THE ARAFURA SEA. 19 



other drinks that his hosts consume, and which he is 

 expected to consume also, but, as I remember noticing 

 in the case of their neighbours the Belgians in the Congo, 

 it appears to do them httle if any harm. 



In the larger places there is a concert at the club 

 once or twice a week — at Bandoeng in Java I heard 

 a remarkably good string quartette — and in almost 

 every place there is a ladies' night at the club once a 

 week, when the children come to dance to the music 

 of a piano or gramophone, as the case may be. It is 

 a pretty sight and one to make one ponder on the possible 

 harmony of nations — " Harmonic " is commonly a name 

 for the clubs in the Netherlands Indies— to see small Dutch 

 children dancing with little half-castes and, as I have 

 more than once seen, with little Celestials and Japanese. 



We left Amboina on New Year's Day in a deluge of 

 rain, and all that day we were in sight of the forest- 

 covered heights of Ceram to the North. On January 

 2nd we passed Banda at dawn, and at sunset we got a 

 view of the most South-west point of New Guinea, 

 Cape Van de Bosch. On the morning of January 3rd 

 we dropped anchor in the harbour of Dobo in the Aru 

 Islands. For several miles before we arrived there we 

 had noticed a marked difference in the appearance of 

 the sea. Since we left Batavia we had been saihns 

 over a deep sea of great oceanic depths, sometimes of 

 two or three thousand fathoms, which was always clear 

 and blue or black as deep seas are. Approaching the 

 Aru Islands we came into the shoal waters of the Arafura 

 Sea, which is yellowish and opaque and never exceeds 

 one hundred fathoms in depth. We were, in fact, sailing 



