386 Ceram. 



have neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost entirely on 

 sago and a little fish. Having few occupations at home, they 

 wander about on petty trading or fishing expeditions to the 

 neighboring islands ; and as far as the comforts of life are con- 

 cerned, are much inferior to the wild Hill Dyaks of Borneo, or 

 to many of the more barbarous tribes of the Archipelago. 



The country round Warus-warus is low and. swampy, and 

 owing to the absence of cultivation, there were scai'cely any 

 paths leading into the forest. I was therefore unable to col- 

 lect much during my enforced stay, and found no rare birds 

 or insects to improve my opinion of Ceram as a collecting- 

 ground. Finding it quite impossible to get men here to ac- 

 company me on the whole voyage, I was obliged to be content 

 with a crew to take me as far as Wahai, on the middle of the 

 north coast of Ceram, and the chief Dutch station in the island. 

 The journey took us five days, owing to calms and light winds, 

 and no incident of any interest occurred on it, nor did I ob- 

 tain at our stopping-places a single addition to my collections 

 worth naming. At Wahai, which I reached on the 15th of 

 June, I was hospitably received by the commandant and my 

 old friend Herr Rosenberg, who was now on an official visit 

 here. He lent me some money to pay my men, and I was 

 lucky enough to obtain three others willing to make the voy- 

 age with me to Ternate, and one more who was to return from 

 Mysol. One of my Amboyna lads, however, left me, so that 

 I was still rather short of hands. 



I found here a letter from Chai'les Allen, who was at Silinta, 

 in Mysol, anxiously expecting me, as he was out of rice and 

 other necessaries, and was short of insect pins. He was also 

 ill, and if I did not soon come would return to Wahai. 



As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among isl- 

 ands inhabited by the Papuan race, and was an eventful and 

 disastrous one, I will narrate its chief incidents in a separate 

 chapter in that division of my work devoted to the Papuan 

 Islands. I now have to pass over a year spent in Waigiou 

 and Timor, in order to describe my visit to the island of 

 Bouru, which concluded my explorations of the Moluccas. 



