Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
formed of the leaves lasts six or seven years without removal. Close to the town I noticed
the foundation of a ruined house below high-water mark, indicating recent subsidence.
Earthquakes are not severe here, and are so infrequent and harmless that the chief houses are
built of stone.
The inhabitants of Coupang consist of Malays, Chinese, and Dutch, besides the natives;
so that there are many strange and complicated mixtures among the population. There is one
resident English merchant, and whalers as well as Australian ships often come here for
stores and water. The native Timorese preponderate, and a very little examination serves to
show that they have nothing in common with Malays, but are much more closely allied to
the true Papuans of the Aru Islands and New Guinea. They are tall, have pronounced fea-
tures, large somewhat aquiline noses, and frizzly hair, and are generally of a dusky brown
colour. The way in which the women talk to each other and to the men, their loud voices and
laughter, and general character of self-assertion, would enable an experienced observer to
decide, even without seeing them, that they were not Malays.
Mr. Arndt, a German and the Government doctor, invited me to stay at his house while in
Coupang, and I gladly accepted his offer, as I only intended making a short visit. We at first
began speaking French, but he got on so badly that we soon passed insensibly into Malay;
and we afterwards held long discussions on literary, scientific, and philosophical questions,
in that semi-barbarous language, whose deficiencies we made up by the free use of French
or Latin words.
After a few walks in the neighbourhood of the town, I found such a poverty of insects and
birds that I determined to go for a few days to the island of Semao at the western extremity
of Timor, where I heard that there was forest country with birds not found at Coupang. With
some difficulty I obtained a large dug-out boat with outriggers, to take me over, a distance
of about twenty miles. I found the country pretty well wooded, but covered with shrubs and
thorny bushes rather than forest trees, and everywhere excessively parched and dried up by
the long-continued dry season. I stayed at the village of Oeassa, remarkable for its soap
springs. One of these is in the middle of the village, bubbling out from a little cone of mud
to which the ground rises all round like a volcano in miniature. The water has a soapy feel
and produces a strong lather when any greasy substance is washed in it. It contains alkali
and iodine, in such quantities as to destroy all vegetation for some distance round. Close by
the village is one of the finest springs I have ever seen, contained in several rocky basins
communicating by narrow channels. These have been neatly walled where required and
partly levelled, and form fine natural baths. The water is well tasted and clear as crystal, and
