_Manufactures--Handicrafts--Bricks--Thatch--Mats--Cotton--Cloths-- Dyes--Tanning--Ropes--Metals--Road and Ship-building--Paper--Salt--Saltpetre Works--Gunpowder, &c.--Felling and Transporting of Teak Timber--Fisheries._
It is here proposed to state the progress made by the Javans in a few of the common arts and handicrafts, and in one or two of the more extensive manufactures; their docility in working under European direction, and some other observations, which could not be so appropriately placed in any other part of this work. I have already had occasion to notice the limited skill and simple contrivances with which they carry on the labours of agriculture, and prepare the produce of the soil for consumption, in the various ways that their taste or their habits require. In a country like Java, where the structure of society is simple, and the wants of the people are few, where there is no accumulation of capital and little division of professions, it cannot be expected that manufacturing skill should be acquired, or manufacturing enterprize encouraged, to any great extent. The family of a Javan peasant is almost independent of any labour but that of its own members. The furniture, the clothing, and almost every article required for a family, being prepared within its own precincts, no extensive market of manufactured commodities is necessary for the supply of the island itself; and for foreign trade, the produce of their soil is more in demand than the fruits of their skill or industry. In a country where nature is bountiful, and where so much of her bounty can be collected with so little labour to pay for manufactures from abroad, there is but little encouragement to withdraw the natives from the rice field, the forest, or the coffee-garden, to the loom, the forge, or the workshop; and it is not in this respect, certainly, that a change of their habits would be beneficial. This short notice of Javan manufactures, therefore, must be very limited, both in the number of the articles that it embraces, and in the importance that Europeans may attach to them: for Java can neither send us porcelain, like China; nor silks, shawls, and cottons, like Western India. To a nation, however, so much accustomed as we are to the exertions of manufacturing skill and perfection of manufacturing machinery, it may not be uninteresting to see the simple means, by which a half-civilized people accomplish the objects which we attain by such expeditious and ingenious processes. The most experienced naval architect may be interested by the manner in which a savage scoops his canoe.