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Apuult, 1897.]
SELUNGS OF THE MERGUI ARCHIPELAGO.
Daring the north-east monsoon they are generally visited by traders, with whom they barter their mate, dry caoa, honey and wax, pearls, and other objects, for rice and shunskoo, and a very little cloth. I had the opportunity, while I was at anchor for about fifteen days in the great bay on the south-eastern side of Elpinstone Island (Peeleh of the Salones), to have about me thirty-five fine boats of these people, with their respective headmen and headman. in-chief (Hama). The Salones, as has been already said and as is well known live for one-half of the year in their boats. About usually contains a family, but I have observed as many as five adults, besides children and dogs, living in one boat. A boat is generally 20 to 24 feet in length. All the household operations are carried on in the boat during the period it is tenanted, and as they never appear to clean them out, the stench emitted from decaying food and other substancos is intolerable to any one but a Salone. I have already alluded to their temporary land-dwellings, but these have an advantage over the boats in the way of cleauliness, as they are annually rebuilt.
I had a good deal of converention through my interpreter) with the headmen, more especially with Hama, who told me that the Salones of his group (Done) would be very glad to settle on land and cultivate, provided they were assared of protection and would not be taxed for the land until they had a fair retarn for their labour of clearing and establishing cultivation, which, however, would be a question of some years. Without protection of some kind it would be impossible for them to settle, as he informed me, on some previous atteinpts of this kind, their reaped crops of paddy and the fruits of the doorian and other trees were stolen by the people from the mainland, traders and others : so much so that a doorian garden in the above bay belonging to him for some time had ultimately to be abandoned, and hardly a trace of it now remained. He also complained to me of the unsafety to which the results of their fishing of the caoo were exposed ; and I had an instance of this feeling, as some boats which were late in arriving at Peeleh refased to remain with me beyond a day or two, as they were afraid that the caoo which they had left behind on the rocks to dry in the sun would be stolen in their absence, which, they said, was not an unfrequent occurrenco. But these poor people are subjected to a greater evil than any of these in the rapicity and unscrupulousness of the traders who barter with them. It is the policy of these mon always to lead the Salones to believe that they are in their debt and so to have them in their power; and these trading boats on their retara visits com pel the Salones to accompany them to collect bache-de-ner and to spear fish to satisfy their demands, they paying them in rice measured in baskets far below the recognized measures in use at Mergui, and even neighbouring villages. While I was in Peeleh I had the greatest difficulty in persuading the first ten to fifteen boats, which came to see me, to remain, as news had arrived that a noted Chinese free-booting trader from Mergui had appeared amongst their islands. They had the greatest dread of this man, because he compelled them to work for him, and paid them nothing except in driblets of rice. It must be remembered that these people, as they are precluded cultivating, are almost entirely dependent on the traders for rice, as they very seldom master courage to go to Mergui.
I have been also informed that these tradors sometimes even go the length of committing serious assaults upon these unoffending people, and, I believe, some of them have been tried and prosecuted at the Courts of Mergai for so doing; but I am told that the punishments, having been pecuniary, can be well borne, considering the profits they make out of their trading with the Salones, and are therefore not deterrent. It was also brought to my notice that some of these uuscrupalous men oven resort to the nefarious practice of drugging the shamsloo, which they barter with these people, in order to reduce them to a state in which they can do with their property much as they please. Of course, I only repeat what I have heard, but I think it desirable to put this information on record. While I was at Peeleh and the Salones around me, the bay was visite l by two Chinese trading boats, one of which came provided with large quantities of shamshoo, which the Salones, having once tasted, did not cease Lartering for until the whole supply was finished ; and it was a painful sight to see these
