Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
across, its golden body, and crimson breast. It is true I had seen similar insects in cabinets at
home, but it is quite another thing to capture such oneself—to feel it struggling between
one's fingers, and to gaze upon its fresh and living beauty, a bright gem shining out amid the
silent gloom of a dark and tangled forest. The village of Dobbo held that evening at least
one contented man.
Jan
. 26
th
.—Having now been here a fortnight, I began to understand a little of the place
and its peculiarities. Praus continually arrived, and the merchant population increased al-
most daily. Every two or three days a fresh house was opened, and the necessary repairs
made. In every direction men were bringing in poles, bamboos, rattans, and the leaves of the
nipa palm to construct or repair the walls, thatch, doors, and shutters of their houses, which
they do with great celerity. Some of the arrivals were Macassar men or Bugis, but more
from the small island of Goram, at the east end of Ceram, whose inhabitants are the petty
traders of the far East. Then the natives of Aru come in from the other side of the islands
(called here 'blakang tana,' or 'back of the country') with the produce they have collected
during the preceding six months, and which they now sell to the traders, to some of whom
they are most likely in debt. Almost all, or I may safely say all, the new arrivals pay me a
visit, to see with their own eyes the unheard-of phenomenon of a person come to stay at
Dobbo who does not trade! They have their own ideas of the uses that may possibly be
made of stuffed birds, beetles, and shells which are not the right shells—that is, 'mother-of-
pearl.' They every day bring me dead and broken shells, such as I can pick up by hundreds
on the beach, and seem quite puzzled and distressed when I decline them. If, however, there
are any snail shells among a lot, I take them, and ask for more—a principle of selection so
utterly unintelligible to them, that they give it up in despair, or solve the problem by imput-
ing hidden medical virtue to those which they see me preserve so carefully.
These traders are all of the Malay race, or a mixture of which Malay is the chief ingredi-
ent, with the exception of a few Chinese. The natives of Aru, on the other hand, are
Papuans, with black or sooty brown skins, woolly or frizzly hair, thick-ridged prominent
noses, and rather slender limbs. Most of them wear nothing but a waist-cloth, and a few of
them may be seen all day long wandering about the half-deserted streets of Dobbo offering
their little bit of merchandise for sale.
Living in a trader's house everything is brought to me as well as to the rest,—bundles of
smoked tripang, or 'bêche de mer,' looking like sausages which have been rolled in mud
and then thrown up the chimney; dried sharks' fins, mother-of-pearl shells, as well as Birds
of Paradise, which, however, are so dirty and so badly preserved that I have as yet found no
specimens worth purchasing. When I hardly look at the articles, and make no offer for them,
