Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
reached their country. There was probably hardly a man in Aru who had not by this time
heard of me.
Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable property of a native is
very scanty. He has a good supply of spears and bows and arrows for hunting, a parang, or
chopping-knife, and an axe—for the stone age has passed away here, owing to the commer-
cial enterprise of the Bugis and other Malay races. Attached to a belt, or hung across his
shoulder, he carries a little skin pouch and an ornamented bamboo, containing betel-nut, to-
bacco, and lime, and a small German wooden-handled knife is generally stuck between his
waist-cloth of bark and his bare skin. Each man also possesses a 'cadjan,' or sleeping-mat,
made of the broad leaves of a pandanus neatly sewn together in three layers. This mat is
about four feet square, and when folded has one end sewn up, so that it forms a kind of sack
open at one side. In the closed corner the head or feet can be placed, or by carrying it on the
head in a shower it forms both coat and umbrella. It doubles up in a small compass for con-
venient carriage, and then forms a light and elastic cushion, so that on a journey it becomes
clothing, house, bedding, and furniture, all in one.
The only ornaments in an Aru house are trophies of the chase—jaws of wild pigs, the
heads and backbones of cassowaries, and plumes made from the feathers of the Bird of
Paradise, cassowary, and domestic fowl. The spears, shields, knife-handles, and other
utensils are more or less carved in fanciful designs, and the mats and leaf boxes are painted
or plaited in neat patterns of red, black, and yellow colours. I must not forget these boxes,
which are most ingeniously made of the pith of a palm leaf pegged together, lined inside
with pandanus leaves, and outside with the same, or with plaited grass. All the joints and
angles are covered with strips of split rattan sewn neatly on. The lid is covered with the
brown leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which is impervious to water, and the whole box
is neat, strong, and well finished. They are made from a few inches to two or three feet long,
and being much esteemed by the Malays as clothes-boxes, are a regular article of export
from Aru. The natives use the smaller ones for tobacco or betel-nut, but seldom have clothes
enough to require the larger ones, which are only made for sale.
Among the domestic animals which may generally be seen in native houses, are gaudy
parrots, green, red, and blue, a few domestic fowls, which have baskets hung for them to lay
in under the eaves, and who sleep on the ridge, and several half-starved wolfish-looking
dogs. Instead of rats and mice there are curious little marsupial animals about the same size,
which run about at night and nibble anything eatable that may be left uncovered. Four or
five different kinds of ants attack everything not isolated by water, and one kind even swims
across that; great spiders lurk in baskets and boxes, or hide in the folds of my mosquito cur-
