The Malay Archipelago, Volume 2

We now had seven or eight days of hot and dry weather, which reduced the little river to a succession of shallow pools connected by the smallest possible thread of trickling water. If there were a dry season like that of Macassar, the Aru Islands would be uninhabitable, as there is no part of them much above a hundred feet high; and the whole being a mass of porous coralline rock, allows the surface water rapidly to escape. The only dry season they have is for a month or two about September or October, and there is then an excessive scarcity of water, so that sometimes hundreds of birds and other animals die of drought. The natives then remove to houses near the sources of the small streams, where, in the shady depths of the forest, a small quantity of water still remains. Even then many of them have to go miles for their water, which they keep in large bamboos and use very sparingly. They assure me that they catch and kill game of all kinds, by watching at the water holes or setting snares around them. That would be the time for me to make my collections; but the want of water would be a terrible annoyance, and the impossibility of getting away before another whole year had passed made it out of the question.

Ever since leaving Dobbo I had suffered terribly from insects, who seemed here bent upon revenging my long-continued persecution of their race. At our first stopping-place sand-flies were very abundant at night, penetrating to every part of the body, and producing a more lasting irritation than mosquitoes. My feet and ankles especially suffered, and were completely covered with little red swollen specks, which tormented me horribly. On arriving here we were delighted to find the house free from sand-flies or mosquitoes, but in the plantations where my daily walks led me, the day-biting mosquitoes swarmed, and seemed especially to delight in attaching my poor feet. After a month's incessant punishment, those useful members rebelled against such treatment and broke into open insurrection, throwing out numerous inflamed ulcers, which were very painful, and stopped me from walking. So I found myself confined to the house, and with no immediate prospect of leaving it. Wounds or sores in the feet are especially difficult to heal in hot climates, and I therefore dreaded them more than any other illness. The confinement was very annoying, as the fine hot weather was excellent for insects, of which I had every promise of obtaining a fine collection; and it is only by daily and unremitting search that the smaller kinds, and the rarer and more interesting specimens, can be obtained. When I crawled down to the river-side to bathe, I often saw the blue-winged Papilio ulysses, or some other equally rare and beautiful insect; but there was nothing for it but patience, and to return quietly to my bird-skinning, or whatever other work I had indoors. The stings and bites and ceaseless irritation caused by these pests of the tropical forests, would be borne uncomplainingly; but to be kept prisoner by them in so rich and unexplored a country where rare and beautiful creatures are to be met with in every forest ramble—a country reached by such a long and tedious voyage, and which might not in the present century be again visited for the same purpose—is a punishment too severe for a naturalist to pass over in silence.

I had, however, some consolation in the birds my boys brought home daily, more especially the Paradiseas, which they at length obtained in full plumage. It was quite a relief to my mind to get these, for I could hardly have torn myself away from Aru had I not obtained specimens.

But what I valued almost as much as the birds themselves was the knowledge of their habits, which I was daily obtaining both from the accounts of my hunters, and from the conversation of the natives. The birds had now commenced what the people here call their "sacaleli," or dancing-parties, in certain trees in the forest, which are not fruit trees as I at first imagined, but which have an immense tread of spreading branches and large but scattered leaves, giving a clear space for the birds to play and exhibit their plumes. On one of these trees a dozen or twenty full-plumaged male birds assemble together, raise up their wings, stretch out their necks, and elevate their exquisite plumes, keeping them in a continual vibration. Between whiles they fly across from branch to branch in great excitement, so that the whole tree is filled with waving plumes in every variety of attitude and motion. (See Frontispiece.) The bird itself is nearly as large as a crow, and is of a rich coffee brown colour. The head and neck is of a pure straw yellow above and rich metallic green beneath. The long plumy tufts of golden orange feathers spring from the sides beneath each wing, and when the bird is in repose are partly concealed by them. At the time of its excitement, however, the wings are raised vertically over the back, the head is bent down and stretched out, and the long plumes are raised up and expanded till they form two magnificent golden fans, striped with deep red at the base, and fading off into the pale brown tint of the finely divided and softly waving points. The whole bird is then overshadowed by them, the crouching body, yellow head, and emerald green throat forming but the foundation and setting to the golden glory which waves above. When seen in this attitude, the Bird of Paradise really deserves its name, and must be ranked as one of the most beautiful and most wonderful of living things. I continued also to get specimens of the lovely little king-bird occasionally, as well as numbers of brilliant pigeons, sweet little parroquets, and many curious small birds, most nearly resembling those of Australia and New Guinea.

Here, as among most savage people I have dwelt among, I was delighted with the beauty of the human form-a beauty of which stay-at-home civilized people can scarcely have any conception. What are the finest Grecian statues to the living, moving, breathing men I saw daily around me? The unrestrained grace of the naked savage as he goes about his daily occupations, or lounges at his ease, must be seen to be understood; and a youth bending his bow is the perfection of manly beauty. The women, however, except in extreme youth, are by no means so pleasant to look at as the men. Their strongly-marked features are very unfeminine, and hard work, privations, and very early marriages soon destroy whatever of beauty or grace they may for a short time possess. Their toilet is very simple, but also, I am sorry to say, very coarse, and disgusting. It consists solely of a mat of plaited strips of palm leaves, worn tight round the body, and reaching from the hips to the knees. It seems not to be changed till worn out, is seldom washed, and is generally very dirty. This is the universal dress, except in a few cases where Malay "sarongs" have come into use. Their frizzly hair is tied in a bench at the back of the head. They delight in combing, or rather forking it, using for that purpose a large wooden fork with four diverging prongs, which answers the purpose of separating and arranging the long tangled, frizzly mass of cranial vegetation much better than any comb could do. The only ornaments of the women are earrings and necklaces, which they arrange in various tasteful ways. The ends of a necklace are often attached to the earrings, and then looped on to the hair-knot behind. This has really an elegant appearance, the beads hanging gracefully on each side of the head, and by establishing a connexion with the earrings give an appearance of utility to those barbarous ornaments. We recommend this style to the consideration of those of the fair sex who still bore holes in their ears and hang rings thereto. Another style of necklace among these Papuan belles is to wear two, each hanging on one side of the neck and under the opposite arm, so as to cross each other. This has a very pretty appearance, in part due to the contrast of the white beads or kangaroo teeth of which they are composed with the dark glossy skin. The earrings themselves are formed of a bar of copper or silver, twisted so that the ends cross. The men, as usual among savages, adorn themselves more than the women. They wear necklaces, earrings, and finger rings, and delight in a band of plaited grass tight round the arm just below the shoulder, to which they attach a bunch of hair or bright coloured feathers by way of ornament. The teeth of small animals, either alone, or alternately with black or white beads, form their necklaces, and sometimes bracelets also. For these latter, however, they prefer brass wire, or the black, horny, wing-spines of the cassowary, which they consider a charm. Anklets of brass or shell, and tight plaited garters below the knee, complete their ordinary decorations.

Some natives of Kobror from further south, and who are reckoned the worst and least civilized of the Aru tribes, came one day to visit us. They have a rather more than usually savage appearance, owing to the greater amount of ornaments they use—the most conspicuous being a large horseshoe-shaped comb which they wear over the forehead, the ends resting on the temples. The back of the comb is fastened into a piece of wood, which is plated with tin in front, and above is attached a plume of feathers from a cock's tail. In other respects they scarcely differed from the people I was living with. They brought me a couple of birds, some shells and insects; showing that the report of the white man and his doing had reached their country. There was probably hardly a man in Aru who had not by this time heard of me.

Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable property of a native is very scanty. He has a good supply of spears and bows and arrows for hunting, a parang, or chopping-knife, and an axe-for the stone age has passed away here, owing to the commercial enterprise of the Bugis and other Malay races. Attached to a belt, or hung across his shoulder, he carries a little skin pouch and an ornamented bamboo, containing betel-nut, tobacco, and lime, and a small German wooden-handled knife is generally stuck between his waist-cloth of bark and his bare shin. Each man also possesses a "cadjan," or sleeping-mat, made of the broad leaves of a pandanus neatly sewn together in three layers. This mat is abort four feet square, and when folded has one end sewn up, so that it forms a kind of sack open at one side. In the closed corner the head or feet can be placed, or by carrying it on the head in a shower it forms both coat and umbrella. It doubles up ix a small compass for convenient carriage, and then forms a light and elastic cushion, so that on a journey it becomes clothing, house, bedding, and furniture, all in one.

The only ornaments in an Aru horse are trophies of the chase—jaws of wild pigs, the heads and backbones of cassowaries, and plumes made from the feathers of the Bird of Paradise, cassowary, and domestic fowl. The spears, shields, knife-handles, and other utensils are more or less carved in fanciful designs, and the mats and leaf boxes are painted or plaited in neat patterns of red, black, and yellow colours. I must not forget these boxes, which are most ingeniously made of the pith of a balm leaf pegged together, lined inside with pandanus leaves, and outside with the same, or with plaited grass. All the joints and angles are coffered with strips of split rattan sewn neatly on. The lid is covered with the brown leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which is impervious to water, and the whole box is neat, strong, and well finished. They are made from a few inches to two or three feet long, and being much esteemed by the Malay as clothes-boxes, are a regular article of export from Aru. The natives use the smaller ones for tobacco or betel-nut, but seldom have clothes enough to require the larger ones, which are only made for sale.

Among the domestic animals which may generally be seen in native houses, are gaudy parrots, green, red, and blue, a few domestic fowls, which have baskets hung for them to lay in under the eaves, and who sleep on the ridge, and several half-starved wolfish-baking dogs. Instead of rats and mice there are curious little marsupial animals about the same size, which run about at night and nibble anything eatable that may be left uncovered. Four or five different kinds of ants attack everything not isolated by water, and one kind even swims across that; great spiders lurk in baskets and boxes, or hide in the folds of my mosquito curtain; centipedes and millepedes are found everywhere. I have caught them under my pillow and on my bead; while in every box, and under every hoard which has lain for some days undisturbed, little scorpions are sure to be found snugly ensconced, with their formidable tails quickly turned up ready for attack or defence. Such companions seem very alarming and dangerous, but all combined are not so bad as the irritation of mosquitoes, or of the insect pests often found at home. These latter are a constant and unceasing source of torment and disgust, whereas you may live a long time among scorpions, spiders, and centipedes, ugly and venomous though they are, and get no harm from them. After living twelve years in the tropics, I have never yet been bitten or stung by either.

The lean and hungry dogs before mentioned were my greatest enemies, and kept me constantly on the watch. If my boys left the bird they were skinning for an instant, it was sure to be carried off. Everything eatable had to be hung up to the roof, to be out of their reach. Ali had just finished skinning a fine King Bird of Paradise one day, when he dropped the skin. Before he could stoop to pick it up, one of this famished race had seized upon it, and he only succeeded in rescuing it from its fangs after it was torn to tatters. Two skins of the large Paradisea, which were quite dry and ready to pack away, were incautiously left on my table for the night, wrapped up in paper. The next morning they were gone, and only a few scattered feathers indicated their fate. My hanging shelf was out of their reach; but having stupidly left a box which served as a step, a full-plumaged Paradise bird was next morning missing; and a dog below the house was to be seen still mumbling over the fragments, with the fine golden plumes all trampled in the mud. Every night, as soon as I was in bed, I could hear them searching about for what they could devour, under my table, and all about my boxes and baskets, keeping me in a state of suspense till morning, lest something of value might incautiously have been left within their read. They would drink the oil of my floating lamp and eat the wick, and upset or break my crockery if my lazy boys had neglected to wash away even the smell of anything eatable. Bad, however, as they are here, they were worse in a Dyak's house in Borneo where I was once staying, for there they gnawed off the tops of my waterproof boots, ate a large piece out of an old leather game-bag, besides devouring a portion of my mosquito curtain!

April 28th.—Last evening we had a grand consultation, which had evidently been arranged and discussed beforehand. A number of the natives gathered round me, and said they wanted to talk. Two of the best Malay scholars helped each other, the rest putting in hints and ideas in their own language. They told me a long rambling story; but, partly owing to their imperfect knowledge of Malay, partly through my ignorance of local terms, and partly through the incoherence of their narrative, I could not make it out very clearly. It was, however, a tradition, and I was glad to find they had anything of the kind. A long time ago, they said, some strangers came to Aru, and came here to Wanumbai, and the chief of the Wanumbai people did not like them, and wanted them to go away, but they would not go, and so it came to fighting, and many Aru men were killed, and some, along with the chief, were taken prisoners, and carried away by the strangers. Some of the speakers, however, said that he was not carried away, but went away in his own boat to escape from the foreigners, and went to the sea and never came back again. But they all believe that the chief and the people that went with him still live in some foreign country; and if they could but find out where, they would send for them to come back again. Now having some vague idea that white men must know every country beyond the sea, they wanted to know if I had met their people in my country or in the sea. They thought they must be there, for they could not imagine where else they could be. They had sought for them everywhere, they said—on the land and in the sea, in the forest and on the mountains, in the air and in the sky, and could not find them; therefore, they must be in my country, and they begged me to tell them, for I must surely know, as I came from across the great sea. I tried to explain to them that their friends could not have reached my country in small boats; and that there were plenty of islands like Aru all about the sea, which they would be sure to find. Besides, as it was so long ago, the chief and all the people must be dead. But they quite laughed at this idea, and said they were sure they were alive, for they had proof of it. And then they told me that a good many years ago, when the speakers were boys, some Wokan men who were out fishing met these lost people in the sea, and spoke to them; and the chief gave the Wokan men a hundred fathoms of cloth to bring to the men of Wanumbai, to show that they were alive and would soon come back to them, but the Wokan men were thieves, and kept the cloth, and they only heard of it afterwards; and when they spoke about it, the Wokan men denied it, and pretended they had not received the cloth;—so they were quite sure their friends were at that time alive and somewhere in the sea. And again, not many years ago, a report came to them that some Bugis traders had brought some children of their lost people; so they went to Dobbo to see about it, and the owner of the house, who was now speaking to me, was one who went; but the Bugis man would not let them see the children, and threatened to kill them if they came into his house. He kept the children shut up in a large box, and when he went away he took them with him. And at the end of each of these stories, they begged me in an imploring tone to tell them if I knew where their chief and their people now were.

By dint of questioning, I got some account of the strangers who had taken away their people. They said they were wonderfully strong, and each one could kill a great many Aru men; and when they were wounded, however badly, they spit upon the place, and it immediately became well. And they made a great net of rattans, and entangled their prisoners in it, and sunk them in the water; and the next day, when they pulled the net up on shore, they made the drowned men come to life again, and carried them away.

Much more of the same kind was told me, but in so confused and rambling a manner that I could make nothing out of it, till I inquired how long ago it was that all this happened, when they told me that after their people were taken away the Bugis came in their praus to trade in Aru, and to buy tripang and birds' nests. It is not impossible that something similar to what they related to me really happened when the early Portuguese discoverers first came to Aru, and has formed the foundation for a continually increasing accumulation of legend and fable. I have no doubt that to the next generation, or even before, I myself shall be transformed into a magician or a demigod, a worker of miracles, and a being of supernatural knowledge. They already believe that all the animals I preserve will come to life again; and to their children it will be related that they actually did so. An unusual spell of fine weather setting in just at my arrival has made them believe I can control the seasons; and the simple circumstance of my always walking alone in the forest is a wonder and a mystery to them, as well as my asking them about birds and animals I have not yet seen, and showing an acquaintance with their form, colours, and habits. These facts are brought against me when I disclaim knowledge of what they wish me to tell them. "You must know," say they; "you know everything: you make the fine weather for your men to shoot, and you know all about our birds and our animals as well as we do; and you go alone into the forest and are not afraid." Therefore every confession of ignorance on my part is thought to be a blind, a mere excuse to avoid telling them too much. My very writing materials and books are to them weird things; and were I to choose to mystify them by a few simple experiments with lens and magnet, miracles without end would in a few years cluster about me; and future travellers, penetrating to Wanumbai, world h hardly believe that a poor English naturalist, who had resided a few months among them, could have been the original of the supernatural being to whom so many marvels were attributed.

Far some days I had noticed a good deal of excitement, and many strangers came and went armed with spears and cutlasses, bows and shields. I now found there was war near us—two neighbouring villages having a quarrel about some matter of local politics that I could not understand. They told me it was quite a common thing, and that they are rarely without fighting somewhere near. Individual quarrels are taken up by villages and tribes, and the nonpayment of the stipulated price for a wife is one of the most frequent causes of bitterness and bloodshed. One of the war shields was brought me to look at. It was made of rattans and covered with cotton twist, so as to be both light, strong, and very tough. I should think it would resist any ordinary bullet. Abort the middle there was au arm-hole with a shutter or flap over it. This enables the arm to be put through and the bow drawn, while the body and face, up to the eyes, remain protected, which cannot be done if the shield is carried on the arm by loops attached at the back in the ordinary way. A few of the young men from our house went to help their friends, but I could not bear that any of them were hurt, or that there was much hard fighting.

May 8th.-I had now been six weeks at Wanumbai, but for more than half the time was laid up in the house with ulcerated feet. My stores being nearly exhausted, and my bird and insect boxes full, and having no immediate prospect of getting the use of my legs again, I determined on returning to Dobbo. Birds had lately become rather scarce, and the Paradise birds had not yet become as plentiful as the natives assured me they would be in another month. The Wanumbai people seemed very sorry at my departure; and well they might be, for the shells and insects they picked up on the way to and from their plantations, and the birds the little boys shot with their bows and arrows, kept them all well supplied with tobacco and gambir, besides enabling them to accumulate a stock of beads and coppers for future expenses. The owner of the house was supplied gratis with a little rice, fish, or salt, whenever he asked for it, which I must say was not very often. On parting, I distributed among them my remnant stock of salt and tobacco, and gave my host a flask of arrack, and believe that on the whole my stay with these simple and good-natured people was productive of pleasure and profit to both parties. I fully intended to come back; and had I known that circumstances would have prevented my doing so, shoed have felt some sorrow in leaving a place where I had first seen so many rare and beautiful living things, and bad so fully enjoyed the pleasure which fills the heart of the naturalist when he is so fortunate as to discover a district hitherto unexplored, and where every day brings forth new and unexpected treasures. We loaded our boat in the afternoon, and, starting before daybreak, by the help of a fair wind reached Dobbo late the same evening.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE ARU ISLANDS.—SECOND RESIDENCE AT DOBBO

(MAY AND JUNE 1857.)

DOBBO was full to overflowing, and I was obliged to occupy the court-house where the Commissioners hold their sittings. They had now left the island, and I found the situation agreeable, as it was at the end of the village, with a view down the principal street. It was a mere shed, but half of it had a roughly boarded floor, and by putting up a partition and opening a window I made it a very pleasant abode. In one of the boxes I had left in charge of Herr Warzbergen, a colony of small ants had settled and deposited millions of eggs. It was luckily a fine hot day, and by carrying the box some distance from the house, and placing every article in the sunshine for an hour or two, I got rid of them without damage, as they were fortunately a harmless species.