neatly dressed in
white and black - a true Portuguese habit. Quadrilles, waltzes,
polkas, and mazurkas are danced with great vigour and much skill.
The refreshments are muddy coffee and a few sweetmeats. Dancing
is kept up for hours, and all is conducted with much decorum and
propriety. A party of this kind meets about once a week, the
principal inhabitants taking it by turns, and all who please come
in without much ceremony.
It is astonishing how little these people have altered in three
hundred years, although in that time they have changed their
language and lost all knowledge of their own nationality.
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