170 A COLLECTING TRIP 
al 
jobs, errands, interpreting (really invaluable for cab- 
men, ete.) for he knows pigeon English and the Malay 
and Chinese languages. His stipend is eight dollars 
per month. He sleeps on the floor outside the door 
and eats I never know when or how or what. 
Speaking of Ah Woo brings me to speak of my 
other boys, Ban Doung and On Dit, and later a funny 
little savage, Ong Ung by name. I got on with them 
very well and as I am quite at home with the Malay 
language I really got a lot of work out of them, al- 
though they think me a good deal of an ogre. Their 
pay runs about thirty cents (silver) per day and 
they earn it. The real beauty of the crowd was a 
full-blooded Papuan cannibal, who had been to Ter- 
nate to be civilized and to see a bit of the world. He 
came on our ship at Ternate and I decided to make 
a collector of him. Numerous difficulties arose. First, 
the Captain was personally responsible for his safe 
delivery home in Djamma and said if we took him 
ashore at places where his people were unfriendly 
with the natives they would fight and the devil gen- 
erally would be to pay. I said that I would be person- 
ally responsible for his conduct and keeping. Dif- 
ficulty No. 2 — to make him eateh bugs. This I did 
by leading him up to the beetle and then ostentatious- 
ly showing him how it died in a killing jar. Dif- 
ficulty No. 3 — to keep him from tasting all killing 
mixtures and drinking up our alcohol. We put pep- 
per, ete., into the aleohol and hid the cyanide. Then 
came the question how to pay him, for money was of 
no use at home to him, so I told him — and his Malay 
was as bad as my Numfoor—that I would make every- 
thing all right with him. He finally reached the posi- 
