The Malay Archipelago

b >> by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

Dobbo now presented an animated appearance. Five or six new
houses had been added to the street; the praus were all brought
round to the western side of the point, where they were hauled up
on the beach, and were being caulked and covered with a thick
white lime-plaster for the homeward voyage, making them the
brightest and cleanest looking things in the place. Most of the
small boats had returned from the "blakang-tana "(back country),
as the side of the islands towards New Guinea is called. Piles of
firewood were being heaped up behind the houses; sail-makers and
carpenters were busy at work; mother-of-pearl shell was being
tied up in bundles, and the black and ugly smoked tripang was
having a last exposure to the sun before loading. The spare
portion of the crews were employed cutting and squaring timber,
and boats from Ceram and Goram were constantly unloading their
cargoes of sago-cake for the traders' homeward voyage. The fowls,
ducks, and goats all looked fat and thriving on the refuse food
of a dense population, and the Chinamen's pigs were in a state of
obesity that foreboded early death. Parrots and Tories and
cockatoos, of a dozen different binds, were suspended on bamboo
perches at the doors of the houses, with metallic green or white
fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and eventide. Young
cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered
about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in
the hot sunshine, with sometimes a pretty little kangaroo, caught
in the Aru forests, but already tame and graceful as a petted
fawn.

Of an evening there were more signs of life than at the time of
my former residence. Tom-toms, jews'-harps, and even fiddles were
to be heard, and the melancholy Malay songs sounded not
unpleasantly far into the night. Almost every day there was a
cock-fight in the street. The spectators make a ring, and after
the long steel spurs are tied on, and the poor animals are set
down to gash and kill each other, the excitement is immense.
Those who lave made bets scream and yell and jump frantically, if
they think they are going to win or lose, but in a very few
minutes it is all over; there is a hurrah from the winners, the
owners seize their cocks, the winning bird is caressed and
admired, the loser is generally dead or very badly wounded, and
his master may often be seen plucking out his feathers as he
walks away, preparing him for the cooking pot while the poor bird
is still alive.

A game at foot-ball, which generally took place at sunset, was,
however, much more interesting to me. The ball used is a rather
small one, and is made of rattan, hollow, light, and elastic. The
player keeps it dancing a little while on his foot, then
occasionally on his arm or thigh, till suddenly he gives it a
good blow with the hollow of the foot, and sends it flying high
in the air. Another player runs to meet it, and at its first
bound catches it on his foot and plays in his turn. The ball must
never be touched with the hand; but the arm, shoulder, knee, or
thigh are used at pleasure to rest the foot. Two or three played
very skilfully, keeping the ball continually flying about, but
the place was too confined to show off the game to advantage. One
evening a quarrel arose from some dispute in the game, and there
was a great row, and it was feared there would be a fight about
it--not two men only, but a party of a dozen or twenty on each
side, a regular battle with knives and krisses; but after a large
amount of talk it passed off quietly, and we heard nothing about
it afterwards.

Most Europeans being gifted by nature with a luxuriant growth of
hair upon their faces, think it disfigures them, and keep up a
continual struggle against her by mowing down every morning the
crop which has sprouted up flaring the preceding twenty-four
hours. Now the men of Mongolian race are, naturally, just as many
of us want to he. They mostly pass their lives with faces as
smooth and beardless as an infant's. But shaving seems an
instinct of the human race; for many of these people, having no
hair to take off their faces, shave their heads. Others, however,
set resolutely to work to force nature to give them a beard. One
of the chief cock-fighters at Dobbo was a Javanese, a sort of
master of the ceremonies of the ring, who tied on the spars and
acted as backer-up to one of the combatants. This man had
succeeded, by assiduous cultivation, in raising a pair of
moustaches which were a triumph of art, for they each contained
about a dozen hairs more than three inches long, and which, being
well greased and twisted, were distinctly visible (when not too
far off) as a black thread hanging down on each side of his
mouth. But the beard to match was the difficulty, for nature had
cruelly refused to give him a rudiment of hair on his chin, and
the most talented gardener could not do much if he had nothing to
cultivate. But true genius triumphs over difficulties. Although
there was no hair proper on the chin; there happened to be,
rather on one side of it, a small mole or freckle which contained
(as such things frequently do) a few stray hairs. These had been
made the most of. They had reached four or five inches in length,
and formed another black thread dangling from the left angle of
the chin. The owner carried this as if it were something
remarkable (as it certainly was); he often felt it
affectionately, passed it between his fingers, and was evidently
extremely proud of his moustaches and beard!

One of the most surprising things connected with Aru was the
excessive cheapness of all articles of European or native
manufacture. We were here two thousand miles beyond Singapore and
Batavia, which are themselves emporiums of the "far east," in a
place unvisited by, and almost unknown to, European traders;
everything reached us through at least two or three hands, often
many more; yet English calicoes and American cotton cloths could
be bought for 8s. the piece, muskets for 15s., common scissors
and German knives at three-halfpence each, and other cutlery,
cotton goods, and earthenware in the same proportion. The natives
of this out-of-the-way country can, in fact, buy all these things
at about the same money price as our workmen at home, but in
reality very much cheaper, for the produce of a few hours' labour
enables the savage to purchase in abundance what are to him
luxuries, while to the European they are necessaries of life. The
barbarian is no happier and no better off for this cheapness. On
the contrary, it has a most injurious effect on him. He wants the
stimulus of necessity to force him to labour; and if iron were as
dear as silver, and calico as costly as satin, the effect would
be beneficial to him. As it is, he has more idle hours, gets a
more constant supply of tobacco, and can intoxicate himself with
arrack more frequently and more thoroughly; for your Aru man
scorns to get half drunk-a tumbler full of arrack is but a slight
stimulus, and nothing less than half a gallon of spirit will make
him tipsy to his own satisfaction.

It is not agreeable to reflect on this state of things. At least
half of the vast multitudes of uncivilized peoples, on whom our
gigantic manufacturing system, enormous capital, and intense
competition force the produce of our looms and workshops, would
be not a whit worse off physically, and would certainly be
improved morally, if all the articles with which w e supply them
were double or treble their present prices. If at the same time
the difference of cost, or a large portion of it, could find its
way into the pockets of the manufacturing workmen, thousands
would be raised from want to comfort, from starvation to health,
and would be removed from one of the chief incentives to crime.
It is difficult for an Englishman to avoid contemplating with
pride our gigantic and ever-increasing manufactures and commerce,
and thinking everything good that renders their progress still
more rapid, either by lowering the price at which the articles
can be produced, or by discovering new markets to which they may
be sent. If, however, the question that is so frequently asked of
the votaries of the less popular sciences were put here--"Cui
bono?"--it would be found more difficult to answer than had been
imagined. The advantages, even to the few who reap them, would be
seen to be mostly physical, while the wide-spread moral and
intellectual evils resulting from unceasing labour, low wages,
crowded dwellings, and monotonous occupations, to perhaps as
large a number as those who gain any real advantage, might be
held to show a balance of evil so great, as to lead the greatest
admirers of our manufactures and commerce to doubt the
advisability of their further development. It will be said: "We
cannot stop it; capital must be employed; our population must be
kept at work; if we hesitate a moment, other nations now hard
pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin will follow." Some
of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult
problem which we have to solve; and I am inclined to think it is
this difficulty that makes men conclude that what seems a
necessary and unalterable state of things must be good-that its
benefits must he greater than its evils. This was the feeling of
the American advocates of slavery; they could not see an easy,
comfortable way out of it. In our own case, however, it is to be
hoped, that if a fair consideration of the matter in all its
hearings shows that a preponderance of evil arises from the
immensity of our manufactures and commerce-evil which must go on
increasing with their increase-there is enough both of political
wisdom and true philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to
turn their superabundant wealth into other channels. The fact
that has led to these remarks is surely a striking one: that in
one of the most remote corners of the earth savages can buy
clothing cheaper than the people of the country where it is made;
that the weaver's child should shiver in the wintry wind, unable
to purchase articles attainable by the wild natives of a tropical
climate, where clothing is mere ornament or luxury, should make
us pause ere we regard with unmixed admiration the system which
has led to such a result, and cause us to look with some
suspicion on the further extension of that system. It must be
remembered too that our commerce is not a purely natural growth.
It has been ever fostered by the legislature, and forced to an
unnatural luxuriance by the protection of our fleets and armies.
The wisdom and the justice of this policy have been already
doubted. So soon, therefore, as it is seen that the further
extension of our manufactures and commerce would be an evil, the
remedy is not far to seek.

After six weeks' confinement to the house I was at length well,
and could resume my daily walks in the forest. I did not,
however, find it so productive as when I had first arrived at
Dobbo. There was a damp stagnation about the paths, and insects
were very scarce. In some of my best collecting places I now
found a mass of rotting wood, mingled with young shoots, and
overgrown with climbers, yet I always managed to add something
daily to my extensive collections. I one day met with a curious
example of failure of instinct, which, by showing it to be
fallible, renders it very doubtful whether it is anything more
than hereditary habit, dependent on delicate modifications of
sensation. Some sailors cut down a good-sized tree, and, as is
always my practice, I visited it daily for some time in search of
insects. Among other beetles came swarms of the little
cylindrical woodborers (Platypus, Tesserocerus, &c.), and
commenced making holes in the bark. After a day or two I was
surprised to find hundreds of them sticking in the holes they had
bored, and on examination discovered that the milky sap of the
tree was of the nature of gutta-percha, hardening rapidly on
exposure to the air, and glueing the little animals in self-dug
graves. The habit of boring holes in trees in which to deposit
their eggs, was not accompanied by a sufficient instinctive
knowledge of which trees were suitable, and which destructive to
them. If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive
odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to
their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same
odour was disagreeable, and who therefore avoided the dangerous
trees, would survive, and would be credited by us with an
instinct, whereas they would really be guided by a simple
sensation.

Those curious little beetles, the Brenthidae, were very abundant
in Aru. The females have a pointed rostrum, with which they bore
deep holes in the bark of dead trees, often burying the rostrum
up to the eyes, and in these holes deposit their eggs. The males
are larger, and have the rostrum dilated at the end, and
sometimes terminating in a good-sized pair of jaws. I once saw
two males fighting together; each had a fore-leg laid across the
neck of the other, and the rostrum bent quite in an attitude of
defiance, and looking most ridiculous. Another time, two were
fighting for a female, who stood close by busy at her boring.
They pushed at each other with their rostra, and clawed and
thumped, apparently in the greatest rage, although their coats of
mail must have saved both from injury. The small one, however,
soon ran away, acknowledging himself vanquished. In most
Coleoptera the female is larger than the male, and it is
therefore interesting, as bearing on the question of sexual
selection, that in this case, as in the stag-beetles where the
males fight together, they should be not only better armed, but
also much larger than the females. Just as we were going away, a
handsome tree, allied to Erythrina, was in blossom, showing its
masses of large crimson flowers scattered here and there about
the forest. Could it have been seen from an elevation, it would
have had a fine effect; from below I could only catch sight of
masses of gorgeous colour in clusters and festoons overhead,
about which flocks of blue and orange lories were fluttering and
screaming.

A good many people died at Dobbo this season; I believe about
twenty. They were buried in a little grove of Casuarinas behind
my house. Among the traders was a. Mahometan priest, who
superintended the funerals, which were very simple. The body was
wrapped up in new white cotton cloth, and was carried on a bier
to the grave. All the spectators sat down on the ground, and the
priest chanted some verses from the Koran. The graves were fenced
round with a slight bamboo railing, and a little carved wooden
head-post was put to mark the spot. There was also in the village
a small mosque, where every Friday the faithful went to pray.
This is probably more remote from Mecca than any other mosque in
the world, and marks the farthest eastern extension of the
Mahometan religion. The Chinese here, as elsewhere, showed their
superior wealth and civilization by tombstones of solid granite
brought from Singapore, with deeply-cut inscriptions, the
characters of which are painted in red, blue, and gold. No people
have more respect for the graves of their relations and friends
than this strange, ubiquitous, money-getting people.

Soon after we had returned to Dobbo, my Macassar boy, Baderoon,
took his wages and left me, because I scolded him for laziness.
He then occupied himself in gambling, and at first had some luck,
and bought ornaments, and had plenty of money. Then his luck
turned; he lost everything, borrowed money and lost that, and was
obliged to become the slave of his creditor till he had worked
out the debt. He was a quick and active lad when he pleased, but
was apt to be idle, and had such an incorrigible propensity for
gambling, that it will very likely lead to his becoming a slave
for life.

The end of June was now approaching, the east monsoon had set in
steadily, and in another week or two Dobbo would be deserted.
Preparations for departure were everywhere visible, and every
sunny day (rather rare now) the streets were as crowded and as
busy as beehives. Heaps of tripang were finally dried and packed
up in sacks; mother-of-pearl shell, tied up with rattans into
convenient bundles, was all day long being carried to the beach
to be loaded; water-casks were filled, and cloths and mat-sails
mended and strengthened for the run home before the strong east
wind. Almost every day groups of natives arrived from the most
distant parts of the islands, with cargoes of bananas and sugar-
cane to exchange for tobacco, sago, bread, and other luxuries,
before the general departure. The Chinamen killed their fat pig
and made their parting feast, and kindly sent me some pork, and a
basin of birds' nest stew, which had very little more taste than
a dish of vermicelli. My boy Ali returned from Wanumbai, where I
had sent him alone for a fortnight to buy Paradise birds and
prepare the skins; he brought me sixteen glorious specimens, and
had he not been very ill with fever and ague might have obtained
twice the number. He had lived with the people whose house I had
occupied, and it is a proof of their goodness, if fairly treated,
that although he took with him a quantity of silver dollars to
pay for the birds they caught, no attempt was made to rob him,
which might have been done with the most perfect impunity. He was
kindly treated when ill, and was brought back to me with the
balance of the dollars he had not spent.

The Wanumbai people, like almost all the inhabitants of the Aru
Islands, are perfect savages, and I saw no signs of any religion.
There are, however, three or four villages on the coast where
schoolmasters from Amboyna reside, and the people are nominally
Christians, and are to some extent educated and civilized. I
could not get much real knowledge of the customs of the Aru
people during the short time I was among them, but they have
evidently been considerably influenced by their long association
with Mahometan traders. They often bury their dead, although the
national custom is to expose the body an a raised stage till it
decomposes. Though there is no limit to the number of wives a man
may have, they seldom exceed one or two. A wife is regularly
purchased from the parents, the price being a large assortment of
articles, always including gongs, crockery, and cloth. They told
me that some of the tribes kill the old men and women when they
can no longer work, but I saw many very old and decrepid people,
who seemed pretty well attended to. No doubt all who have much
intercourse with the Bugis and Ceramese traders gradually lose
many of their native customs, especially as these people often
settle in their villages and marry native women.

The trade carried on at Dobbo is very considerable. This year
there were fifteen large praus from Macassar, and perhaps a
hundred small boats from Ceram, Goram, and Ke. The Macassar
cargoes are worth about £1,000. each, and the other boats take
away perhaps about £3,000, worth, so that the whole exports may
be estimated at £18,000. per annum. The largest and most bulky
items are pearl-shell and tripang, or "beche-de-mer," with
smaller quantities of tortoise-shell, edible birds' nests,
pearls, ornamental woods, timber, and Birds of Paradise. These
are purchased with a variety of goods. Of arrack, about equal in
strength to ordinary West India rum, 3,000 boxes, each containing
fifteen half-gallon bottles, are consumed annually. Native cloth
from Celebes is much esteemed for its durability, and large
quantities are sold, as well as white English calico and American
unbleached cottons, common crockery, coarse cutlery, muskets,
gunpowder, gongs, small brass cannon, and elephants' tusks. These
three last articles constitute the wealth of the Aru people, with
which they pay for their wives, or which they hoard up as "real
property." Tobacco is in immense demand for chewing, and it must
be very strong, or an Aru man will not look at it. Knowing how
little these people generally work, the mass of produce obtained
annually shows that the islands must be pretty thickly inhabited,
especially along the coasts, as nine-tenths of the whole are
marine productions.

It was on the 2d of July that we left Aru, followed by all the
Macassar praus, fifteen in number, who had agreed to sail in
company. We passed south of Banda, and then steered due west,
not seeing land for three days, till we sighted some low islands
west of Bouton. We had a strong and steady south-east wind day
and night, which carried us on at about five knots an hour, where
a clipper ship would have made twelve. The sky was continually
cloudy, dark, and threatening, with occasional drizzling showers,
till we were west of Bouru, when it cleared up and we enjoyed the
bright sunny skies of the dry season for the rest of our voyage.
It is about here, therefore that the seasons of the eastern and
western regions of the Archipelago are divided. West of this line
from June to December is generally fine, and often very dry, the
rest of the year being the wet season. East of it the weather is
exceedingly uncertain, each island, and each side of an island,
having its own peculiarities. The difference seems to consist not
so much in the distribution of the rainfall as in that of the
clouds and the moistness of the atmosphere. In Aru, for example,
when we left, the little streams were all dried up, although the
weather was gloomy; while in January, February, and March, when
we had the hottest sunshine and the finest days, they were always
flowing. The driest time of all the year in Aru occurs in
September and October, just as it does in Java and Celebes. The
rainy seasons agree, therefore, with those of the western
islands, although the weather is very different. The Molucca sea
is of a very deep blue colour, quite distinct from the clear
light blue of the Atlantic. In cloudy and dull weather it looks
absolutely black, and when crested with foam has a stern and
angry aspect. The wind continued fair and strong during our whole
voyage, and we reached Macassar in perfect safety on the evening
of the 11th of July, having made the passage from Aru (more than
a thousand miles) in nine and a half days.

My expedition to the Aru Islands had been eminently successful.
Although I had been for months confined to the house by illness,
and had lost much time by the want of the means of locomotion,
and by missing the right season at the right place, I brought
away with me more than nine thousand specimens of natural
objects, of about sixteen hundred distinct species. I had made
the acquaintance of a strange and little-known race of men; I had
become familiar with the traders of the far East; I had revelled
in the delights of exploring a new fauna and flora, one of the
most remarkable and most beautiful and least-known in the world;
and I had succeeded in the main object for which I had undertaken
the journey-namely, to obtain fine specimens of the magnificent
Birds of Paradise, and to be enabled to observe them in their
native forests. By this success I was stimulated to continue my
researches in the Moluccas and New Guinea for nearly five years
longer, and it is still the portion of my travels to which I look
back with the most complete satisfaction.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE ARU ISLANDS--PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ASPECTS OF NATURE.

IN this chapter I propose to give a general sketch of the
physical geography of the Aru Islands, and of their relation to
the surrounding countries; and shall thus be able to incorporate
the information obtained from traders, and from the works of
other naturalists with my own observations in these exceedingly
interesting and little-known regions.

The Aru group may be said to consist of one very large central
island with a number of small ones scattered round it. The great
island is called by the natives and traders "Tang-busar" (great
or mainland), to distinguish it as a whole from Dobbo, or any of
the detached islands. It is of an irregular oblong form, about
eighty miles from north to south, and forty or fifty from east to
west, in which direction it is traversed by three narrow
channels, dividing it into four portions. These channels are
always called rivers by the traders, which puzzled me much till I
passed through one of them, and saw how exceedingly applicable
the name was. The northern channel, called the river of Watelai,
is about a quarter of a mile wide at its entrance, but soon
narrows to abort the eighth of a mile, which width it retains,
with little variation, during its whole, length of nearly fifty
miles, till it again widens at its eastern mouth. Its course is
moderately winding, and the hanks are generally dry and somewhat
elevated. In many places there are low cliffs of hard coralline
limestone, more or less worn by the action of water; while
sometimes level spaces extend from the banks to low ranges of
hills a little inland. A few small streams enter it from right
and left, at the mouths of which are some little rocky islands.
The depth is very regular, being from ten to fifteen fathoms, and
it has thus every feature of a true river, but for the salt water
and the absence of a current. The other two rivers, whose names
are Vorkai and Maykor, are said to be very similar in general
character; but they are rather near together, and have a number
of cross channels intersecting the flat tract between them. On
the south side of Maykor the banks are very rocky, and from
thence to the southern extremity of Aru is an uninterrupted
extent of rather elevated and very rocky country, penetrated by
numerous small streams, in the high limestone cliffs bordering
which the edible birds' nests of Aru are chiefly obtained. All my
informants stated that the two southern rivers are larger than
Watelai.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24