716 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
chiefs embraced Mahometanism. The legend about Paradise being 
the birthplace of these birds, and that other form of the same 
legend to the effect that they never rested upon the ground, nor 
upon anything that grew upon it, but that they sometimes fell dead 
from the sky, arose probably from the Aru methods of killing and 
preserving the birds ; for the islanders conceal themselves under 
mats of leaves placed in the trees which the birds frequent, and 
shoot them with blunt-capped arrows, so that they are killed with- 
out any wound and without blood being shed. Then the wings 
and feet are cut off, and the skin is preserved by smoking, and 
perhaps in Galvano’s time by embalming, as he calls “them 
“ Passaros myrrados.” As the skins were not seen in a complete 
state, with wings and feet—by the traders, it was supposed that 
the birds possessed neither, but that they floated through the air 
in a beatific way. 
There are traditions extant in the Arus to the present day re- 
specting the contact of the islanders with certain strangers who 
came to Wanumbhai before the Bugis came to trade there. This 
must have been before the time at which Galvano wrote, for the 
dried birds of which he speaks were no doubt exported by the 
Bugis. These strangers ‘‘ were wonderfully strong, and each one 
could kill a great many Aru men, and when they were wounded, 
however badly, they spit upon the place, and it immediately 
became well.” And they made a great net of rattans, and 
entangled their prisoners in it and sunk them in the water ; and 
the next day, when they pulled the net up on shore, they made 
the drowned men come to life again and carried them away. 
(Wallace's Malay Archipelago, chap. xxxi.) It is very probable 
that these legends originated in a Portuguese visit to the Aru 
Islands ; indeed, it may have been this very visit of Abreu 
which gave rise to them. They are to us very childish and 
absurd, but it must be remembered that many ‘of the legends 
beliey ed by European writers in the seventeenth centur y are much 
more childish and absurd than these. 
Galvano’s statement about the Aru Islands is not so important, 
as the further statement that Abreu came “to other islands which 
lie in the same parallel of south latitude in 7 or 8 degrees, and 
they are so close to one another that they appear all one land.” 
Abreu then, it appears, continued his voyage eastward from 
the Arus. Most probably he directed his course to the south of 
these islands, leaving their shallow tripang banks to the north. 
In five or six days’ sailing he would be off the coast of New 
Guinea. At first the land appeared to be continuous, but as he 
came nearer he discovered that there was more than one island. 
The only break in the coast-line at this part, namely between 
7 and 8 degrees south, is the northern entrance of Dourga 
Strait, between New Guinea and Prince Frederick Hendrik 
