The Malay Archipelago
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by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago
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Dec. 30th.--Passed the island of Teor, and a group near it, which
are very incorrectly marked on the charts. Flying-fish were
numerous to-day. It is a smaller species than that of the
Atlantic, and more active and elegant in its motions. As they
skim along the surface they turn on their sides, so as fully to
display their beautiful fins, taking a flight of about a hundred
yards, rising and falling in n most graceful manner. At a little
distance they exactly resemble swallows, and no one who sees them
can doubt that they really do fly, not merely descend in an
oblique direction from the height they gain by their first
spring. In the evening an aquatic bird, a species of booby (Sula
fiber.) rested on our hen-coop, and was caught by the neck by one
of my boys.
Dec. 31st,.--At daybreak the Ke Islands (pronounced Kay) were in
sight, where we are to stay a few days. About noon we rounded the
northern point, and endeavoured to coast along to the anchorage;
but being now on the leeward side of the island, the wind came in
violent irregular gusts, and then leaving us altogether, we were
carried back by a strong current. Just then two boats-load of
natives appeared, and our owner having agreed with them to tow us
into harbour, they tried to do so, assisted by our own boat, but
could make no way. We were therefore obliged to anchor in a very
dangerous place on a rocky bottom, and we were engaged till
nearly dark getting hawsers secured to some rocks under water.
The coast of Ke along which we had passed was very picturesque.
Light coloured limestone rocks rose abruptly from the water to
the height of several hundred feet, everywhere broken into
jutting peaks and pinnacles, weather-worn into sharp points and
honeycombed surfaces, and clothed throughout with a most varied
and luxuriant vegetation. The cliffs above the sea offered to our
view screw-pines and arborescent Liliaceae of strange forms,
mingled with shrubs and creepers; while the higher slopes
supported a dense growth of forest trees. Here and there little
bays and inlets presented beaches of dazzling whiteness. The
water was transparent as crystal, and tinged the rock-strewn
slope which plunged steeply into its unfathomable depths with
colours varying from emerald to lapis-lazuli. The sea was calm as
a lake, and the glorious sun of the tropics threw a flood of
golden light over all. The scene was to me inexpressibly
delightful. I was in a new world, and could dream of the
wonderful productions hid in those rocky forests, and in those
azure abysses. But few European feet had ever trodden the shores
I gazed upon its plants, and animals, and men were alike almost
unknown, and I could not help speculating on what my wanderings
there for a few days might bring to light.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE KE ISLANDS.
(JANUARY 1857)
THE native boats that had come to meet us were three or four in
number, containing in all about fifty men.
They were long canoes, with the bow and stern rising up into a
beak six or night feet high, decorated with shells and waving
plumes of cassowaries hair. I now had my first view of Papuans in
their own country, and in less than five minutes was convinced
that the opinion already arrived at by the examination of a few
Timor and New Guinea slaves was substantially correct, and that
the people I now had an opportunity of comparing side by side
belonged to two of the most distinct and strongly marked races
that the earth contains. Had I been blind, I could have been
certain that these islanders were not Malays. The loud, rapid,
eager tones, the incessant motion, the intense vital activity
manifested in speech and action, are the very antipodes of the
quiet, unimpulsive, unanimated Malay These Ke men came up singing
and shouting, dipping their paddles deep in the water and
throwing up clouds of spray; as they approached nearer they stood
up in their canoes and increased their noise and gesticulations;
and on coming alongside, without asking leave, and without a
moment's hesitation, the greater part of them scrambled up on our
deck just as if they were come to take possession of a captured
vessel. Then commenced a scene of indescribable confusion. These
forty black, naked, mop-headed savages seemed intoxicated with
joy and excitement. Not one of them could remain still for a
moment. Every individual of our crew was in turn surrounded and
examined, asked for tobacco or arrack, grinned at and deserted
for another. All talked at once, and our captain was regularly
mobbed by the chief men, who wanted to be employed to tow us in,
and who begged vociferously to be paid in advance. A few presents
of tobacco made their eyes glisten; they would express their
satisfaction by grins and shouts, by rolling on deck, or by a
headlong leap overboard. Schoolboys on an unexpected holiday,
Irishmen at a fair, or mid-shipmen on shore, would give but a
faint idea of the exuberant animal enjoyment of these people.
Under similar circumstances Malays could not behave as these
Papuans did. If they came on board a vessel (after asking
permission), not a word would be at first spoken, except a few
compliments, and only after some time, and very cautiously, world
any approach be made to business. One would speak at a time, with
a low voice and great deliberation, and the mode of making a
bargain would be by quietly refusing all your offers, or even
going away without saying another word about the matter, unless
advanced your price to what they were willing to accept. Our
crew, many of whom had not made the voyage before, seemed quite
scandalized at such unprecedented bad manners, and only very
gradually made any approach to fraternization with the black
fellows. They reminded me of a party of demure and well-behaved
children suddenly broken in upon by a lot of wild romping,
riotous boys, whose conduct seems most extraordinary and very
naughty. These moral features are more striking and more
conclusive of absolute diversity than oven the physical contrast
presented by the two races, though that is sufficiently
remarkable. The sooty blackness of the skin, the mop-like head of
frizzly hair, and, most important of all, the marked form of
countenance of quite a different type from that of the Malay, are
what we cannot believe to result from mere climatal or other
modifying influences on one and the same race. The Malay face is
of the Mongolian type, broad and somewhat flat. The brows are
depressed, the mouth wide, but not projecting, and the nose small
and well formed but for the great dilatation of the nostrils. The
face is smooth, and rarely develops the trace of a beard; the
hair black, coarse, and perfectly straight. The Papuan, on the
other hand, has a face which we may say is compressed and
projecting. The brows are protuberant and overhanging, the mouth
large and prominent, while the nose is very large, the apex
elongated downwards, the ridge thick, and the nostrils large. It
is an obtrusive and remarkable feature in the countenance, the
very reverse of what obtains in the Malay face. The twisted beard
and frizzly hair complete this remarkable contrast. Hero then I
had reached a new world, inhabited by a strange people. Between
the Malayan tribes, among whom I had for some years been living,
and the Papuan races, whose country I had now entered, we may
fairly say that there is as much difference, both moral and
physical, as between the red Indians of South America and the
negroes of Guinea on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
Jan. 1st, 1857.-This has been a day of thorough enjoyment. I have
wandered in the forests of an island rarely seen by Europeans.
Before daybreak we left our anchorage, and in an hour reached the
village of Har, where we were to stay three or four days. The
range of hills here receded so as to form a small bay, and they
were broken up into peaks and hummocks with intervening flats and
hollows. A broad beach of the whitest sand lined the inner part
of the bay, backed by a mass of cocoa-nut palms, among which the
huts were concealed, and surmounted by a dense and varied growth
of timber. Canoes and boats of various sizes were drawn up on the
beach and one or two idlers, with a few children and a dog, gazed
at our prau as we came to an anchor.
When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us was a
large and well-constructed shed, under which a long boat was
being built, while others in various stages of completion were
placed at intervals along the beach. Our captain, who wanted two
of moderate size for the trade among the islands at Aru,
immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short tine had
arranged the nuns number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs,
handkerchiefs, axes, white plates, tobacco, and arrack, which he
was to give for a hair which could be got ready in four days. We
then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four
huts, situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rocky
piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas, and
other fruit trees. The houses were very rude, black, and half
rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bamboo or
planks, and high thatched roofs. They had small doors and no
windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the smoke
out and a little light in. The floors were of strips of bamboo,
thin, slippery, and elastic, and so weak that my feet were in
danger of plunging through at every step. Native boxes of
pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed,
mats of the same, jars and cooking pots of native pottery, and a
few European plates and basins, were the whole furniture, and the
interior was throughout dark and smoke-blackened, and dismal in
the extreme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some
explorations, and we were followed by a train of boys eager to
see what we were going to do. The most trodden path from the
beach led us into a shady hollow, where the trees were of immense
height and the undergrowth scanty. From the summits of these
trees came at intervals a deep booming sound, which at first
puzzled us, but which we soon found to proceed from some large
pigeons. My boys shot at them, and after one or two misses,
brought one down. It was a magnificent bird twenty inches long,
of a bluish white colour, with the back wings and tail intense
metallic green, with golden, blue, and violet reflexions, the
feet coral red, and the eyes golden yellow. It is a rare species,
which I have named Carpophaga concinna, and is found only in a
few small islands, where, however, it abounds. It is the same
species which in the island of Banda is called the nutmeg-pigeon,
from its habit of devouring the fruits, the seed or nutmeg being
thrown up entire and uninjured. Though these pigeons have a
narrow beak, yet their jaws and throat are so extensible that
they can swallow fruits of very large size. I had before shot a
species much smaller than this one, which had a number of hard
globular palm-fruits in its crop, each more than an inch in
diameter.
A little further the path divided into two, one leading along the
beach, and across mangrove and sago swamps the other rising to
cultivated grounds. We therefore returned, and taking a fresh
departure from the village, endeavoured to ascend the hills and
penetrate into the interior. The path, however, was a most trying
one. Where there was earth, it was a deposit of reddish clay
overlying the rock, and was worn so smooth by the attrition of
naked feet that my shoes could obtain no hold on the sloping
surface. A little farther we came to the bare rock, and this was
worse, for it was so rugged and broken, and so honeycombed and
weatherworn into sharp points and angles, that my boys, who had
gone barefooted all their lives, could not stand it. Their feet
began to bleed, and I saw that if I did not want them completely
lamed it would be wise to turn lack. My own shoes, which were
rather thin, were but a poor protection, and would soon have been
cut to pieces; yet our little naked guides tripped along with the
greatest ease and unconcern, and seemed much astonished at our
effeminacy in not being able to take a walk which to them was a
perfectly agreeable one. During the rest of our stay in the
island we were obliged to confine ourselves to the vicinity of
the shore and the cultivated grounds, and those more level
portions of the forest where a little soil had accumulated and
the rock had been less exposed to atmospheric action.
The island of Ke (pronounced exactly as the letter K, but
erroneously spelt in our maps Key or Ki) is long and narrow,
running in a north and south direction, and consists almost
entirely of rock and mountain. It is everywhere covered with
luxuriant forests, and in its bays and inlets the sand is of
dazzling whiteness, resulting from the decomposition of the
coralline limestone of which it is entirely composed. In all the
little swampy inlets and valleys sago trees abound, and these
supply the main subsistence of the natives, who grow no rice, and
have scarcely any other cultivated products but cocoa-nuts,
plantains, and yams. From the cocoa-nuts, which surround every
hut, and which thrive exceedingly on the porous limestone soil
and under the influence of salt breezes, oil is made which is
sold at a good price to the Aru traders, who all touch here to
lay in their stuck of this article, as well as to purchase boats
and native crockery. Wooden bowls, pans, and trays are also
largely made here, hewn out of solid blocks of wood with knife
and adze; and these are carried to all parts of the Moluccas. But
the art in which the natives of Ke pre-eminently excel is that of
boat building. Their forests supply abundance of fine timber,
though, probably not more so than many other islands, and from
some unknown causes these remote savages have come to excel in
what seems a very difficult art. Their small canoes are
beautifully formed, broad and low in the centre, but rising at
each end, where they terminate in high-pointed beaks more or less
carved, and ornamented with a plume of feathers. They are not
hollowed out of a tree, but are regularly built of planks running
from ego to end, and so accurately fitted that it is often
difficult to find a place where a knife-blade can be inserted
between the joints. The larger ones are from 20 to 30 tons
burthen, and are finished ready for sea without a nail or
particle of iron being used, and with no other tools than axe,
adze, and auger. These vessels are handsome to look at, good
sailers, and admirable sea-boats, and will make long voyages with
perfect safety, traversing the whole Archipelago from New Guinea
to Singapore in seas which, as every one who has sailed much in
them can testify, are not so smooth and tempest-free as word-
painting travellers love to represent them.
The forests of Ke produce magnificent timber, tall, straight, and
durable, of various qualities, some of which are said to be
superior to the best Indian teak. To make each pair of planks
used in the construction of the larger boats an entire tree is
consumed. It is felled, often miles away from the shore, cut
across to the proper length, and then hewn longitudinally into
two equal portions. Each of these forms a plank by cutting down
with the axe to a uniform thickness of three or four inches,
leaving at first a solid block at each end to prevent splitting.
Along the centre of each plank a series of projecting pieces are
left, standing up three or four inches, about the same width, and
a foot long; these are of great importance in the construction of
the vessel. When a sufficient number of planks have been made,
they are laboriously dragged through the forest by three or four
men each to the beach, where the boat is to be built. A
foundation piece, broad in the middle and rising considerably at
each end, is first laid on blocks and properly shored up. The
edges of this are worked true and smooth with the adze, and a
plank, properly curved and tapering at each end, is held firmly
up against it, while a line is struck along it which allows it to
be cut so as to fit exactly. A series of auger holes, about as
large as one's finger, are then bored along the opposite edges,
and pins of very hard wood are fitted to these, so that the two
planks are held firmly, and can be driven into the closest
contact; and difficult as this seems to do without any other aid
than rude practical skill in forming each edge to the true
corresponding curves, and in poring the holes so as exactly to
match both in position and direction, yet so well is it done that
the best European shipwright cannot produce sounder or closer-
fitting joints. The boat is built up in this way by fitting plank
to plank till the proper height and width are obtained. We have
now a skin held together entirely by the hardwood pins connecting
the edges of the planks, very strong and elastic, but having
nothing but the adhesion of these pins to prevent the planks
gaping. In the smaller boats seats, in the larger ones cross-
beams, are now fixed. They are sprung into slight notches cut to
receive them, and are further secured to the projecting pieces of
the plank below by a strong lashing of rattan. Ribs are now
formed of single pieces of tough wood chosen and trimmed so as
exactly to fit on to the projections from each plank, being
slightly notched to receive them, and securely bound to them by
rattans passed through a hole in each projecting piece close to
the surface of the plank. The ends are closed against the
vertical prow and stern posts, and further secured with pegs and
rattans, and then the boat is complete; and when fitted with
rudders, masts, and thatched covering, is ready to do battle
with, the waves. A careful consideration of the principle of this
mode of construction, and allowing for the strength and binding
qualities of rattan (which resembles in these respects wire
rather than cordage), makes me believe that a vessel carefully
built in this manner is actually stronger and safer than one
fastened in the ordinary way with nails.
During our stay here we were all very busy. Our captain was daily
superintending the completion of his two small praus. All day
long native boats were coming with fish, cocoa-nuts, parrots and
lories, earthen pans, sirip leaf, wooden bowls, and trays, &c.
&e., which every one of the fifty inhabitants of our prau seemed
to be buying on his own account, till all available and most
unavailable space of our vessel was occupied with these
miscellaneous articles: for every man on board a prau considers
himself at liberty to trade, and to carry with him whatever he
can afford to buy.
Money is unknown and valueless here--knives, cloth, and arrack
forming the only medium of exchange, with tobacco for small coin.
Every transaction is the subject of a special bargain, and the
cause of much talking. It is absolutely necessary to offer very
little, as the natives are never satisfied till you add a little
more. They are then far better pleased than if you had given them
twice the amount at first and refused to increase it.
I, too, was doing a little business, having persuaded some of the
natives to collect insects for me; and when they really found
that I gave them most fragrant tobacco for worthless black and
green beetles, I soon had scores of visitors, men, women, and
children, bringing bamboos full of creeping things, which, alas!
too frequently had eaten each other into fragments during the
tedium of a day's confinement. Of one grand new beetle,
glittering with ruby and emerald tints, I got a large quantity,
having first detected one of its wing-cases ornamenting the
outside of a native's tobacco pouch. It was quite a new species,
and had not been found elsewhere than on this little island. It
is one of the Buprestidae, and has been named Cyphogastra
calepyga.
Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by myself into
the forest, where I found delightful occupation in capturing the
large and handsome butterflies, which were tolerably abundant,
and most of them new to me; for I was now upon the confines of
the Moluccas and New Guinea,--a region the productions of which
were then among the most precious and rare in the cabinets of
Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with
splendid scarlet lories on the wing, as well as by the sight of
that most imperial butterfly, the "Priamus "of collectors, or a
closely allied species, but flying so high that I did not succeed
in capturing a specimen. One of them was brought me in a bamboo,
bored up with a lot of beetles, and of course torn to pieces. The
principal drawback of the place for a collector is the want of
good paths, and the dreadfully rugged character of the surface,
requiring the attention to be so continually directed to securing
a footing, as to make it very difficult to capture active winged
things, who pass out of reach while one is glancing to see that
the next step may not plunge one into a chasm or over a
precipice. Another inconvenience is that there are no running
streams, the rock being of so porous a nature that the surface-
water everywhere penetrates its fissures; at least such is the
character of the neighbourhood we visited, the only water being
small springs trickling out close to the sea-beach.
In the forests of Ke, arboreal Liliaceae and Pandanaceae abound,
and give a character to the vegetation in the more exposed rocky
places. Flowers were scarce, and there were not many orchids, but
I noticed the fine white butterfly-orchis, Phalaenopsis
grandiflora, or a species closely allied to it. The freshness and
vigour of the vegetation was very pleasing, and on such an arid
rocky surface was a sure indication of a perpetually humid
climate. Tall clean trunks, many of them buttressed, and immense
trees of the fig family, with aerial roots stretching out and
interlacing and matted together for fifty or a hundred feet above
the ground, were the characteristic features; and there was an
absence of thorny shrubs and prickly rattans, which would have
made these wilds very pleasant to roam in, had it not been for
the sharp honeycombed rocks already alluded to. In damp places a
fine undergrowth of broadleaved herbaceous plants was found,
about which swarmed little green lizards, with tails of the most
"heavenly blue," twisting in and out among the stalks and foliage
so actively that I often caught glimpses of their tails only,
when they startled me by their resemblance to small snakes.
Almost the only sounds in these primeval woods proceeded from two
birds, the red lories, who utter shrill screams like most of the
parrot tribe, and the large green nutmeg-pigeon, whose voice is
either a loud and deep boom, like two notes struck upon a very
large gong, or sometimes a harsh toad-like croak, altogether
peculiar and remarkable. Only two quadrupeds are said by the
natives to inhabit the island--a wild pig and a Cuscus, or
Eastern opossum, of neither of which could I obtain specimens.
The insects were more abundant, and very interesting. Of
butterflies I caught thirty-five species, most of them new to me,
and many quite unknown in European collections. Among them was
the fine yellow and black Papilio euchenor, of which but few
specimens had been previously captured, and several other
handsome butterflies of large size, as well as some beautiful
little "blues," and some brilliant dayflying moths. The beetle
tribe were less abundant, yet I obtained some very fine and rare
species. On the leaves of a slender shrub in an old clearing I
found several fine blue and black beetles of the genus Eupholus,
which almost rival in beauty- the diamond beetles of South
America. Some cocoa-nut palms in blossom on the beach were
frequented by a fine green floral beetle (Lomaptera which, when
the flowers were shaken, flew off like a small swarm of bees. I
got one of our crew to climb up the tree, and he brought me a
good number in his hand; and seeing they were valuable, I sent
him up again with my net to shake the flowers into, and thus
secured a large quantity. My best capture, however, was the
superb insect of the Buprestis family, already mentioned as
having been obtained from the natives, who told me they found it
in rotten trees in the mountains.
In the forest itself the only common and conspicuous coleoptera
were two tiger beetles. One, Therates labiata, was much larger
than our green tiger beetle, of a purple black colour, with green
metallic glosses, and the broad upper lip of a bright yellow. It
was always found upon foliage, generally of broad-leaned
herbaceous plants, and in damp and gloomy situations, taking
frequent short flights from leaf to leaf, and preserving an alert
attitude, as if always looking out for its prey. Its vicinity
could be immediately ascertained, often before it was seen, by a
very pleasant odour, like otto of roses, which it seems to emit
continually, and which may probably be attractive to the small
insects on which it feeds. The other, Tricondyla aptera, is one
of the most curious forms in the family of the Cicindelidae, and
is almost exclusively confined to the Malay islands. In shape it
resembles a very large ant, more than an inch long, and of a
purple black colour. Like an ant also it is wingless, and is
generally found ascending trees, passing around the trunks in a
spiral direction when approached, to avoid capture, so that it
requires a sudden run and active fingers to secure a specimen.
This species emits the usual fetid odour of the ground beetles.
My collections during our four days' stay at Ke were as follow:--
Birds, 13 species; insects, 194 species; and 3 kinds of land-
shells.
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