Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/58

 are occasionally kept as slaves, but the character given them is as bad as that of the Niasese is good. The Bataks are spoken of as unwilling, lazy and revengeful. Every Achehnese can furnish plentiful examples of this either from his own experience or what he has heard from others—how one Batak has treacherously murdered his master through anger at a trifling chastisement, and another after having been treated with the utmost kindness has made himself scarce after putting his masters children to death, and so on.

Some few persons of position have permitted themselves the luxury of importing Chinese female slaves from the Straits Settlements as concubines. Still more common is it to see slaves brought home from Mekka by those who have performed the Hajj. These Africans are known by the Achehnese under the generic name of Abeusi (Abyssinians) irrespectively of what may be the land of their birth. Concubinage with female slaves of such origin is extremely rare; they are allowed to marry among themselves or with Niasese slaves. It is considered a mark of distinction to have such Abeusis as household servants.

As we noticed above, the Achehnese slave-law is not wanting in departures from the Mohammedan code. To these may be added the fact that it is everywhere thought natural and permissible for all who acquire slaves at once to violate their female captives. Even in Arabia the prescribed period of abstention in regard to purchased female slaves is seldom or never observed, but in Acheh no disgrace whatever attaches to its violation, and most of the transgressors are absolutely ignorant that they are sinning against that very law which they look upon as sanctioning kidnapping.

In the highlands far fewer slaves are kept than in the lowlands, as in the former there is less to be found of all that tends to make life easy or pleasant.