MuKA. 533 



sally accepted view that they are but modifications of one and 

 the same race. 



The people of Muka live in that abject state of poverty that 

 is almost always found where the sago-tree is abundant. 

 Very few of them take the trouble to plant any vegetables or 

 fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and fish, selling a little 

 tripang or tortoise-shell to buy the scanty clothing they require. 

 Almost all of them, however, possess one or more Papuan 

 slaves, on whose labor they live in almost absolute idleness, 

 just going out on little fishing or trading excursions, as an ex- 

 citement in their monotonous existence. They are under the 

 rule of the Sultan of Tidore, and every year have to pay a 

 small tribute of paradise birds, tortoise-shell, or sago. To 

 obtain these, they go in the fine season on a trading voyage to 

 the main land of New Guinea, and getting a few goods on 

 credit from some Ceram or Bugis trader, make hard bargains 

 with the natives, and gain enough to pay their tribute, and 

 leave a little profit for themselves. 



Such a country is not a very pleasant one to live in, for as 

 there are no superfluities, there is nothing to sell ; and had it 

 not been for a trader from Ceram who was residing there 

 during my stay, who had a small vegetable garden and whose 

 men occasionally got a few spare fish, I should often have had 

 nothing to eat. Fowls, fi'uit, and vegetables are luxuries very 

 rarely to be purchased at Muka ; and even cocoa-nuts, so in- 

 dispensable for Eastern cookery, are not to be obtained ; for 

 though there are some hundreds of trees in the village, all the 

 fruit is eaten green, to supply the place of the vegetables the 

 people are too lazy to cultivate. Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, 

 or plantains, we had very short commons, and the boisterous 

 weather being unpropitious for fishing, we had to live on 

 what few eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional 

 Cuscus, or Eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, 

 inhabiting the island. 



I had only shot two male Paradiseas on my tree when they 

 ceased visiting it, either owing to the fruit becoming scarce, 

 or that they were wise enough to know there was danger. 

 We continued to hear and see them in the forest, but after a 

 month had not succeeded in shooting any more; and as my 

 chief object in visiting Waigiou was to get these birds, I de- 



