134 A COLLECTING TRIP 
crossed the equator seven times. We have, or shall 
have in a few days, spent fifty nights in our bunks on 
this little tub, which is 730 tons net and 1,300 gross — 
less than one-tenth the size of the Ivernia by a thous- 
and tons. We have been six thousand miles and over. 
The spice islands are, I believe, the most beautiful in 
the world and I only wonder that they are not more 
famous than they are. There are chains of splendid 
voleanos rising, each its own little island, and cov- 
ered with the most magnificent vegetation. As I 
sit on deck here writing I see baskets of orchid plants; 
one has twenty sprays, two feet long and each with 
from forty to sixty glorious, great, pale, lavender 
flowers. We are just leaving Tifu bay about which I 
wrote to you before from Amboina. In a few days 
we shall be at Macassar, whence I shall send this let- 
ter by Mr. Pim, who has been with us, to Hong Kong, 
while we will go on to Java to pack up our collections 
and make a trip to the ruins of Boro Boder, which we 
had no time to do before. 
Now a few words about our collection. At Ma- 
eassar I bought perhaps seventy guilders’ worth of 
trade — tobacco, cheap knives, small mirrors, beads, 
belts, ete. With these in New Guinea we paid the 
savages for shields, bows and arrows, carved idols, ete. 
We have really a very interesting collection of these 
things. Some of the spears are beautifully carved and 
ornamented with tufts of cassowary feathers. I do 
not know as we shall ever have a house in which to 
properly display these articles; I think they had bet- 
ter go to the Peabody Museum where they will be ap- 
preciated. At Djamna and Humboldt’s bay, New 
Guinea, we found the people using just such stone 
