Very frequently have I been invited to enter their houses in the country, when loitering about during the heat of the sun, under the protection of an immense and thick sombrero which prevented me suffering much from the exposure; and on going into one of them, after the host or hostess had accommodated me with a seat on the banco of bamboo, a cigarillo, or the buyo, which is universally chewed by them, and composed of the betel nut and lime spread over an envelope of leaf, such as nearly all Asiatics use, has been offered by the handsome, though swarthy, hands of the hostess or of a grown-up daughter: or, if their rice was cooking at the time, often have I been invited to share it, and have sometimes so made a most excellent and hearty meal, using the natural aid of the fingers in place of a spoon, or other of the customary aids for eating. After eating they always wash their hands and mouths, so cleanly are their habits.
So long as any white man behaves properly towards them, and treats them as human beings should be treated, their character will evince many good points; but should they be beaten or abused without a cause, or for something that they do not understand, as they but too frequently are when composing the crews of ships, the masters of which are seldom able to speak to them in their own language or in Spanish: who can blame them if the knife is drawn from its sheath, and their own arm avenges the maltreatment of some brutal shipmaster or his mates for the wrong they have suffered at their hands? In all I have seen or had to do with them they have never appeared as aggressors, and it has only been when the white men, despising their dark skins, have ventured on unjustifiable conduct, that I have heard of their hands being raised to revenge it.
When they know that they are in the wrong, however, should the harshest measures be used towards them, I have never known or heard of their having had recourse to the knife, and I have frequently seen them suffer very severe bodily chastisement for very slight causes of offence.
They are easily kept in order by gentleness, but have spirit enough to resent ill-treatment if undeserved. Not long ago an instance of the kind happened to a person who has the character of being a violent and irascible man. He one day fell into a passion about something or other, and fastened his ill-nature and passion on an inoffensive servant who chanced to be near him at the time, and ended some abuse by ordering the man to go into a room, where he followed him, and after locking the door and putting the key into his pocket, took up a riding switch and began to flog the servant, who bore it for a while, until, losing his temper completely, he seized his master by the throat, and, taking the whip from him, administered with it quite as much castigation as he had himself received.
Their general character is that of a good-natured and merry people, strongly disposed to enjoy the present, and caring little for the future.
So far as regards personal strength and mental activity or power, they are much superior to any of the Javanese or Malays I have seen in Java, or at Batavia and Singapore. But, to our modes of thinking, the greatest defect in their character is their indolence and dislike to any bodily exertion, which are the effects of the sun under which they live; but their native maxims and their habits, although we may disapprove of them now-a-days, when everything goes by steam, might be dignified by a great poet’s verse into the truest and best philosophy; for does he not sing,—
Otium bello furiosa Thrace,
Otium Medi pharetra decori
Grosphe, non gemmis, neque purpura venale, nec auro.
Vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum