Achin has ever been remarkable for the severity with which crimes are punished by their laws; the same rigour still subsists, and there is no commutation admitted, as is regularly established in the southern countries.  There is great reason however to conclude that the poor alone experience the rod of justice; the nobles being secure from retribution in the number of their dependants.  Petty theft is punished by suspending the criminal from a tree, with a gun or heavy weight tied to his feet; or by cutting off a finger, a hand, or leg, according to the nature of the theft.  Many of these mutilated and wretched objects are daily to be seen in the streets.  Robbery, on the highway and housebreaking, are punished by drowning, and afterwards exposing the body on a stake for a few days.  If the robbery is committed upon an imam or priest the sacrilege is expiated by burning the criminal alive.  A man who is convicted of adultery or rape is seldom attempted to be screened by his friends, but is delivered up to the friends and relations of the injured husband or father.  These take him to some large plain and, forming themselves in a circle, place him in the middle.  A large weapon, called a gadubong, is then delivered to him by one of his family, and if he can force his way through those who surround him and make his escape he is not liable to further prosecution; but it commonly happens that he is instantly cut to pieces.  In this case his relations bury him as they would a dead buffalo, refusing to admit the corpse into their house, or to perform any funeral rites.  Would it not be reasonable to conclude that the Achinese, with so much discouragement to vice both from law and prejudice, must prove a moral and virtuous people? yet all travellers agree in representing them as one of the most dishonest and flagitious nations of the East, which the history of their government will tend to corroborate.

CHAPTER 22.

HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM OF ACHIN, FROM THE PERIOD OF ITS BEING VISITED BY EUROPEANS.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE PORTUGUESE.

The Portuguese, under the conduct of Vasco de Gama, doubled the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1497, and arrived on the coast of Malabar in the following year.  These people, whom the spirit of glory, commerce, and plunder led to the most magnanimous undertakings, were not so entirely engaged by their conquests on the continent of India as to prevent them from extending their views to the discovery of regions yet more distant.  They learned from the merchants of Guzerat some account of the riches and importance of Malacca, a great trading city in the farther peninsula of India, supposed by them the Golden Chersonnese of Ptolemy.  Intelligence of this was transmitted to their enterprising sovereign Emanuel, who became impressed with a strong desire to avail himself of the flattering advantages which this celebrated country held out to his ambition.