Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

Considering the friendly reception given the former missionaries, I do not think this journey promised such an unhappy issue.

The Battas certainly do not eat human flesh for lack of food, nor wholly to satisfy revenge, but chiefly to gratify their appetites. The governor at Padang informed me that these people gave him this odd origin of their cannibal customs: Many years ago one of their rajahs committed a great crime, and it was evident to all that, exalted as he was, he ought to be punished, but no one would take upon himself the responsibility to punish a prince. After much consultation they at last hit upon the happy idea that he should be put to death, but they would all eat a piece of his body, and in this way all would share in punishing him. During this feast each one, to his astonishment, found the portion assigned him a most palatable morsel, and they all agreed that whenever another convict was to be put to death they would allow themselves to gratify their appetites again in the same manner, and thus arose the custom which has been handed down from one generation to another till the present day.

For many years after the discovery of a passage to the East by sea, pepper formed the principal article of trade, and even Vasco de Gama, who made this great discovery, appears not to have been satisfied with the results and prospects of his voyage until he had fully loaded his ships with it. At that time it was worth about seventy-five cents per pound in Europe. For a century afterward, so completely was this trade monopolized by the Portuguese and Dutch Governments, that it constantly commanded even a higher price. Except salt, perhaps no other condiment is so universally used; and yet the natives, who cultivate it for the rest of the world, never use it themselves, just as we have already seen is the case with those Malays who raise cloves and nutmeg and mace.

It was used by the Romans more than two thousand years ago; and Pliny is surprised that people should go all the way to India to obtain a condiment that had nothing to recommend it but its pungency (amaritudo).

In the early part of this century a very considerable trade in pepper was carried on by American vessels, chiefly from Boston and Salem, with this island, especially between this place and Achin, a region generally known to our sailors as “The Pepper Coast.” Serious troubles often arose between their crews and the natives, and in 1830 nearly all the officers and crew of the ship Friendship, of Salem, were overpowered and murdered but a little farther north.

The region where the pepper-vine is now mostly cultivated is south of Palembang, on the banks of the river Ogan. In the archipelago it does not grow wild, and is only cultivated on Sumatra and a few of the Philippines. Its Javanese name, maricha, is pure Sanscrit, and this as well as its distribution indicates that it was introduced from India.

Here, at Tapanuli, are many natives of Achin, and their darker color and greater stature at once mark them as another people, and indicate that they are the descendants of natives of India and Malays, and this is completely in accordance with what we know of their history. The village of Achin is situated at the northwestern extremity of the island, on a small river two miles from where it empties into a bay, which is well sheltered by islands from the wind and sea in all seasons. On account of its good roadstead, and its being the nearest point to India in the whole archipelago, Achin appears to have been, for ages before the arrival of Europeans, the great mart for the Telinga traders from the eastern shores of the southern part of India.

There they brought cotton fabrics, salt, and opium, and obtained in exchange tin, gold, pepper, cloves, nutmegs, mace, betel-nuts, sulphur, camphor, and benzoin. When the Portuguese first arrived, in 1509, under Sequiera, at the neighboring city of Pedir, Achin was tributary to that city, but in 1521 an energetic prince came to the throne; in eighteen years he had conquered all the neighboring kingdoms, and his city became the great commercial emporium for all the western part of the archipelago. This prosperity it continued to enjoy for a hundred and fifty years. Its fame even reached Europe, and the proudest sovereigns were anxious to obtain the favor of the King of Achin, and make commercial treaties with him.

Here the English first appeared, in 1602, under Sir James Lancaster, who commanded a squadron of four ships, and was furnished with a letter from Queen Elizabeth[53] to the king, who had been a fisherman, and had only obtained the throne by murdering the prince who would have lawfully inherited it. Such was the humble appearance of the English in the East two centuries and a half ago.

Little probably could even the far-seeing queen herself have imagined that one of her successors should reign over the hundred and fifty millions of Hindustan; that her Eastern merchants would soon give up the trade in pepper with Sumatra, and in spices with the Moluccas, for the far more lucrative commerce in silks and teas with China, and especially that to the then unexplored continent of Australia citizens of her own kingdom would migrate, and there lay the foundation of the most enterprising, flourishing, and, what promises to be within the next century, the greatest power in all the East.