Conversation. 459 



voices of many birds promised good shooting, and on my re- 

 turn I found that my boys had ah-eady obtained two or three 

 kinds I had not seen before ; and in the evening a native 

 brought me a rare and beautiful species of ground-thrush 

 (Pitta novJB-guineffi) hitherto only known from New Guinea. 

 As I improved my acquaintance with them I became much 

 interested in these people, who are a fair sample of the true 

 savage inhabitants of the Aru Islands, tolerably free from for- 

 eign admixture. The house I lived in contained four or five 

 families, and there were generally from six to a dozen visitors 

 besides. They kept up a continual row from morning till 

 nisiht — talkinsc, lausrhinsj, shouting without intermission — not 

 very pleasant but intei'esting as a study of national character. 

 My boy Ali said to me, "Banyak quot bitchara orang Aru" 

 (The Aru people are very strong talkers), never having been 

 accustomed to such eloquence either in his OAvn or any other 

 country he had hitherto visited. Of an evening the men, 

 having got over their first shyness, began to talk to me a little, 

 asking about my country, etc., and in return I questioned them 

 about any traditions they had of their own origin. I had, 

 however, very little success, for I could not possibly make 

 them understand the simple question of where the Aru people 

 first came from. I put it in every possible way to them, but 

 it was a subject quite beyond their speculations; they had 

 evidently never thought of any thing of the kind, and were 

 unable to conceive a thing so remote and so unnecessaiy to be 

 thought about as their own origin. Finding this hopeless, I 

 asked if they knew when the trade with Aru first began, when 

 the Bugis and Chinese and Macassar men first came in their 

 praus to buy tripang and tortoise-shell, and birds' nests, and 

 paradise birds ? This they comprehended, but replied that 

 there had always been the same trade as long as they or their 

 fathers recollected, but that this was the first time a real white 

 man had come among them, and, said they, " You see how the 

 people come every day from all the villages round to look at 

 you." This was very flattering, and accounted for the great 

 concourse of visitors which I had at first imagined was acci- 

 dental. A few years before I had been one of the gazers at 

 the Zoolus and the Aztecs in London. Now the tables were 

 turned upon me, for I was to these people a new and Strange 



