Travel Reference
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pang and tortoise-shell, and birds' nests, and Paradise birds? This they comprehended, but
replied that there had always been the same trade as long as they or their fathers recollected,
but that this was the first time a real white man had come among them, and, said they, 'You
see how the people come every day from all the villages round to look at you.' This was
very flattering, and accounted for the great concourse of visitors which I had at first ima-
gined was accidental. A few years before I had been one of the gazers at the Zoolus and the
Aztecs in London. Now the tables were turned upon me, for I was to these people a new and
strange variety of man, and had the honour of affording to them, in my own person, an at-
tractive exhibition, gratis.
All the men and boys of Aru are expert archers, never stirring without their bows and ar-
rows. They shoot all sorts of birds, as well as pigs and kangaroos occasionally, and thus
have a tolerably good supply of meat to eat with their vegetables. The result of this better
living is superior healthiness, well-made bodies, and generally clear skins. They brought me
numbers of small birds in exchange for beads or tobacco, but mauled them terribly, notwith-
standing my repeated instructions. When they got a bird alive they would often tie a string
to its leg, and keep it a day or two, till its plumage was so draggled and dirtied as to be al-
most worthless. One of the first things I got from them was a living specimen of the curious
and beautiful racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing how much I admired it, they afterwards
brought me several more, which were all caught before daybreak, sleeping in cavities of the
rocky banks of the stream. My hunters also shot a few specimens, and almost all of them
had the red bill more or less clogged with mud and earth. This indicates the habits of the
bird, which, though popularly a king-fisher, never catches fish, but lives on insects and
minute shells, which it picks up in the forest, darting down upon them from its perch on
some low branch. The genus Tanysiptera, to which this bird belongs, is remarkable for the
enormously lengthened tail, which in all other kingfishers is small and short. Linnæus
named the species known to him 'the goddess kingfisher' (Alcedo dea), from its extreme
grace and beauty, the plumage being brilliant blue and white, with the bill red, like coral.
Several species of these interesting birds are now known, all confined within the very lim-
ited area which comprises the Moluccas, New Guinea, and the extreme North of Australia.
They resemble each other so closely that several of them can only be distinguished by care-
ful comparison. One of the rarest, however, which inhabits New Guinea, is very distinct
from the rest, being bright red beneath instead of white. That which I now obtained was a
new one, and has been named Tanysiptera hydrocharis, but in general form and coloration it
is exactly similar to the larger species found in Amboyna, and figured at page 323 .
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