Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
iards were truly wonderful conquerors and colonizers. They effected more rapid changes in
the countries they conquered than any other nations of modern times, resembling the Ro-
mans in their power of impressing their own language, religion, and manners on rude and
barbarous tribes.
The striking contrast of character between these people and the Malays is exemplified in
many little traits. One day when I was rambling in the forest, an old man stopped to look at
me catching an insect. He stood very quiet till I had pinned and put it away in my collecting
box, when he could contain himself no longer, but bent almost double, and enjoyed a hearty
roar of laughter. Every one will recognise this as a true negro trait. A Malay would have
stared, and asked with a tone of bewilderment what I was doing, for it is but little in his
nature to laugh, never heartily, and still less at or in the presence of a stranger, to whom,
however, his disdainful glances or whispered remarks are less agreeable than the most bois-
terous open expression of merriment. The women here were not so much frightened at
strangers, or made to keep themselves so much secluded as among the Malay races; the chil-
dren were more merry and had the 'nigger grin,' while the noisy confusion of tongues
among the men, and their excitement on very ordinary occasions, are altogether removed
from the general taciturnity and reserve of the Malay.
The language of the Ké people consists of words of one, two, or three syllables in about
equal proportions, and has many aspirated and a few guttural sounds. The different villages
have slight differences of dialect, but they are mutually intelligible, and, except in words
that have evidently been introduced during a long-continued commercial intercourse, seem
to have no affinity whatever with the Malay languages.
Jan
. 6
th
.—The small boats being finished, we sailed for Aru at 4
P.M.
, and as we left the
shores of Ké had a fine view of its rugged and mountainous character; ranges of hills, three
or four thousand feet high, stretching southwards as far as the eye could reach, everywhere
covered with a lofty, dense, and unbroken forest. We had very light winds, and it therefore
took us thirty hours to make the passage of sixty miles to the low, or flat, but equally forest-
covered Aru Islands, where we anchored in the harbour of Dobbo at nine in the evening of
the next day.
My first voyage in a prau being thus satisfactorily terminated, I must, before taking leave
of it for some months, bear testimony to the merits of the queer old-world vessel. Setting
aside all ideas of danger, which is probably, after all, not more than in any other craft, I must
declare that I have never, either before or since, made a twenty days' voyage so pleasantly,
or perhaps, more correctly speaking, with so little discomfort. This I attribute chiefly to hav-
ing my small cabin on deck, and entirely to myself, to having my own servants to wait upon
