chap, xx DUTCH TREATY WITH ACHlN 249
declared war upon them ; and without this pepper their trade could not prosper.
This
is the kind of pepper which we call ' small', and all Orientals prefer
it, because without skinning or crushing they place it whole on their
plates of rice, as I have elsewhere said.1 At length the
Dutch were compelled to agree with the King of Achin, and ambassadors
were sent by both sides for this purpose. The envoy who arrived on
behalf of the King at Batavia, was treated with much magnificence. When
he was about to depart the General and all his Council enter tained him
splendidly, and the ladies sat at table ; this greatly surprised this
Musalman ambassador, who was not accustomed to see women drink and eat
with men. But that which astonished him still more was that at the end
of the repast, after drinking many healths, they drank that of the
Queen of Achin, who ruled the state during the minority of the King,
her son.2 And in order to honour him still more, the General
desired Madame la Generate to kiss the ambassador. The King and Queen
of Achin did not receive the ambassador sent to them from Batavia with
less honour. He was M. Croc, who for fifteen years suffered from a
languishing sickness ; and it was believed that someone had
administered to him some kind of slow poison. On the occasion of his
third audience with the King, who knew that he had lived for so long a
time in languor and without appetite, he asked him if he had ever kept
any girl of the country, and how he had left her, if by mutual
agreement or whether he had sent her away by force. He admitted that he
had left one in order to get married in his own country, and that since
that time he had always been languishing and indisposed, upon which the
King said to three of his physicians, who were by his side, that having
heard the cause of the ambassador's sickness he would give them fifteen
days to cure him, and that if they did not
1 See vol. ii. 11.
2
' There were Kings of Achin from 1521 till 1641, when the tyrant King
died, and a Queen apparently assumed office, first as regent, and
afterwards as absolute monarch. Her reign was not extraordinarily long,
only 28 years, but the idea that female rule in Achin had prevailed for
many years soon became common belief' (Temple's note on Bowrey, 295 f.;
Fryer, i. 121 ; de la Loubere, 82).
