converts, but the precepts of the Qurʼān were very little observed, both forbidden meats and intoxicating liquors being indulged in. The women, however, were said to be stricter in their adherence to their faith than the men, so that when their husbands wished to indulge in swine’s flesh, they had to do so in secret, their wives not allowing it to be brought into the house. [1328] But in 1887 it was noted that there had been a revival of religious life among the Kei islanders, and the number of Muhammadans was daily increasing. Arab merchants from Madura, Java, and Bali proved themselves zealous propagandists of Islam and left no means untried to win converts, sometimes enforcing their arguments by threats and violence, and at other times by bribes: as a rule new converts were said to get 200 florins’ worth of presents, while chiefs received as much as a thousand florins. [1329] At the close of the nineteenth century about 8000 of the Kei islanders were said to be Muhammadan out of a total population of 23,000. [1330] The above sketch of the spread of Islam from west to east through the Malay Archipelago comprises but a small part of the history of the missionary work of Islam in these islands. Many of the facts of this history are wholly unrecorded, and what can be gleaned from native chronicles and the works of European travellers, officials and missionaries is necessarily fragmentary and incomplete. But there is evidence enough to show the existence of peaceful missionary efforts to spread the faith of Islam during the last six hundred years: sometimes indeed the sword has been drawn in support of the cause of religion, but preaching and persuasion rather than force and violence have been the main characteristics of this missionary movement. The marvellous success that has been achieved has been largely the work of traders, who won their way to the hearts of the natives, by learning their language, adopting their manners and customs, and began quietly and gradually to spread the knowledge of their religion by first converting the native women they married and the persons associated with them in their business relations. Instead of holding themselves apart in proud isolation, they gradually melted into the mass of the population, employing all their superiority of intelligence and civilisation for the work of conversion and making such skilful compromises in the doctrines and practices of their faith as were needed to recommend it to the people they wished to attract. [1331] In fact, as Buckle said of them, “The Mahometan missionaries are very judicious.” [1332]