n Englishman blows out his brains with a pistol.
The Bugis mode has many advantages to one suicidically inclined. A man
thinks himself wronged by society--he is in debt and cannot pay--he is
taken for a slave or has gambled away his wife or child into slavery--he
sees no way of recovering what he has lost, and becomes desperate. He
will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but will be revenged on mankind
and die like a hero. He grasps his kris-handle, and the next moment
draws out the weapon and stabs a man to the heart. He runs on, with
bloody kris in his hand, stabbing at everyone he meets. "Amok! Amok!"
then resounds through the streets. Spears, krisses, knives and guns are
brought out against him. He rushes madly forward, kills all he can--men,
women, and children--and dies overwhelmed by numbers amid all the
excitement of a battle. And what that excitement is those who have been
in one best know, but all who have ever given way to violent passions,
or even indulged in violent and exciting exercises, may form a very good
idea. It is a delirious intoxication, a temporary madness that absorbs
every thought and every energy. And can we wonder at the kris-bearing,
untaught, brooding Malay preferring such a death, looked upon as almost
honourable to the cold-blooded details of suicide, if he wishes to
escape from overwhelming troubles, or the merciless of the hangman and
the disgrace of a public execution, when he has taken the law into his
own hands and too hastily revenged himself upon his enemy? In either
case he chooses rather to "amok."

The great staples of the trade of Lombock as well as of Bali are rice
and coffee; the former grown on the plains, the latter on the hills. The
rice is exported very largely to other islands of the Archipelago,
to Singapore, and even to China, and there are generally one or more
vessels loading in the port. It is brought into Ampanam on pack-horses,
and almost everyday a string of these would come into Mr. Carter's yard.
The only money the natives will take for their rice is Chinese copper
cash, twelve hundred of which go to a dollar. Every morning two large
sacks of this money had to be counted out into convenient sums for
payment. From Bali quantities of dried beef and ox-tongues are exported,
and from Lombock a good many ducks and ponies. The ducks are a peculiar
breed, which have very long flat bodies, and walk erect almost like
penguins. They are generally of a pale reddish ash col