The Malay pirates may be said to brave everything, and to be everywhere. The archipelago of Sooloo, which contains no less than 160 islands, is entirely peopled by them. At an appointed time they will sail forth over the waters with a fleet of, perhaps, 500 junks, manned by 5,000 sailors, and lie in ambuscade for unsuspecting merchantmen. The booty which they secure they divide among themselves; and the prisoners whom they take are only set at liberty on the receipt of a considerable ransom: too frequently they are killed. These water-rats have sometimes pushed their audacity so far as to make descents in the very midst of such great centres of commerce as the islands of Sumatra and Java; and on one occasion they even dared to come and buy powder and ball at Macao. What is quite as remarkable, too, the merchants of this place did not hesitate a moment to sell them all the ammunition they required: in this respect reminding one of those mercenary Dutchmen who, when besieged by the Spaniards, made a practice each evening of selling to their adversaries—no doubt at remunerative prices—the cannon-balls which they had fired against their town during the day. These pirates are apparently indestructible; they have lasted for centuries as it is, and they bid fair to last for centuries more.
It is to protect its subjects against the poisoned daggers of these swarming bandits that England, as I have mentioned above, is constantly sending forth ships to innumerable points on the sea-coast of China, and to the interminable shores scattered round about.
These vessels often remain for entire years in localities which are believed to be menaced with a visit from these formidable corsairs. It is then that the officers take up their quarters on shore, that tents are pitched, and houses even are constructed, where naval men can manage to lodge in something like comfort.
This particular kind of naval campaign is much dreaded by the English sailors, obliged to contend at the same time against tempests, pirates, and fevers of every kind and colour; and, above all, with the wearisomeness arising from the monotonous kind of life they are here forced to lead, and which may be described as the yellow fever of the mind.
Vice-Admiral Campbell, who commanded, as I have already said, at one of these stations, had hoisted his pennant on board Her Majesty’s steam frigate Halcyon.
The admiral was preparing to leave the roads of Macao on the very day that he came with all his staff—captains, lieutenants, commanders, and officers of every grade—to view my menagerie. Some of these gentlemen had brought their wives with them, whence I concluded that their stay at the station to which they were about to proceed would be an unusually long one.
Fortunately, I had received a short time previously some considerable additions to my stock of animals; and I can truly say that my establishment at this time was alike worthy of the attention of men of science and of amateurs. Besides birds from every clime, which enriched my aviaries, I possessed gazelles from Egypt, bisons from Missouri, goats from Cashmere, ant-eaters, jaguars, leopards from Senegambia, otters, polar bears, black panthers, lynxes, moose-deer from Canada, rhinoceroses with one horn, llamas from Brazil, lions from Bengal, and a magnificent selection of tigers. But the cream of my collection was its endless variety of apes: waggish, wicked, shy, wild, grave, pensive, sinister, intellectual, stupid, melancholy, and grotesque. I had ourang-outangs, gibbons, baboons, papios, mandrills, wanderoos, monkeys, macaques, patas monkeys, malbroncks, mangabeys, lemurs, talapoins, cluks, and magots. Of all these apes, there were four that seemed to divide among themselves the curiosity of the large party at that moment assembled in my museum.
Firstly, there were two baboons of unequalled strength and ferocity—as large as men, as intelligent as men, and, I was about to add, as wicked as men. They made their cage shake again with their violent movements, they often turned it over even; and, in an excess of anger, would twist the iron bars through which they made a point of insulting every one that stopped to gaze at them, as though these stout metal rods were so many sticks of pliant wax. How was it that visitors generally were so pleased with them? Could it have been because they were so supremely wicked? I am half afraid that this was the reason.
The two other apes who divided the sympathies of the visitors with the big baboons were a male and female chimpanzee, both possessing youth, and, I may add, even grace. The male chimpanzee was gentle as a young girl, delicate, sensible, understanding everything, approaching as near the limits of intelligence as is permitted to a being deprived of the Divine light of reason. He was fond of children, played with them, and appeared to have a taste for music, since he invariably left off eating whenever he heard the sounds of an instrument.