Curiosity of the Natives. 393 



comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner 

 carried my daily-Avashed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo 

 shelf was arranged my small stock of crockery and hardware. 

 Boxes were ranged against the thatch walls, and hanging 

 shelves, to preserve my collections from ants while drying, 

 were suspended both without and within the house. On my 

 table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers, and pins, with in- 

 sects and bird-labels, all of which were unsolved mysteries to 

 the native mind. 



Most of the peojDle here had never seen a pin, and the 

 better informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant 

 companions the peculiarities and uses of that strange European 

 production — a needle with a head, but no eye ! Even paper, 

 which we throw away hourly as rubbish, was to them a curi- 

 osity ; and I often saw them picking up little scraps which had 

 been swept out of the house, and carefully putting them away 

 in their betel-pouch. Then when I took my morning coffee 

 and evening tea, how many were the strange things displayed 

 to them ! Tea-pot, tea-cups, tea-spoons were all more or less 

 curious in their eyes ; tea^ sugar, biscuit, and butter were 

 articles of human consumption seen by many of them for the 

 first time. One asks if that whitish powder is " gula passir " 

 (sand-sugar), so called to distinguish it from the coarse lump 

 palm-sxigar or molasses of native manufacture ; and the bis- 

 cuit is considered a sort of European sago-cake, which the in- 

 habitants of those remote regions are obliged to use in the 

 absence of the genuine article. My pursuits were of course 

 utterly beyond their comprehension. They con.tinually asked 

 me what white people did with the birds and insects I took 

 so much care to preserve. If I only kept what was beautiful, 

 they might perhaps comprehend it ; but to see ants and flies 

 and small ugly insects put away so carefully was a great puz- 

 zle to them, and they were convinced that there must be some 

 medical or magical use for them which I kept a profound 

 secret. These people were in fact as completely unacquainted 

 with civilized life as the Indians of the Rocky Mountains or 

 the savages of Central Africa — yet a steam-ship, that highest 

 triumph of human ingenuity, with its little floating epitome 

 of European civilization, touches monthly at Cajeli, twenty 

 miles off; while at Amboyna, only sixty miles distant, a 



