Bali Chronicles. Willard A. Hanna
was eager to buy.
Arnoudt Lintgens, Captain of the Hollandia, was the ranking member of the shore party. Emanuel Roodenburg, a sailor from Amsterdam, was the messenger between sea and shore and the carrier of Houtman’s gifts; Jan the Portuguese, a Mestizo “slave” who had come on board at Bantam as interpreter, participated in all the more significant encounters; and Jacob Claaszoon, an ordinary seaman from Delft, gained historical fame along with Roodenburg by jumping ship just as the expedition was about to set sail back to Holland.
Lintgens, Roodenburg, and Jan the Portuguese were guests of the Kijloer, the chief official of the Conick, that is, the Dewa Agung. Both the Dewa Agung and the Kijloer were then in residence in Kuta, where they were readying an expeditionary force of 20,000 men to send to the relief of their Javanese dependency, Blambangan, which was under siege by the Susuhunan of Mataram.
The Dewa Agung, whom Lintgens described as a tall, dark, stout, vigorous man of about forty, astounded the Dutch with his wealth, power, and magnificence. He lived ordinarily in a huge palace in the walled town of Gelgel, surrounded by his harem of 200 wives, his troupe of 50 misshapen dwarfs (their bodies deliberately deformed to resemble the grotesque figures of kris hilts) and his many noblemen, who ruled in his name over the 300,000 persons who then populated the island. His state kris, said Lintgens, was especially notable for the splendor of its jewels and the weight (two pounds) of its intricately wrought golden hilt. The handle of his state parasol was equally showy, and in his palace were to be found many other krises, lances, parasols, vessels of gold and silver, and miscellaneous treasures such as would be the envy of any king in Europe. When the Dewa Agung ventured outside his palace, he was accompanied by a procession of scores of lance and banner bearers and rode either in a palanquin or in a cart drawn by two white oxen which he himself drove. He held the love and respect of his people and his courtiers and was famous for the clemency of his rule, having only recently, it was said, spared certain conspirators who had plotted against his life, commuting their sentence from execution to exile on a nearby islet.
Audience with Dewa Agung and Lesson in Geography
Once it was determined that the visitors would bear gifts and exactly what those gifts would be, the Kijloer escorted the three—Lintgens, Roodenburg, and Jan the Portuguese—to an audience with the Dewa Agung in his Kuta palace, where all of the high nobility had assembled as witnesses. The Dewa Agung was delighted with the gifts: a large gilt-framed mirror, a print of a ship resembling the Mauritius (which he had viewed from the shore), several lengths of plain colored velvet (not as fine as the flowered velvet which had already been presented to the Kijloer, of which the Dewa Agung was jealous), six pieces-of-eight (the “coins of the Dutch”), a rifle, and the much coveted chart. The rifle had to be demonstrated at once, much to the satisfaction of all of the court; but it was the chart which was the real sensation. The Dewa Agung, reported Lintgens, regarded it as evidence of the “subtilty of our nation;” when he found a globe pictured in one corner he was even more astonished and insisted that the Dutch must bring him one on their next visit. He himself proposed to write a letter of appreciation to the Dutch King and to send him a kris and a dwarf, none of which are mentioned again in the records.
The Dewa Agung called at once for a lesson in world geography, and Lintgens was happy to oblige. The lesson started with the islands of Southeast Asia, the Dewa Agung expressing great disappointment to find that Bali “showed so small.” Next came the Empire of the “Great Turk,” which mightily impressed him. Finally came the European continent, Lintgens being required very clearly to explain about the Netherlands and the port of Amsterdam and then the route by which the expedition had traveled to the East. Upon being queried by the Dewa Agung which was the larger, China or Holland, Lint-gens replied by tracing boundaries of the Netherlands so imaginative as to include Scandinavia, Austria, and a generous portion of Imperial Russia.
The audience developed into a prolonged interview in which the Dewa Agung demanded detailed information about the King of Holland (Prince Maurits), his age (30), his marital status (single, much to the King’s amazement), his armies (50,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and 150 pieces of heavy artillery), his commerce (700 large ships a day visiting Amsterdam), the Dutch climate (with elucidation of the strange phenomenon of ice), and much, much else, including personal information about his immediate callers and other members of the expedition, the nature of the vessels and their guns. Since, said the Kijloer, the Dewa Agung made a point of surrounding himself with foreigners and requiring all newcomers to visit him and perhaps also to remain in Gelgel, he was especially pleased to learn that the expedition had brought with it two young boys from “St. Louwerens Island,” whom, said Lintgens, he might see if he wished.
Entertainment by Kijloer; Interview with Portuguese Merchant
Before and after the audience with the Dewa Agung and a subsequent visit to Gelgel, Lintgens, Roodenburg, and Jan the Portuguese were entertained in the splendid Kuta and Gelgel palaces of the Kijloer, who served lavish feasts (one being brought in by twelve of the Dewa Agung’s wives) and was fully as curious as was the Dewa Agung himself with regard to European customs, including the system of justice and the punishments meted out to thieves and murderers. The Kijloer informed his guests about previous European visitors—the English (presumably Sir Francis Drake), and the Portuguese. One morning he suddenly produced for their inspection Pedro de Noronha, a merchant from Malacca who had been in the service of the Dewa Agung ever since the shipwreck of 1585. Pedro told them something of his life story, inquired about conditions in Portugal, and allowed that although he had been eager at first to return to Malacca he was now quite content to remain in Bali together with his Balinese wife and their two children. He had been forbidden, nevertheless, to establish any contact with the Houtman expedition until the Kijloer himself introduced him.
For reasons which the record does not make clear, Cornelis Houtman himself seems to have gone ashore only once, a few days before setting sail again for Holland. There he met with the brother of the Dewa Agung, engaging in desultory conversation and the consumption of fruits and sweets while his Balinese hostages were being brought ashore so that Lintgens and his companions would be permitted to go back on shipboard.
Desertion of Roodenburg, Claaszoon, and Jan the Portuguese
The Houtman expedition departed from Bali on February 20, without Roodenburg and Claaszoon, who had vanished. They had remained ashore to enter the service of the Dewa Agung, perhaps of their own volition, perhaps not, most probably quite willing to be induced to forgo the rigors of the voyage back to wet, cold, gloomy, little Holland in preference for the pleasures of equatorial Bali. In any event, they both settled in Gelgel, took Balinese wives, learned the Balinese language, and attended upon the Dewa Agung. When the next Dutch expedition appeared, that of Jacob van Heemskerck in 1601, Roodenburg joined it as interpreter and translator, also as general informant and advisor. According to vague contemporary accounts, Heemskerck appears to have shown his appreciation for Roodenburg’s services (and unspecified services of Claaszoon) by “buying them free.” Roodenburg (but not Claaszoon) subsequently reappeared in Holland as a humble clerk in an Amsterdam office, an unlikely sequel to his Bali idyll.
Heemskerck Expedition of 1601; Roodenburg as Interpreter; Dewa Agung’s Letter to Prince Maurits
The Heemskerck expedition left no such detailed records as those of its predecessor, but Heemskerck himself was a more perceptive and sympathetic visitor than Houtman and served as his own ambassador. He carried a letter from Prince Maurits which he presented in person to the Dewa Agung together with the usual presents, thus eliciting a gracious letter of acknowledgment from “den conick van Bali” to “den conick van Hollandt.” The Dewa Agung advised the King of Holland that he was pleased to comply with his request for permission to open trade and stated, further, apparently in reply to a suggestion of political relationship, that he concurred that Holland and Bali should “be one.” Heemskerck (or Eemskerck) promptly dispatched the original letter in Balinese together with the Dutch translation