Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hung, and round the walls we arranged my boxes and other stores, fitted up a table and seat,
and with a little cleaning and dusting made the place look quite comfortable. My boat was
then hauled up on shore, and covered with palm-leaves, the sails and oars brought indoors, a
hanging-stage for drying my specimens erected outside the house and another inside, and
my boys were set to clean their guns and get all ready for beginning work.
The next day I occupied myself in exploring the paths in the immediate neighbourhood.
The small river up which we had ascended ceases to be navigable at this point, above which
it is a little rocky brook, which quite dries up in the hot season. There was now, however, a
fair stream of water in it; and a path which was partly in and partly by the side of the water,
promised well for insects, as I here saw the magnificent blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, as
well as several other fine species, flopping lazily along, sometimes resting high up on the
foliage which drooped over the water, at others settling down on the damp rock or on the
edges of muddy pools. A little way on several paths branched off through patches of second-
growth forest to cane-fields, gardens, and scattered houses, beyond which again the dark
wall of verdure striped with tree-trunks, marked out the limits of the primeval forests. The
voices of many birds promised good shooting, and on my return I found that my boys had
already obtained two or three kinds I had not seen before; and in the evening a native
brought me a rare and beautiful species of ground thrush (Pitta novæ-guineæ) hitherto only
known from New Guinea.
As I improved my acquaintance with them I became much interested in these people, who
are a fair sample of the true savage inhabitants of the Aru Islands, tolerably free from for-
eign admixture. The house I lived in contained four or five families, and there were gener-
ally from six to a dozen visitors besides. They kept up a continual row from morning till
night—talking, laughing, shouting, without intermission—not very pleasant, but interesting
as a study of national character. My boy Ali said to me, 'Banyak quot bitchara Orang Aru'
(The Aru people are very strong talkers), never having been accustomed to such eloquence
either in his own or any other country he had hitherto visited. Of an evening the men, having
got over their first shyness, began to talk to me a little, asking about my country, &c., and in
return I questioned them about any traditions they had of their own origin. I had, however,
very little success, for I could not possibly make them understand the simple question of
where the Aru people first came from. I put it in every possible way to them, but it was a
subject quite beyond their speculations; they had evidently never thought of anything of the
kind, and were unable to conceive a thing so remote and so unnecessary to be thought about,
as their own origin. Finding this hopeless, I asked if they knew when the trade with Aru first
began, when the Bugis and Chinese and Macassar men first came in their praus to buy tri-
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