44 Naturalist at Large 



boden." The next day we found Mr. Duivenboden and 

 were introduced. He was dressed in immaculate white, 

 spoke perfect Enghsh. His father had been Wallace's host 

 and his mother a Javanese lady: as a small boy he had seen 

 Wallace and remembered him. He took me into the woods, 

 sat beside me on a giant fallen log, and whistled in a pe- 

 culiar way. In a few moments, hopping down the long 

 snaky trunk of a climbing palm, appeared a bizarre-look- 

 ing brown bird. Here was I, sitting at the very spot where 

 Wallace had collected the extroardinary-looking bird of 

 paradise which bears his name. Wallace speaks of the elder 

 Duivenboden as the scion of "an ancient Dutch family, but 

 who was educated in England and speaks our language per- 

 fectly." He was a very rich man, possessed many ships 

 and more than a hundred slaves. "He was, moreover, well 

 educated and fond of literature and science — a phenome- 

 non in these regions." 



The next day at Galela, a neighboring village and the 

 seat of a rather cocky ruler, as it turned out, I went shoot- 

 ing at dawn. The island fairly swarmed with parrots, lories, 

 and cockatoos of all sorts. I saw a giant cockatoo in the 

 top of a tall tree. I shot it. Down it came, fluttering and 

 flapping through the foliage, to fall at my feet. I picked 

 it up and, to my utter astonishment, dangling from its leg 

 was about eighteen inches of gilt chain. Of course, it had 

 to belong to the Rajah — a favorite pet which had escaped 

 that morning. There was the devil to pay. I paid a con- 

 siderable amount of hush money, and I never even got the 

 bird. 



We had a little launch on board, called by the Malays 

 "Child of the Fireboat" {Ajiak Kapal Apt). When we 



