Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
XXIX
The Ké Islands
( JANUARY 1857)
The native boats that had come to meet us were three or four in number, containing in all
about fifty men. They were long canoes, with the bow and stern rising up into a beak six or
eight feet high, decorated with shells and waving plumes of cassowaries hair. I now had my
first view of Papuans in their own country, and in less than five minutes was convinced that
the opinion already arrived at by the examination of a few Timor and New Guinea slaves was
substantially correct, and that the people I now had an opportunity of comparing side by side
belonged to two of the most distinct and strongly marked races that the earth contains. Had I
been blind, I could have been certain that these islanders were not Malays. The loud, rapid,
eager tones, the incessant motion, the intense vital activity manifested in speech and action,
are the very antipodes of the quiet, unimpulsive, unanimated Malay. These Ké men came up
singing and shouting, dipping their paddles deep in the water and throwing up clouds of
spray; as they approached nearer they stood up in their canoes and increased their noise and
gesticulations; and on coming alongside, without asking leave, and without a moment's hesit-
ation, the greater part of them scrambled up on our deck just as if they were come to take
possession of a captured vessel. Then commenced a scene of indescribable confusion. These
forty black, naked, mop-headed savages seemed intoxicated with joy and excitement. Not
one of them could remain still for a moment. Every individual of our crew was in turn sur-
rounded and examined, asked for tobacco or arrack, grinned at and deserted for another. All
talked at once, and our captain was regularly mobbed by the chief men, who wanted to be
employed to tow us in, and who begged vociferously to be paid in advance. A few presents of
tobacco made their eyes glisten; they would express their satisfaction by grins and shouts, by
rolling on deck, or by a headlong leap overboard. Schoolboys on an unexpected holiday,
Irishmen at a fair, or midshipmen on shore, would give but a faint idea of the exuberant anim-
al enjoyment of these people.
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