Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
who had ever come to their island. After three days, my man brought me the first bird—a
very fine specimen, and alive, but tied up in a small bag, and consequently its tail and wing
feathers very much crushed and injured. I tried to explain to him, and to the others that came
with him, that I wanted them as perfect as possible, and that they should either kill them, or
keep them on a perch with a string to their leg. As they were now apparently satisfied that
all was fair, and that I had no ulterior designs upon them, six others took away goods; some
for one bird, some for more, and one for as many as six. They said they had to go a long
way for them, and that they would come back as soon as they caught any. At intervals of a
few days or a week, some of them would return, bringing me one or more birds; but though
they did not bring any more in bags, there was not much improvement in their condition. As
they caught them a long way off in the forest, they would scarcely ever come with one, but
would tie it by the leg to a stick, and put it in their house till they caught another. The poor
creature would make violent efforts to escape, would get among the ashes, or hang suspen-
ded by the leg till the limb was swollen and half-putrefied, and sometimes die of starvation
and worry. One had its beautiful head all defiled by pitch from a dammar torch; another had
been so long dead that its stomach was turning green. Luckily, however, the skin and
plumage of these birds is so firm and strong, that they bear washing and cleaning better than
almost any other sort; and I was generally able to clean them so well that they did not per-
ceptibly differ from those I had shot myself.
Some few were brought me the same day they were caught, and I had an opportunity of
examining them in all their beauty and vivacity. As soon as I found they were generally
brought alive, I set one of my men to make a large bamboo cage with troughs for food and
water, hoping to be able to keep some of them. I got the natives to bring me branches of a
fruit they were very fond of, and I was pleased to find they ate it greedily, and would also
take any number of live grasshoppers I gave them, stripping off the legs and wings, and then
swallowing them. They drank plenty of water, and were in constant motion, jumping about
the cage from perch to perch, clinging on the top and sides, and rarely resting a moment the
first day till nightfall. The second day they were always less active, although they would eat
as freely as before; and on the morning of the third day they were almost always found dead
at the bottom of the cage, without any apparent cause. Some of them ate boiled rice as well
as fruit and insects; but after trying many in succession, not one out of ten lived more than
three days. The second or third day they would be dull, and in several cases they were
seized with convulsions, and fell off the perch, dying a few hours afterwards. I tried imma-
ture as well as full-plumaged birds, but with no better success, and at length gave it up as a
