hotel, nor resident English merchant, The half-caste descendants of the
Portuguese are, generally speaking, indolent, degraded with the
degradation that is born of indolence, and proud. The Malays dream away
their lives in the jungle, and the Chinese, who number twenty thousand,
are really the ruling population.
[*Linscholt, two hundred and seventy years ago, writes:--"This place is
the market of all India, of China, and the Moluccas, and of other
islands round about, from all which places, as well as from Banda, Java,
Sumatra, Siam, Pegu, Bengal, Coromandil, and India, arrive ships which
come and go incessantly charged with an infinity of merchandises."]

The former greatness of Malacca haunts one at all times. The romantic
exploits of Albuquerque, who conquered it in 1511, apostrophized in the
Lusiad--

"Not eastward far though fair Malacca lie,
Her groves embosomed in the morning sky,
Though with her amorous sons the valiant line
Of Java's isle in battle rank combine,
Though poisoned shafts their ponderous quivers store,
Malacca's spicy groves and golden ore,
Great Albuquerque, thy dauntless toils shall crown,"

live again, though my sober judgment is that Albuquerque and most of
his Portuguese successors were little better than buccaneers.

I like better to think of Francis Xavier passing through the
thoroughfares of what was then the greatest commercial city of the
East, ringing his bell, with the solemn cry, "Pray for those who are in
a state of mortal sin." For among the "Jews, Turks, infidels, and