422 The Ke Islands. 



remarkable feature in the countenance, the very reverse of 

 what obtains in the Malay face. The twisted beard and friz- 

 zly hair complete this remarkable contrast. Here, then, I had 

 reached a new world, inhabited by a strange people. Between 

 the Malayan tribes, among whom I had for some years been 

 living, and the Papuan races, whose country I had now enter- 

 ed, we may fairly say that there is as much difference, both 

 moral and physical, as between the red Indians of South 

 America and the negroes of Guinea on the opposite side of 

 the Atlantic. 



Jan. \st^ 1857. — This has been a day of thorough enjoy- 

 ment. I have wandered in the forests of an island rarely seen 

 by Europeans. Before daybreak we left our anchorage, and 

 in an hour reached the village of Har, where we were to stay 

 three or four days. The range of hills here receded so as to 

 form a small bay, and they were broken up into peaks and 

 hummocks, with intervening flats and hollows. A broad beach 

 of the whitest sand lined the inner part of the bay, backed by 

 a mass of cocoa-nut palms, among which the huts were con- 

 cealed, and surmounted by a dense and varied growth of tim- 

 ber. Canoes and boats of various sizes were drawn up on the 

 beach, and one or two idlers, with a few children and a dog, 

 gazed at our praix as we came to an anchor. 



When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us 

 was a large and well-constructed shed, under which a long boat 

 was being built, while others in various stages of completion 

 were placed at intervals along the beach. Our captain, who 

 wanted two of moderate size for the trade among the islands 

 at Aru, immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short 

 time had arranged the number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs, 

 handkerchiefs, axes, white plates, tobacco, and arrack which 

 he was to give for a pair which could be got ready in four 

 days. We then went to the village, which consisted only of 

 three or four huts, situated immediately above the beach on 

 an irregular rocky piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa- 

 nuts, palms, bananas, and other fruit-trees. The houses were 

 very rude, black, and half rotten, raised a few feet on posts, 

 with low sides of bamboo or planks, and high thatched roofs. 

 They had small doors and no windows, an opening under the 

 projecting gables letting the smoke out and a little light in. 



