Banda Oriental

“ Very hale, hearty, and jovial though he is, it must be admitted that the Oriental is in deadly earnest when engaged in civil battle—as is the case with all who pursue a hobby to the detriment of a more lucrative occupation. ”

“ An Occidental entering the Orient is well-nigh overwhelmed with amusement and surprise at the antipodal characteristics of the two civilizations. Every visible expression of Oriental civilization, every mode of thought, art, architecture; conceptions of God, man, and nature; pronunciation and structure of the language—all seem utterly different from their corresponding elements in the West. Furthermore, as he visits one Oriental country after another, although he discovers differences between Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Hindus, yet he is impressed with a strange, a baffling similarity. ”

“ Consequently we expect to make the Asiatic exhibit the special point; we want to exhibit all the products of Asia and the Indian Archipelago, the Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Australia, New Zealand, and Formosa, and so we will have the first Asiatic expression of commerce on so large a scale, showing unity of language, racial features, religion and customs, for we can collect from all those peoples and realize a unifying of the Oriental Nations, and enlighten the world as to the Oriental essence, thought, ideals,—past and future. ”

“ This too is a characterization of no little truth. The easy-going, time-forgetting, dreaming characteristics of the Orient are in marked contrast to the rush, bustle, and hurry of the Occident. One of the first and most forcible impressions made on the Oriental visiting the West is the tremendous energy displayed even in the ordinary everyday business. In the home there is haste; on the streets men, women, and children are "always on the run." It must seem to be literally so, when the walk of the Occidental is compared with the slow, crawling rate at which the Oriental moves. ”

“ Preparing ourselves therefore for a voyage, we took shipping and in fifteen days we came to the island of Bandan or Banda, whence nutmegs and mace are procured.
In this voyage to the isle of Banda, we passed about twenty islands, some of them inhabited and some desert. This island of Banda is very low, savage, and barren, being about 100 miles in circuit. It has neither king nor governor, but is inhabited by a savage and brutal people, who live without law, order, or government, dwelling in low huts scarcely rising above the ground, and having a scanty shirt for their whole clothing. ”

“ The Banda group consists of three large islands and two smaller ones. The nutmegs, which form the only export of the place, are all grown upon Great Banda, the largest of the three islands. It averages 500 feet in height, and is luxuriantly wooded.
Banda Neira, the next in point of size, is the residence of the government officers, the troops, and the convicts. It is not so high as Great Banda, and does not produce a single nutmeg. The third island is called the Gounung Api, or Burning Mountain ”

“ Here are the nations and the people of mixed blood—the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese—a population immensely representative of Oriental Asia. The measure of success of the missionaries under our flag in dealing with these people can hardly fail to be accepted by the world as a test of the practical results of the labor with the Asiatica. ”

“ Though the physical energies and the intellectual resources of the Occidental exceed those of the Oriental, they can be maintained only at an expense totally incommensurate with the racial advantage. For the Oriental has proved his ability to study and to master the results of our science upon a diet of rice, and on as simple a diet can learn to manufacture and to utilize our most complicated inventions. But the Occidental cannot even live except at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of twenty Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies the secret of our fatal weakness. ”

“ There is much profit made in this trade, as the Chinese have sometimes given four for one to our men who had adventured with them.
[Footnote 149: Perhaps, as stated in conjunction with bells, gongs are here meant, which are not unlike frying-pans.--E.]
Banda is in the latitude of 5° S. and affords great store of mace and nutmegs, together with oil of two sorts. It has no king, being ruled by a sabander, who unites with the sabanders of Nero, Lentore, Puloway, Pulorin, and Labatacca, islands near adjoining. ”

“ Kalgan stands hard-by the Great Wall; here China and Mongolia meet, and the two races mingle in its streets. Nothing now keeps them in or out, but the barrier of a great gulf is there. Behind you lie the depressing heat and the crowded places of the lowlands. Before you is the untainted air, the emptiness of Mongolia. You have turned your back on the walled-in Chinese world, walled houses, walled towns, walled empire; you look out on the great spaces, the freedom of the desert. ”

“ Englishmen who have not travelled much in the Far East will scarcely understand the working of the Oriental mind in these matters. An officer of any Power who travels in a cattle truck will not only lose the respect of the Oriental for his own person, but will lower the standard of the country he represents, irrespective of its position in the comity of nations. ”

“ The inner life of the spirit of an Oriental would be utterly inane, spiritless to the average Occidental. The "old resident" accordingly knows from long experience what the tourist only guesses from a hasty glance, that the characteristic differences distinguishing the peoples of the East and the West are racial and ineradicable. An Oriental is an Oriental, and that is the ultimate, only thoroughgoing explanation of his nature. ”

“ The Oriental region comprises all tropical Asia east of the Indus, with the Malay Islands as far as Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. In its actual land-area it is the smallest region except the Australian; but if we take into account the wide extent of shallow sea connecting Indo-China with the Malay Islands, and which has, doubtless, at no distant epoch, formed an extension of the Asiatic Continent, it will not be much smaller than the Ethiopian region. Here we find all the conditions favourable to the development of a rich and varied fauna. ”

“ The trade with the islands to the eastward of Ceram is indispensable to our settlement of Banda, as it is entirely supplied with sago, oil, cocoa-nuts, stock, wood, attap, siri, and other necessaries by them. When we can succeed in preventing the direct importation to the islands, of calicoes and other articles from Singapore, Malacca, and even from Manilla and Bengal, the prosperity of Amboyna and Banda would be greatly increased by the exclusive trade they would enjoy, particularly if a Dutch ship of war were occasionally to show herself among the group. ”

“ In a hotel in Kobe a lady of my acquaintance ordered orange juice for breakfast. The Japanese "boy"—waiters and stewards are all "boys" in the Far East—presently returned to say that there was no orange juice to be had that morning. But he added that he could bring oranges if she so desired.
The Oriental Mind? Not at all. The Orient has no monopoly of stupid waiters. The same thing might have happened in our own country or another. And that is the test we should apply to every incident which we are inclined to attribute to some basic mental difference between the Orientals and ourselves. ”

“ When I regard the condition of the women of the Orient, I feel like starting an immediate crusade—in Egypt they are slaves or toys; in India, bound by the iron laws of custom and caste, sad and dejected; in Burma, happy because independent on business and property lines, thanks to the English Government; in Ceylon, cheerful but with no recognized positions; in Java, children of toil; in Siam, fearless and intrepid in temperament, but subject to the conditions of the Orient; in China, Manchuria, and Korea, seemingly impassive but bound by traditional customs, enforced for centuries ”

“ Fortunately, perhaps, few of these could read, so the breach of confidence was not very great. I have often noticed that an Oriental, when he does shake off the apathetic reserve habitual to him, becomes more excited and enthusiastic than warmer-blooded nations. ”

“ Occasionally a popular writer makes something of an attempt in this direction, but with astonishingly slight results. A recent writer in the London Daily Mail has illustrated afresh the futility of all attempts to catalogue the distinguishing characteristics of the Oriental. He names the inferior position assigned to women, the licentiousness of men, licensed prostitution, lack of the play instinct among Oriental boys, scorn of Occidental civilization, and the rude treatment of foreigners. ”

“ That from their great extension through the northern desert lands of Central Asia, perceptible shades may be met with in the external traits is scarcely to be doubted; [41] but one easily comprehends that our classification into great, little, and middle hordes, is unknown to them; for, from the mutual tie of the manner of living, customs and dispositions, they remain always the same, in spite of the many subdivisions into branches, families and lines, which they, like the Turkomans, gladly consider as decided separations. ”

“ The Oriental is selfish—he wants peace, and is indifferent to the fate of others. The Oriental don’t care what a man believes, or what god he worships, so long as he pays the liken, and moves on; while the superior races are deeply concerned about the soul, and they want to discover all other people, and get them to join them—afterwhile.
“As social units, the Occidentals are more progressive and free, but less secure; they are more sympathetic, but less just; more interested in others, but less tolerant; and more inclined to action, and less to meditation than the Orientals. ”

“ In other words, as the Occidental must learn and must trust to Oriental methods of social intercourse, so the Oriental must learn and must trust to the corresponding Occidental methods. The difficulty is great in either case, though of an opposite nature. Which has the greater difficulty is a question I do not attempt to solve. ”

“ The Oriental may endeavour to strike a bargain—for that is one of the chief pleasures of his existence, though a fault which can easily be counter-balanced—but he is ever ready to pay well for what he really wants. Thus, if because of his training in fighting he requires a certain curl and a particular handle to his knife; if he fancies a particular pattern printed or woven in the fabrics he imports, and if because of his religious notions he prefers his silver spoons drilled with holes ”

“ Whatever progress is achieved by Orientals consists in adopting certain technical results of Occidental evolution. This does not mean that Oriental nations cannot be strong and powerful, for many of them have at times been powerful. ”

“ Yung Long’s bowler hat, his loose sleeves and fan, Fanny’s furs, the earrings of jade, and the bracelet—all serve what purpose?
Atmosphere: Captain Abdullah says (page 4) “the tale is of the Orient.” Note that he has secured the Oriental feel, or atmosphere, modified slightly by the American intrusion, through the harmonizing of character, speech, dress, customs,—above all, by emphasizing the things “which matter most to the Oriental.” Contrast to similar Occidental characteristics is subordinated to the intensification, and is, therefore, contributory to the larger impression. ”

“ Page 51.—"The Western Burmans more often resemble the handsomer Asianesian (Indonesian) tribes found in Borneo, some parts of East Indonesia, and Polynesia. Similar tribes appear to have preceded the Malayan race in Sumatra, [2] for they have left their impress, to a certain extent, on the Nias and some of the Batto tribes. Even in the Peninsula, neater, lighter and handsomer men than the ordinary Malay are not infrequent amongst some of the Binua tribes. ”

“ LAOS, n.p. A name applied by the Portuguese to the civilised people who occupied the inland frontier of Burma and Siam, between those countries on the one hand and China and Tongking on the other; a people called by the Burmese Shans, a name which we have in recent years adopted. They are of the same race of Thai to which the Siamese belong, and which extends with singular identity of manners and language, though broken into many separate communities, from Assam to the Malay Peninsula. ”

“ The headman of a tribe or district is called a Beg, and in Chinese Turkestan, in the uplands of which we travelled at first, he is put in authority by the Amban, to whom he gives a gift for the honour, recouping himself afterwards by taking a fortieth part of the flocks and herds of the families in his charge. These officials were most helpful to us, arranging for transport—usually the great stumbling-block of travellers in Central Asia—sending men on ahead to prepare akhois for us, accompanying my brother and treating us as honoured guests when we passed through their districts. ”

“ That the day of the British is over—that is the idea that is spread now through the Dutch East Indies—purposely spread—and which has extended to our own priceless possessions of Singapore and Hong-Kong, that is spreading throughout the whole East, and is it the East alone? The natives of all sorts believe it. We only hold India, Ceylon, and our Eastern possessions through prestige— that gone, they go too. ”

“ Afterwards the immense tracts of unoccupied or thinly peopled territories on Sumatra, Borneo, and the numerous islands scattered over the Archipelago, may be ready to receive colonies, arts, and civilization from the metropolis of the Indian seas. Commercial intercourse, friendly relations, or political institutions, may bind these dispersed communities in one great insular commonwealth. Its trade and navigation might connect the centre of this great empire with Japan, China, and the south-western countries of Asia. ”