Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
if, as I suppose, the islands have been entirely submerged within the epoch of existing spe-
cies of animals, as in that case it must owe its present fauna and flora to recent immigration
from surrounding lands; and with this view its poverty in species very well agrees. It pos-
sesses much in common with East Ceram, but at the same time has a good deal of resemb-
lance to the Ké Islands and Banda. The fine pigeon, Carpophaga concinna, inhabits Ké,
Banda, Matabello, and Goram, and is replaced by a distinct species, C. neglecta, in Ceram.
The insects of these four islands have also a common facies—facts which seem to indicate
that some more extensive land has recently disappeared from the area they now occupy, and
has supplied them with a few of its peculiar productions.
The Goram people (among whom I stayed a month) are a race of traders. Every year they
visit the Tenimber, Ké, and Aru Islands, the whole north-west coast of New Guinea from
Oetanata to Salwatty, and the island of Waigiou and Mysol. They also extend their voyages
to Tidore and Ternate, as well as to Banda and Amboyna. Their praus are all made by that
wonderful race of boat-builders, the Ké islanders, who annually turn out some hundreds of
boats, large and small, which can hardly be surpassed for beauty of form and goodness of
workmanship. They trade chiefly in tripang, the medicinal mussoi bark, wild nutmegs, and
tortoise-shell, which they sell to the Bugis traders at Ceram-laut or Aru, few of them caring
to take their products to any other market. In other respects they are a lazy race, living very
poorly, and much given to opium smoking. The only native manufactures are sail-matting,
coarse cotton cloth, and pandanus-leaf boxes, prettily stained and ornamented with shell-
work.
In the island of Goram, only eight or ten miles long, there are about a dozen Rajahs,
scarcely better off than the rest of the inhabitants, and exercising a mere nominal sway, ex-
cept when any order is received from the Dutch Government, when, being backed by a high-
er power, they show a little more strict authority. My friend the Rajah of Ammer (commonly
called Rajah of Goram) told me that a few years ago, before the Dutch had interfered in the
affairs of the island, the trade was not carried on so peaceably as at present, rival praus often
fighting when on the way to the same locality, or trafficking in the same village. Now such a
thing is never thought of—one of the good effects of the superintendence of a civilized gov-
ernment. Disputes between villages are still, however, sometimes settled by fighting, and I
one day saw about fifty men, carrying long guns and heavy cartridge-belts, march through
the village. They had come from the other side of the island on some question of trespass or
boundary, and were prepared for war if peaceable negotiations should fail.
