Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
plank, being slightly notched to receive them, and securely bound to them by rattans passed
through a hole in each projecting piece close to the surface of the plank. The ends are closed
against the vertical prow and stern posts, and further secured with pegs and rattans, and then
the boat is complete; and when fitted with rudders, masts, and thatched covering, is ready to
do battle with the waves. A careful consideration of the principle of this mode of construc-
tion, and allowing for the strength and binding qualities of rattan (which resembles in these
respects wire rather than cordage), makes me believe that a vessel carefully built in this
manner is actually stronger and safer than one fastened in the ordinary way with nails.
During our stay here we were all very busy. Our captain was daily superintending the
completion of his two small praus. All day long native boats were coming with fish, cocoa-
nuts, parrots and lories, earthen pans, sirip leaf, wooden bowls, and trays, &c. &c., which
every one of the fifty inhabitants of our prau seemed to be buying on his own account, till
all available and most unavailable space of our vessel was occupied with these miscel-
laneous articles: for every man on board a prau considers himself at liberty to trade, and to
carry with him whatever he can afford to buy.
Money is unknown and valueless here—knives, cloth, and arrack forming the only medi-
um of exchange, with tobacco for small coin. Every transaction is the subject of a special
bargain, and the cause of much talking. It is absolutely necessary to offer very little, as the
natives are never satisfied till you add a little more. They are then far better pleased than if
you had given them twice the amount at first and refused to increase it.
I, too, was doing a little business, having persuaded some of the natives to collect insects
for me; and when they really found that I gave them most fragrant tobacco for worthless
black and green beetles, I soon had scores of visitors, men, women, and children, bringing
bamboos full of creeping things, which, alas! too frequently had eaten each other into frag-
ments during the tedium of a day's confinement. Of one grand new beetle, glittering with
ruby and emerald tints, I got a large quantity, having first detected one of its wing-cases or-
namenting the outside of a native's tobacco pouch. It was quite a new species, and had not
been found elsewhere than on this little island. It is one of the Buprestidæ, and has been
named Cyphogastra calepyga.
Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by myself into the forest, where I found
delightful occupation in capturing the large and handsome butterflies, which were tolerably
abundant, and most of them new to me; for I was now upon the confines of the Moluccas
and New Guinea,—a region the productions of which were then among the most precious
and rare in the cabinets of Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with splen-
did scarlet lories on the wing, as well as by the sight of that most imperial butterfly, the 'Pri-
