Irene Elliott Benson - "How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl"

Charles Neville Buck - "The Call of the Cumberlands"

Selected by Beverly Nichols - "Book of Old Ballads"

Victor Appleton - "Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Malay Archipelago Volume 1

b >> by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago Volume 1




On the 4th of January I left Amboyna for Ternate; but two years
later, in October 1859, I again visited it after my residence in
Menado, and stayed a month in the town in a small house which I
hired for the sake of assorting and packing up a large and varied
collection which I had brought with me from North Celebes,
Ternate, and Gilolo. I was obliged to do this because the mail
steamer would have come the following month by way of Amboyna to
Ternate, and I should have been delayed two months before I could
have reached the former place. I then paid my first visit to
Ceram, and on returning to prepare for my second more complete
exploration of that island, I stayed (much against my will) two
months at Paso, on the isthmus which connects the two portions of
the island of Amboyna. This village is situated on the eastern
side of the isthmus, on sandy ground, with a very pleasant view
over the sea to the island of Haruka. On the Amboyna side of the
isthmus there is a small river which has been continued by a
shallow canal to within thirty yards of high-water mark on the
other side. Across this small space, which is sandy and but
slightly elevated, all small boats and praus can be easily
dragged, and all the smaller traffic from Ceram and the islands
of Saparúa and Harúka, passes through Paso. The canal is not
continued quite through, merely because every spring-tide would
throw up just such a sand-bank as now exists.

I had been informed that the fine butterfly Ornithoptera priamus
was plentiful here, as well as the racquet-tailed kingfisher and
the ring-necked lory. I found, however, that I had missed the
time for the former: and birds of all kinds were very scarce,
although I obtained a few good ones, including one or two of the
above-mentioned rarities. I was much pleased to get here the fine
long-armed chafer, Euchirus longimanus. This extraordinary insect
is rarely or never captured except when it comes to drink the sap
of the sugar palms, where it is found by the natives when they go
early in the morning to take away the bamboos which have been
filled during the night. For some time one or two were brought me
every day, generally alive. They are sluggish insects, and pull
themselves lazily along by means of their immense forelegs. A
figure of this and other Moluccan beetles is given in the 27th
chapter of this work.

I was kept at Paso by an inflammatory eruption, brought on by the
constant attacks of small acari-like harvest-bugs, for which the
forests of Ceram are famous, and also by the want of nourishing
food while in that island. At one time I was covered with severe
boils. I had them on my eye, cheek, armpits, elbows, back,
thighs, knees, and ankles, so that I was unable to sit or walk,
and had great difficulty in finding a side to lie upon without
pain. These continued for some weeks, fresh ones coming out as
fast as others got well; but good living and sea baths ultimately
cured them.

About the end of January Charles Allen, who had been my assistant
in Malacca and Borneo, again joined me on agreement for three
years; and as soon as I got tolerably well, we had plenty to do
laying in stores and making arrangements for our ensuing
campaign. Our greatest difficulty was in obtaining men, but at
last we succeeded in getting two each. An Amboyna Christian named
Theodorus Watakena, who had been some time with me and had learned
to skin birds very well, agreed to go with Allen, as well as a
very quiet and industrious lad named Cornelius, whom I had
brought from Menado. I had two Amboynese, named Petrus Rehatta,
and Mesach Matahena; the latter of whom had two brothers, named
respectively Shadrach and Abednego, in accordance with the usual
custom among these people of giving only Scripture names to their
children.

During the time I resided in this place, I enjoyed a luxury I have
never met with either before or since--the true bread-fruit. A
good deal of it has been planted about here and in the
surrounding villages, and almost everyday we had opportunities
of purchasing some, as all the boats going to Amboyna were
unloaded just opposite my door to be dragged across the isthmus.
Though it grows in several other parts of the Archipelago, it is
nowhere abundant, and the season for it only lasts a short time.
It is baked entire in the hot embers, and the inside scooped out
with a spoon. I compared it to Yorkshire pudding; Charles Allen
said it was like mashed potatoes and milk. It is generally about
the size of a melon, a little fibrous towards the centre, but
everywhere else quite smooth and puddingy, something in
consistence between yeast-dumplings and batter-pudding. We
sometimes made curry or stew of it, or fried it in slices; but it
is no way so good as simply baked. It may be eaten sweet or
savory. With meat and gravy it is a vegetable superior to any I
know, either in temperate or tropical countries. With sugar,
milk, butter, or treacle, it is a delicious pudding, having a
very slight and delicate but characteristic flavour, which, like
that of good bread and potatoes, one never gets tired of. The
reason why it is comparatively scarce is that it is a fruit of
which the seeds are entirely aborted by cultivation, and the tree
can therefore only be propagated by cuttings. The seed-bearing
variety is common all over the tropics, and though the seeds are
very good eating, resembling chestnuts, the fruit is quite
worthless as a vegetable. Now that steam and Ward's cases render
the transport of young plants so easy, it is much to be wished
that the best varieties of this unequalled vegetable should be
introduced into our West India islands, and largely propagated
there. As the fruit will keep some time after being gathered, we
might then be able to obtain this tropical luxury in Covent
Garden Market.

Although the few months I at various times spent in Amboyna were
not altogether very profitable to me in the way of collections,
it will always remain as a bright spot in the review of my
Eastern travels, since it was there that I first made the
acquaintance of those glorious birds and insects which render
the Moluccas classic ground in the eyes of the naturalist, and
characterise its fauna as one of the most remarkable and
beautiful upon the globe. On the 20th of February I finally
quitted Amboyna for Ceram and Waigiou, leaving Charles Allen to
go by a Government boat to Wahai on the north coast of Ceram, and
thence to the unexplored island of Mysol.

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