Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cealed, and surmounted by a dense and varied growth of timber. Canoes and boats of vari-
ous sizes were drawn up on the beach, and one or two idlers, with a few children and a dog,
gazed at our prau as we came to an anchor.
When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us was a large and well-constructed
shed, under which a long boat was being built, while others in various stages of completion
were placed at intervals along the beach. Our captain, who wanted two of moderate size for
the trade among the islands at Aru, immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short
time had arranged the number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs, handkerchiefs, axes, white
plates, tobacco, and arrack, which he was to give for a pair which could be got ready in four
days. We then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four huts, situated imme-
diately above the beach on an irregular rocky piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-
nuts, palms, bananas, and other fruit trees. The houses were very rude, black, and half rot-
ten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bamboo or planks, and high thatched roofs.
They had small doors and no windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the
smoke out and a little light in. The floors were of strips of bamboo, thin, slippery, and elast-
ic, and so weak that my feet were in danger of plunging through at every step. Native boxes
of pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed, mats of the same, jars
and cooking pots of native pottery, and a few European plates and basins, were the whole
furniture, and the interior was throughout dark and smoke-blackened, and dismal in the ex-
treme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some explorations, and we
were followed by a train of boys eager to see what we were going to do. The most trodden
path from the beach led us into a shady hollow, where the trees were of immense height and
the undergrowth scanty. From the summits of these trees came at intervals a deep booming
sound, which at first puzzled us, but which we soon found to proceed from some large pi-
geons. My boys shot at them, and after one or two misses, brought one down. It was a mag-
nificent bird twenty inches long, of a bluish white colour, with the back wings and tail in-
tense metallic green, with golden, blue, and violet reflexions, the feet coral red, and the eyes
golden yellow. It is a rare species, which I have named Carpophaga concinna, and is found
only in a few small islands, where, however, it abounds. It is the same species which in the
island of Banda is called the nutmeg-pigeon, from its habit of devouring the fruits, the seed
or nutmeg being thrown up entire and uninjured. Though these pigeons have a narrow beak,
yet their jaws and throat are so extensible that they can swallow fruits of very large size. I
had before shot a species much smaller than this one, which had a number of hard globular
palm-fruits in its crop, each more than an inch in diameter.
