and especially a large quantity of beer. We remained till midnight with the President, who showed much joy at seeing us again.
Next
day at 10 o'clock a.m., when going to the palace, with my brother and a
Dutch surgeon, who was prescribing for one of the King's wives, we
passed along a road with the river on one side and on the other a large
garden enclosed by a palisade, and there were intervals between each
pair of posts. Behind the palisade a rascal of a Bantamese was
concealed who had returned from Mecca and was running a muck,1
which means in their language, that when someone of the lower class of
Musalmans, who has returned from Mecca, takes it into his head to seize
his crease 2 which is a kind of dagger with generally half
of the blade poisoned, he runs through the streets and kills all whom
he meets who are not of the Musalman faith, until he is himself killed.
These fanatics think they do a service to God and to Muhammad by
killing the enemies of his Law, and thus they will be saved. After they
are killed the Musalman mob inter them as though they were saints, and
everyone contributes to build them splendid tombs. Often some great
mendicant dresses as a Dervish and builds a hut close to the tomb,
which he is careful to keep tidy and adorn with flowers. According as
donations are given he adds some ornament, because the more beautiful
the grave is, so much the more worship and sanctity does it acquire,
and by so much the more do the donations increase. I remember in the
year 1642 a vessel of the Great Mogul arrived at Suwall,3 which is the port of Surat, from Mecca,
1
A Moqua in the original. The French edition of 1713 has it ' joiioit a
Mocca'. This is what is more commonly known as running a muck. See
Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 18 ff. for etymology and examples of the use of the term.
2
Cric in the original. The term crease or cris, signifying a dagger, is
adopted in the Malay from the Javanese kris or kiris. Ball had seen an
ingenious explanation for the waved form of these blades; it is that it
is a survival of the outlines of the knives and spears made of obsidian
by flaking, and indeed the resemblance is somewhat striking. See
Romilly, West Pacific and New Guinea; Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 274 fi. gives examples of the use of the term. On the magical significance of these marks see W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, 525 ff.
3 Souali in the original (vol. i. 5).
