464 The Aru Islands. 



know all about it; you can't deceive me." And so I was set 

 down as a conjurer, and was unable to repel the charge. But 

 the conjurer was completely puzzled by the next question: 

 " What," said the old man, " is the great ship, where the Bugis 

 and Chinamen go to sell their things? It is always in the 

 great sea — its name is Jong ; tell us all about it." In vain I 

 inquired what they knew about it; they knew nothing but 

 that it was called " Jong," and was always in the sea, and was 

 a very great ship, and concluded with, " Perhaps that is your 

 country ?" Finding that I could not or would not tell them 

 any thing about " Jong," there came more regrets that I would 

 not tell them the real name of my country ; and then a long- 

 string of compliments, to the effect that I was a much better 

 sort of a person than the Bugis and Chinese, who sometimes 

 came to trade with them, for I gave them things for nothing, 

 and did not try to cheat them. How long would I stop was 

 the next earnest inquiry. Would I stay two or three months ? 

 They would get me plenty of birds and animals, and I might 

 soon finish all the goods I had brought, and then, said the old 

 spokesman, " Don't go away, but send for more things from 

 Dobbo, and stay here a year or two." And then again the old 

 story, " Do tell us the name of your country. We know the 

 Bugis men, and the Macassar men, and the Java men, and the 

 China men ; only you, we don't know from what country you 

 come. Ung-lung ! it can't be ; I know that is not the name 

 of your country." Seeing no end to this long talk, I said I 

 was tired, and wanted to go to sleep ; so after begging — one 

 a little bit of dry fish for his supper, and another a little salt 

 to eat with his sago — they went off very quietly, and I went 

 outside and took a stroll round the house by moonlight, think- 

 ing of the simple people and the strange productions of Aru, 

 and then turned in under my mosquito-curtain, to sleep with 

 a sense of perfect security in the midst of these good-natured 

 savages. 



We now had seven or eight days of hot and dry weather, 

 which reduced the little river to a succession of shallow pools, 

 connected by the smallest possible thread of trickling water. 

 If there were a dry season like that of Macassar, the Aru Isl- 

 ands would be uninhabitable, as there is no part of them much 

 above a hundred feet high ; and the whole being a mass of 



