Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/437

] Amboyna, and the other islands immediately dependent on the Company, where they can exercise continual vigilance. This inquisition, imposed by Dutch avarice, is very much frustrated by the birds, which convey to the neighbouring islands the seeds of the spice-trees from those where they are cultivated. This circumstance made the Company resolve to settle residents in those islands, whose principal business it is, continually to search for and destroy all the young spice-trees they can meet with. But it also often happens that the seeds are dropped in situations so precipitous, as to escape the most active vigilance.

The slaves introduced into the Moluccas, are chiefly brought from Macassar and Ceram. The women of Macassar are generally of a middling stature, and have agreeable features. Their hair is not crisped; and their complexion, though still more yellow than that of European women labouring under the chlorosis, yet procures them, from the natives of the Moluccas, the name of white women, paranpouang pouti.

Before the Dutch established the slave-trade, the islanders of Ceram were in the barbarous practice of devouring their prisoners of war. It is melancholy to learn that they have abandoned that atrocious custom, only because they turn their captives to better account by selling them. If,