CHAPTER XXVI
I learned one morning during my stay that the people of Ternate had been considering me, and had concluded that I must be there because I wanted pearls. Pearls were brought to me. Patient figures would squat for hours on the veranda, waiting for my return, and would then approach in disarming politeness with small packets on outspread palms. These contained globules of many shades, some of them attractive. But I was as well satisfied in looking at them as if I had possessed them. Could I have done more than admire them if I had bought the lot. My knowledge of Malay, however, is insufficient for me to convey to pearl merchants my oddities in æsthetics and the ethics of property, and so they left me, most reluctantly, and I believe under the impression that I am an extremely knowing purchaser of pearls, and one it is hard to deceive. Then the merchants of Ternate, finding that I had rejected their entire stock of pearls, tried me with some gems and stones of these volcanic islands which were more interesting than the pearls, but very poor relatives, nevertheless, of tourmaline, jacinth, rock crystal, peridot, and such. These failed. Then to my veranda came coins of the old Dutch East India Company, and even some ancient Portuguese silver, and two eighteenth-century Dutch glass tumblers. I held an audience with curios every morning after breakfast, and was startled once to find in a packet containing shells two of Queen Victoria’s sovereigns. The last time I saw sovereigns was in Paris in 1914, and then they were mine. I touched those relics reverently, to the great approval of their owner, who thought at last he had found me at home. In a week I supposed I had seen all Ternate’s jewels and oddities outside the old palace of the last sultan (who is now safely sequestered in Java), but one morning a box was placed at my feet, and a cus-cus was released. I saw at once I did not require a cus-cus, but encouraged the keeper of it with money to let the little creature play about. No evidence could have assured me with greater certainty that I was nearly as far from Singapore as I was from home. That zoölogical freak belongs to a region sundered from Asia by an oceanic gulf nearly as profound as its age in time.
I enjoyed those morning audiences. My visitors were modest in all but the value they put upon their wares, and even that they estimated with such humble grace, and urged it so softly, and with such an engaging appeal from innocent eyes, and they were so attractively dressed, and took gratefully my refusal as though it were full acceptance, that I felt it would be easy to have them as neighbors for the rest of my life.
These people of Ternate might be explained by an ethnologist; yet if he did it nobody but other ethnologists would understand him, and probably they would deny all he said. The people of my island are, of course, of the Malay race. But what is that race? The Javanese of Jokyacarta and the Dyaks of Borneo are of the same race, though you would never guess it unless you were told. You could not be expected to guess it, for early Hindu migrations to Java, and other causes, have reduced most of the resemblance to the brownness of skins. There is often something effeminate and timid about the look of a man of Java, but you would never forget to treat a Dyak with the courtesy due from one gentleman to another gentleman who happened to be well armed and to have a look of cool independence about him. Once I saw a European strike a Javanese, calmly, accurately, and with contumely, and then stride on slowly as though nothing had happened. If he had so behaved to a Dyak he would have become an unsightly object on the instant. There is certainly a Malay type, to be recognized throughout the islands. That Malay is less than most whites in stature, but his figure and bearing are attractive. His complexion varies a little, but it is usually bronze. His hair is straight and black, his smooth face is slightly flattened, and his high cheek bones diminish his chin and jaws to delicacy. His nose is small, with prominent nostrils, and his lips are boldly curved and full. He looks better with his mouth shut, for he chews betel and his teeth are black. His dark eyes are grave and watchful. His beauty, in fact, is not generally admired. But that is a matter of taste. I myself found it a pleasure to look upon him and his family, for it was clear that in spite of his apparent indolence he has solved the problem of existence more happily than his betters. He appears to enjoy every hour of the day, and to find very little to worry him. He is not eager to work; yet, why be eager for that, when the primal curse rests lightly? Some fishing and a little time in the padi field set him free to enjoy contemplation and gossip, both of which he loves. But, for the fun of it, he will suffer any hardship in adventure. He is serious in converse and softly spoken. He does not like brusque and ardently curious people with loud voices. It is better, though, not to misread his gravity, for he is an observant man and his humor is dry. He does not meekly tolerate conduct which violates his own code of manners, for he has the mind of an aristocrat and assumes that his worth will not be questioned. I was told that he is quick to appraise the social standing of his visitors, but he always cleverly disguised whatever views he had about me. A carrier of my pack in the wilds, though there he allowed himself but the bare luxury of a cloth about his loins, would stand and converse with the simple dignity of a gentleman who had no illusions left. But he never complained. It might be late, our direction uncertain, our night’s shelter unknown, and our food unfit for a good Mohammedan. But he would merely express a bare opinion, while disengaging with a big toe the leeches which clung to the other leg. Neither did he praise me. He would pick up his pack, the matter decided, in the manner of a man who could go on forever in good company, and there would not be another word from him. Yes, it would be easy and even pleasant to throw in one’s lot with the Malays. A Malay hamlet is a much more attractive result of human effort, and it shelters a happier people, even though it is not far beyond the stage of the lake-dwellings of the Neolithics than Birmingham. Somewhere into our calculations at home for the enjoyment of what sunshine we are likely to get, a few alien and sinister factors have crept, and have deflected our figures and poisoned our sum.
The Malays Sit on Their Decks, Cooking Breakfast
Where the Malays came from is still in dispute. They are bold seafarers, and words of their language are found, it is said, in Madagascar and Polynesia. It is now believed that there is an affinity between them and the Polynesians. But nobody who has seen a little of the Malay Archipelago could doubt that it is a vast region for the fusion of races as magnetic as is now the American continent. The playground of the schoolhouse of Ternate, where little girls chattered among cycads and hibiscus, has received marked contributions from China, Arabia, Papua, and Europe. A passing ethnologist, his glance over the shrubs alighting on some quaint and lively little cinnamon-tinted fairy in white, would want all his skill to tell him whether her demure nose and mouth were from the East or West, though her hair and eyes might be slyly of the Orient. Ternate, of course, though now it is forgotten, and though it was never any more extensive than its present six miles by eight, was for centuries as attractive as a perfumed gem in these seas. Have you read the eulogy of it in The World Circumnavigated by Sir Francis Drake? It was not surprising, therefore, when looking into that school garden, to find reasons to admire the potency of Bagdad, Peking, Lisbon, the South Seas, and Amsterdam. The market place, too, if you were out early enough, was even better, though there the influences were less marked, for the Malay was dominant.
The market is held in a small maze of narrow alleys down by a corner of the beach. The fish is landed directly into it. Some of the alleys, those where the women sit on the ground before their garden wares, are sheltered from the sun with white awnings. A group of Malay women, when dressed for everybody’s eyes, make a finer display than any summer border in full bloom. Flowers, even masses of larkspur, roses, marigolds, peonies, and hollyhocks, could never equal that market place of Ternate, for flowers never turn their heads, and do not smile with such art. The women of Ternate sit in rows facing each other, and the pathway is carpeted between them with plantain leaves. The avenue under the awning is pellucid with filtered light, but patterns of glowing day fall through apertures to emphasize oranges, green and scarlet chillis, mangosteens, and egg fruit. Vagrant light glitters from moving combs and bracelets of gold, and on some vivid dresses is like a shout of triumph in the distance. These good people placidly accept their visitors. Their manners are perfect. One is at one’s ease. A native of Gilolo who had brought over his tobacco in a canoe one morning, pulled out several copious handfuls, wrapped them deftly in a square of banana leaf, and for a few trivial coins gave me sufficient potent stuff to make all a hardened forecastle crowd wonder—after one pipeful each—whether smoking is not the worst of follies. And that man of Gilolo was another sort of Malay, with wavy hair; but then the Papuans in that market place with their huge frizzy mops, faces almost black, and open and constant smiles, showed, like the cus-cus, that Ternate is on the border line of another region, far from the Malay Peninsula.
My friend the missionary, who has spent most of his life among the islands, confused the ethnological problem still more that night with a story of one island he knows, which I should like to see, but never shall. It was not far from me then, and yet more difficult of access than Spitzbergen is from Edinburgh. He called it Makisar. It is to the south of the Moluccas, an isolated lump in the direction of Australia. The Dutch sent a garrison of a hundred of their countrymen and their wives to Makisar some time in the seventeenth century, built a stockade for them, left them, and forgot them. There the descendants of the garrison are to-day, still in the stockade. To that island, about that time or somewhat later, came some English folk named Francis and Coffin, and a Dutch family named Joosten from Macassar. They, too, went into the stockade, which had no traffic with the islanders. The stockaded part of Makisar to-day is peopled with men and women with light eyes and skins and fair hair, who are European in appearance, but who have no word of Dutch or English, though their names are out of the Church registers of the West of England and Holland.