ter their produce for
what they are most in need of. Knives, choppers, swords, guns, tobacco,
gambier, plates, basins, handkerchiefs, sarongs, calicoes, and arrack,
are the principal articles wanted by the natives; but some of the stores
contain also tea, coffee, sugar, wine, biscuits, &c., for the supply
of the traders; and others are full of fancy goods, china ornaments,
looking-glasses, razors, umbrellas, pipes, and purses, which take the
fancy of the wealthier natives. Every fine day mats are spread before
the doors and the tripang is put out to dry, as well as sugar,
salt, biscuit, tea, cloths, and other things that get injured by
an excessively moist atmosphere. In the morning and evening, spruce
Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue trousers,
white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is plaited till it reaches
almost to their heels. An old Bugis hadji regularly takes an evening
stroll in all the dignity of flowing green silk robe and gay turban,
followed by two small boys carrying his sirih and betel boxes.

In every vacant space new houses are being built, and all sorts of odd
little cooking-sheds are erected against the old ones, while in some
out-of-the-way corners, massive log pigsties are tenanted by growing
porkers; for how can the Chinamen exist six months without one feast of
pig?

Here and there are stalls where bananas are sold, and every morning
two little boys go about with trays of sweet rice and crated cocoa-nut,
fried fish, or fried plantains; and whichever it may be, they have
but one cry, and that is "Chocolat-t--t!" This must be a Spanish or
Portuguese cry, handed down for centuries, while its meaning has been
lost. The Bugis sailors, while hoisting the main sail, cry out, "Vela a
vela,--vela, vela, vela!" repeated in an everlasting chorus. As "vela"
is Portuguese a sail, I supposed I had discovered the origin of this,
but I found afterwards they used the same cry when heaving anchor, and
often chanted it to "hela," which is so much an universal expression
of exertion and hard breathing that it is most probably a mere
interjectional cry.

I daresay there are now near five hundred people in Dobbo of various
races, all met in this remote corner of the East, as they express it,
"to look for their fortune;" to get money any way they can. They are
most of them people who have the very worst reputation for honesty as
well as every other form of morality,--Chinese, Bugis,