The Malay Archipelago

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Several praus went out in search of the pirates, sentinels were
appointed, and watch-fires lighted on the beach to guard against
the possibility of a night attack, though it was hardly thought
they would be bold enough to attempt to plunder Dobbo. The next
day the praus returned, and we had positive information that
these scourges of the Eastern seas were really among us. One of
Herr Warzbergen's small praus also arrived in a sad plight. It
had been attacked six days before, just as it was returning, from
the "blakang tana." The crew escaped in their small boat and hid
in the jungle, while the pirates came up and plundered the
vessel. They took away everything but the cargo of mother-of-
pearl shell, which was too bulky for them. All the clothes and
boxes of the men, and the sails and cordage of the prau, were
cleared off. They had four large war boats, and fired a volley of
musketry as they came up, and sent off their small boats to the
attack. After they had left, our men observed from their
concealment that three had stayed behind with a small boat; and
being driven to desperation by the sight of the plundering, one
brave fellow swam off armed only with his parang, or chopping-
knife, and coming on them unawares made a desperate attack,
killing one and wounding the other two, receiving himself numbers
of slight wounds, and then swimming off again when almost
exhausted. Two other prams were also plundered, and the crew of
one of them murdered to a man. They are said to be Sooloo
pirates, but have Bugis among them. On their way here they have
devastated one of the small islands east of Ceram. It is now
eleven years since they have visited Aru, and by thus making
their attacks at long and uncertain intervals the alarm dies
away, and they find a population for the most part unarmed and
unsuspicious of danger. None of the small trading vessels now
carry arms, though they did so for a year or two after the last
attack, which was just the time when there was the least occasion
for it. A week later one of the smaller pirate boats was captured
in the "blakang tana." Seven men were killed and three taken
prisoners. The larger vessels have been often seen but cannot be
caught, as they have very strong crews, and can always escape by
rowing out to sea in the eye of the wind, returning at night.
They will thus remain among the innumerable islands and channels,
till the change of the monsoon enables them to sail westward.

March 9th.-For four or five days we have had a continual gale of
wind, with occasional gusts of great fury, which seem as if they
would send Dobbo into the sea. Rain accompanies it almost every
alternate hour, so that it is not a pleasant time. During such
weather I can do little, but am busy getting ready a boat I have
purchased, for an excursion into the interior. There is immense
difficulty about men, but I believe the "Orang-kaya," or head man
of Wamma, will accompany me to see that I don't run into danger.

Having become quite an old inhabitant of Dobbo, I will endeavour
to sketch the sights and sounds that pervade it, and the manners
and customs of its inhabitants. The place is now pretty full, and
the streets present a far more cheerful aspect than when we first
arrived. Every house is a store, where the natives barter their
produce for what they are most in need of. Knives, choppers,
swords, guns, tobacco, gambier, plates, basins, handkerchiefs,
sarongs, calicoes, and arrack, are the principal articles wanted
by the natives; but some of the stores contain also tea, coffee,
sugar, wine, biscuits, &c., for the supply of the traders; and
others are full of fancy goods, china ornaments, looking-glasses,
razors, umbrellas, pipes, and purses, which take the fancy of the
wealthier natives. Every fine day mats are spread before the
doors and the tripang is put out to dry, as well as sugar, salt,
biscuit, tea, cloths, and other things that get injured by an
excessively moist atmosphere. In the morning and evening, spruce
Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue
trousers, white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is
plaited till it reaches almost to their heels. An old Bugis hadji
regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dignity of flowing
green silk robe and gay turban, followed by two small boys
carrying his sirih and betel boxes.

In every vacant space new houses are being built, and all sorts
of odd little cooking-sheds are erected against the old ones,
while in some out-of-the-way corners, massive log pigsties are
tenanted by growing porkers; for how can the Chinamen exist six
months without one feast of pig?

Here and there are stalls where bananas are sold, and every
morning two little boys go about with trays of sweet rice and
crated cocoa-nut, fried fish, or fried plantains; and whichever
it may be, they have but one cry, and that is
"Chocolat-t--t!" This must be a Spanish or Portuguese cry, handed
down for centuries, while its meaning has been lost. The Bugis
sailors, while hoisting the main sail, cry out, "Vela a vela,--
vela, vela, vela!" repeated in an everlasting chorus. As "vela"
is Portuguese a sail, I supposed I had discovered the origin of
this, but I found afterwards they used the same cry when heaving
anchor, and often chanted it to "hela," which is so much an
universal expression of exertion and hard breathing that it is
most probably a mere interjectional cry.

I daresay there are now near five hundred people in Dobbo of
various races, all met in this remote corner of the East, as they
express it, "to look for their fortune;" to get money any way
they can. They are most of them people who have the very worst
reputation for honesty as well as every other form of morality,--
Chinese, Bugis, Ceramese, and half-caste Javanese, with a
sprinkling of half-wild Papuans from Timor, Babber, and other
islands, yet all goes on as yet very quietly. This motley,
ignorant, bloodthirsty, thievish population live here without the
shadow of a government, with no police, no courts, and no
lawyers; yet they do not cut each other's throats, do not plunder
each other day and night, do not fall into the anarchy such a
state of things might be supposed to lead to. It is very
extraordinary! It puts strange thoughts into one's head about the
mountain-load of government under which people exist in Europe,
and suggests the idea that we may be over-governed. Think of the
hundred Acts of Parliament annually enacted to prevent us, the
people of England, from cutting each other's throats, or from
doing to our neighbour as we would not be done by. Think of the
thousands of lawyers and barristers whose whole lives are spent
in telling us what the hundred Acts of Parliament mean, and one
would be led to infer that if Dobbo has too little law England
has too much.

Here we may behold in its simplest form the genius of Commerce at
the work of Civilization. Trade is the magic that keeps all at
peace, and unites these discordant elements into a well-behaved
community. All are traders, and know that peace and order are
essential to successful trade, and thus a public opinion is
created which puts down all lawlessness. Often in former year,
when strolling along the Campong Glam in Singapore, I have
thought how wild and ferocious the Bugis sailors looked, and how
little should like to trust myself among them. But now I find
them to be very decent, well-behaved fellows; I walk daily
unarmed in the jungle, where I meet them continually; I sleep in
a palm-leaf hut, which any one may enter, with as little fear and
as little danger of thieves or murder as if I were under the
protection of the Metropolitan police. It is true the Dutch
influence is felt here. The islands are nominally under the
government of the Moluccas, which the native chiefs acknowledge;
and in most years a commissioner arrives from Amboyna, who makes
the tour of the islands, hears complaints, settle disputes, and
carries away prisoner any heinous offender. This year he is not
expected to come, as no orders have yet been received to prepare
for him; so the people of Dobbo will probably be left to their
own devices. One day a man was caught in the act of stealing a
piece of iron from Herr Warzbergen's house, which he had entered
by making a hole through the thatch wall. In the evening the
chief traders of the place, Bugis and Chinese, assembled, the
offender was tried and found guilty, and sentenced
to receive twenty lashes on the spot. They were given with a
small rattan in the middle of the street, not very severely, the
executioner appeared to sympathise a little with the culprit. The
disgrace seemed to be thought as much of as the pain; for though
any amount of clever cheating is thought rather meritorious than
otherwise, open robbery and housebreaking meet with universal
reprobation.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE ARU ISLANDS.--JOURNEY AND RESIDENCE IN THE INTERIOR.

(MARCH TO MAY 1857.)

MY boat was at length ready, and having obtained two men besides
my own servants, after an enormous amount of talk and trouble, we
left Dobbo on the morning of March 13th, for the mainland of Aru.
By noon we reached the mouth of a small river or creek, which we
ascended, winding among mangrove, swamps, with here and there a
glimpse of dry land. In two hours we reached a house, or rather
small shed, of the most miserable description, which our
steersman, the "Orang-kaya" of Wamma, said was the place we were
to stay at, and where he had assured me we could get every kind
of bird and beast to be found in Aru. The shed was occupied by
about a dozen men, women, and children; two cooking fires were
burning in it, and there seemed little prospect of my obtaining
any accommodation. I however deferred inquiry till I had seen the
neighbouring forest, and immediately started off with two men,
net, and guns, along a path at the back of the house. In an
hour's walk I saw enough to make me determine to give the place a
trial, and on my return, finding the "Orang-kaya" was in a strong
fever-fit and unable to do anything, I entered into negotiations
with the owner of the house for the use of a slip at one end of
it about five feet wide, for a week, and agreed to pay as rent
one "parang," or chopping-knife. I then immediately got my boxes
and bedding out of the boat, hung up a shelf for my bird-skins
and insects, and got all ready for work next morning. My own boys
slept in the boat to guard the remainder of my property; a
cooking place sheltered by a few mats was arranged under a tree
close by, and I felt that degree of satisfaction and enjoyment
which I always experience when, after much trouble and delay, I
am on the point of beginning work in a new locality.

One of my first objects was to inquire for the people who are
accustomed to shoot the Paradise birds. They lived at some
distance in the jungle, and a man was sent to call them. When
they arrived, we had a talk by means of the "Orang-kaya "as
interpreter, and they said they thought they could get some. They
explained that they shoot the birds with a bow and arrow, the
arrow having a conical wooden cap fitted to the end as large as a
teacup, so as to kill the bird by the violence of the blow
without making any wound or shedding any blood. The trees
frequented by the birds are very lofty; it is therefore necessary
to erect a small leafy covering or hut among the branches, to
which the hunter mounts before daylight in the morning and
remains the whole day, and whenever a bird alights they are
almost sure of securing it. (See Frontispiece.) They returned to
their homes the same evening, and I never saw anything more of
them, owing, as I afterwards found, to its being too early to
obtain birds in good plumage.

The first two or three days of our stay here were very wet, and I
obtained but few insects or birds, but at length, when I was
beginning to despair, my boy Baderoon returned one day with a
specimen which repaid me for months of delay and expectation. It
was a small bird a little less than a thrush. The greater part of
its plumage was of an intense cinnabar red, with a gloss as of
spun glass. On the head the feathers became short and velvety,
and shaded into rich orange. Beneath, from the breast downwards,
was pure white, with the softness and gloss of silk, and across
the breast a band of deep metallic green separated this colour
from the red of the throat. Above each eye was a round spot of
the same metallic green; the bill was yellow, and the feet and
legs were of a fine cobalt ó111e, strikingly contrasting with all
the other parts of the body. Merely in arrangement of colours and
texture of plumage this little bird was a gem of the first water,
yet there comprised only half its strange beauty. Springing from
each side of the breast, and ordinarily lying concealed under the
wings, were little tufts of greyish feathers about two inches
long, and each terminated by a broad band of intense emerald
green. These plumes can be raised at the will of the bird, and
spread out into a pair of elegant fans when the wings are
elevated. But this is not the only ornament. The two middle
feathers of the tail are in the form of slender wires about five
inches long, and which diverge in a beautiful double curve. About
half an inch of the end of this wire is webbed on the outer side
only, awe coloured of a fine metallic green, and being curled
spirally inwards form a pair of elegant glittering buttons,
hanging five inches below the body, and the same distance apart.
These two ornaments, the breast fans and the spiral tipped tail
wires, are altogether unique, not occurring on any other species
of the eight thousand different birds that are known to exist
upon the earth; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of
plumage, render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the many
lovely productions of nature. My transports of admiration and
delight quite amused my Aru hosts, who saw nothing more in the
"Burong raja" than we do in the robin of the goldfinch.

Thus one of my objects in coming to the far fast was
accomplished. I had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of
Paradise (Paradisea regia), which had been described by Linnaeus
from skins preserved in a mutilated state by the natives. I knew
how few Europeans had ever beheld the perfect little organism I
now gazed upon, and how very imperfectly it was still known in
Europe. The emotions excited in the minds of a naturalist, who
has long desired to see the actual thing which he has hitherto
known only by description, drawing, or badly-preserved external
covering--especially when that thing is of surpassing rarity and
beauty, require the poetic faculty fully to express them. The
remote island in which I found myself situated, in an almost
unvisited sea, far from the tracks of merchant fleets and navies;
the wild luxuriant tropical forest, which stretched far away on
every side; the rude uncultured savages who gathered round me,--
all had their influence in determining the emotions with which I
gazed upon this "thing of beauty." I thought of the long ages of
the past, during which the successive generations of this little
creature had run their course--year by year being born, and
living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no
intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance
such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of
melancholy. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite
creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms
only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to
come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should
civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral,
intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these
virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the
nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to
cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these
very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is
fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely
tell us that all living things were _not_ made for man. Many of
them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has
gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every
advance in man's intellectual development; and their happiness
and enjoyment, their loves and hates, their struggles for
existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be
immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation
alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of
the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less
intimately connected.

After the first king-bird was obtained, I went with my men into
the forest, and we were not only rewarded with another in equally
perfect plumage, but I was enabled to see a little of the habits
of both it and the larger species. It frequents the lower trees
of the less dense forests: and is very active, flying strongly
with a whirring sound, and continually hopping or flying from
branch to branch. It eats hard stone-bearing fruits as large as a
gooseberry, and often flutters its wings after the manner of the
South American manakins, at which time it elevates and expands
the beautiful fans with which its breast is adorned. The natives
of Aru call it "Goby-goby."

One day I get under a tree where a number of the Great Paradise
birds were assembled, but they were high up in the thickest of
the foliage, and flying and jumping about so continually that I
could get no good view of them. At length I shot one, but it was
a young specimen, and was entirely of a rich chocolate-brown
colour, without either the metallic green throat or yellow plumes
of the full-grown bird. All that I had yet seen resembled this,
and the natives told me that it would be about two months before
any would be found in full plumage. I still hoped, therefore, to
get some. Their voice is most extraordinary. At early morn,
before the sun has risen, we hear a loud cry of "Wawk-wawk-wawk,
wók-wók-wók," which resounds through the forest, changing its
direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going
to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example; lories and
parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and
bark, and the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their
morning song. As I lie listening to these interesting sounds, I
realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for
months together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped
rather than expected ever to visit. I think how many besides my
self have longed to reach these almost fairy realms, and to see
with their own eyes the many wonderful and beautiful things which
I am daily encountering. But now Ali and Baderoon are up and
getting ready their guns and ammunition, and little Brio has his
fire lighted and is boiling my coffee, and I remember that I had
a black cockatoo brought in late last night, which I must skin
immediately, and so I jump up and begin my day's work very
happily.

This cockatoo is the first I have seen, and is a great prize. It
has a rather small and weak body, long weak legs, large wings,
and an enormously developed head, ornamented with a magnificent
crest, and armed with a sharp-pointed hoofed bill of immense size
and strength. The plumage is entirely black, but has all over it
the curious powdery white secretion characteristic of cockatoo.
The cheeks are bare, and of an intense blood-red colour. Instead
of the harsh scream of the white cockatoos, its voice is a
somewhat plaintive whistle. The tongue is a curious organ, being
a slender fleshy cylinder of a deep red colour, terminated by a
horny black plate, furrowed across and somewhat prehensile. The
whole tongue has a considerable extensile power. I will here
relate something of the habits of this bird, with which I have
since become acquainted. It frequents the lower parts of the
forest, and is seen singly, or at most two or three together. It
flies slowly and noiselessly, and may be killed by a
comparatively slight wound. It eats various fruits arid seeds,
but seems more particularly attached to the kernel of the kanary-
nut, which grows on a lofty forest tree (Canarium commune),
abundant in the islands where this bird is found; and the manner
in which it gets at these seeds shows a correlation of structure
and habits, which would point out the "kanary" as its special
food. The shell of this nut is so excessively hard that only a
heavy hammer will crack it; it is somewhat triangular, and the
outside is quite smooth. The manner in which the bird opens these
nuts is very curious. Taking one endways in its bill and keeping
it firm by a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch
by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged lower mandible.
This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and biting off
a piece of leaf retains it in the deep notch of the upper
mandible, and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from
slipping by the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes the edge of the
lower mandible in the notch, and by a powerful nip breaks of a
piece of the shell. again taking the nut in its claws, it inserts
the very long and sharp point of the bill and picks out the
kernel, which is seized hold of, morsel by morsel, by the
extensible tongue. Thus every detail of form. and structure in
the extraordinary bill of this bird seems to have its use, and we
may easily conceive that the black cockatoos have maintained
themselves in competition with their more active and more
numerous white allies, by their power of existing on a kind of
food which no other bird is able to extract from its stony shell.
The species is the Microglossum aterrimum of naturalists.

During the two weeks which I spent in this little settlement, I
had good opportunities of observing the natives at their own
home, and living in their usual manner. There is a great monotony
and uniformity in everyday savage life, and it seemed to me a
more miserable existence than when it had the charm of novelty.
To begin with the most important fact in the existence of
uncivilized peoples--their food--the Aru men have no regular
supply, no staff of life, such as bread, rice, mandiocca, maize,
or sago, which are the daily food of a large proportion of
mankind. They have, however, many sorts of vegetables, plantains,
yams, sweet potatoes, and raw sago; and they chew up vast
quantities of sugar-cane, as well as betel-nuts, gambir, and
tobacco. Those who live on the coast have plenty of fish; but
when inland, as we are here, they only go to the sea
occasionally, and then bring home cockles and other shell-fish by
the boatload. Now and then they get wild pig or kangaroo, but too
rarely to form anything like a regular part of their diet, which
is essentially vegetable; and what is of more importance, as
affecting their health, green, watery vegetables, imperfectly
cooked, and even these in varying and often in sufficient
quantities. To this diet may be attributed the prevalence of skin
diseases, and ulcers on the legs and joints. The scurfy skin
disease so common among savages has a close connexion with the
poorness and irregularity of their living. The Malays, who are
never without their daily rice, are generally free from it; the
hill-Dyaks of Borneo, who grow rice and live well, are clean
skinned while the less industrious and less cleanly tribes, who
live for a portion of the year on fruits and vegetables only, are
very subject to this malady. It seems clear that in this, as in
other respects, man is not able to make a beast of himself with
impunity, feeding like the cattle on the herbs and fruits of the
earth, and taking no thought of the morrow. To maintain his
health and beauty he must labour to prepare some farinaceous
product capable of being stored and accumulated, so as to give
him a regular supply of wholesome food. When this is obtained, he
may add vegetables, fruits, and meat with advantage.

The chief luxury of the Aru people, besides betel and tobacco, is
arrack (Java rum), which the traders bring in great quantities
and sell very cheap. A day's fishing or rattan cutting will
purchase at least a half-gallon bottle; and when the tripang or
birds' nests collected during a season are sold, they get whole
boxes, each containing fifteen such bottles, which the inmates of
a house will sit round day and night till they have finished.
They themselves tell me that at such bouts they often tear to
pieces the house they are in, break and destroy everything they
can lay their hands on, and make such an infernal riot as is
alarming to behold.

The houses and furniture are on a par with the food. A rude shed,
supported on rough and slender sticks rather than posts, no
walls, but the floor raised to within a foot of the eaves, is the
style of architecture they usually adopt. Inside there are
partition walls of thatch, forming little boxes or sleeping
places, to accommodate the two or three separate families that
usually live together. A few mats, baskets, and cooking vessels,
with plates and basins purchased from the Macassar traders,
constitute their whole furniture; spears and bows are their
weapons; a sarong or mat forms the clothing of the women, a
waistcloth of the men. For hours or even for days they sit idle
in their houses, the women bringing in the vegetables or sago
which form their food. Sometimes they hunt or fish a little, or
work at their houses or canoes, but they seem to enjoy pure
idleness, and work as little as they can. They have little to
vary the monotony of life, little that can be called pleasure,
except idleness and conversation. And they certainly do talk!
Every evening there is a little Babel around me: but as I
understand not a word of it, I go on with my book or work
undisturbed. Now and then they scream and shout, or laugh
frantically for variety; and this goes on alternately with
vociferous talking of men, women, and children, till long after I
am in my mosquito curtain and sound asleep.

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