A Legend. 471 



I could hear them searching abovit for what they could de- 

 vour, under my table, and all about my boxes and baskets, 

 kec])ing- me in a state of suspense till murning, lest something 

 of value might incautiously have been left within their reach. 

 They would drink the oil of my floating lamp and eat the 

 Avick, and upset or break my crockery if my lazy boys had 

 neglected to wash away even the smell of any thing eatable. 

 Bad, however, as they are here, they were worse in a Dyak's 

 house in Borneo where I was once staying, for there they 

 gnawed off the tops of my waterproof boots, ate a large piece 

 out of an old leather game-bag, besides devouring a portion of 

 my mosquito-curtain ! 



A^yril 28th. — Last evening we had a grand consultation, 

 which had evidently been arranged and discussed beforehand. 

 A number of the natives gathered around me, and said they 

 wanted to talk. Two of the best Malay scholars helped each 

 other, the rest putting in hints and ideas in t^eir own language. 

 They told me a long rambling story ; but, partly owing to their 

 imperfect knowledge of Malay, partly through my ignorance 

 of local terms, and partly through the incoherence of their 

 narrative, I could not make it out very clearly. It was, how- 

 ever, a tradition, and I was glad to find they had any thing of 

 the kindo A long time ago, they said, some strangers came to 

 Aru, and came here to Wanumbai, and the chief of the Wa- 

 numbai people did not like them, and wanted them to go away ; 

 but they would not go, and so it came to fighting, and many 

 Aru men were killed, and some, along with the chief, were 

 taken prisoners, and carried away by the strangers. Some of 

 the speakers, however, said that he was not carried away, but 

 went away in his own boat to escape from the foreigners, and 

 went to the sea and never came back again. But they all believe 

 that the chief and the people that went with him still live in 

 some foreign country ; and if they could find out where, they 

 would send for them to come back again. Now having some 

 vague idea that white men must know every country beyond 

 the sea, they wanted to know if I had met their people in 

 my country or in the sea. They thought they must be 

 there, for they could not imagine where else they could be. 

 They had sought for them everywhere, they said — on the land 

 and in the sea, in the forest and on the mountains, in the air 



