xil.] ANDAI. 293 



My reader will, I hope, pardon this digression. It is not " the 

 hairbreadth 'scapes," " the moving accidents by flood and field " — 

 of which, by the way, I have few or none to recount — but rather, 

 as in civilisation, the lesser worries of existence that are the draw- 

 backs of a traveller's life. It is the mosquitoes, illness, bad food, 

 and the like, of which he has the most unpleasant recollections, 

 and as one or other of these formed a part of our daily experiences 

 in these regions, they ought not, perhaps, to go unrecorded. 



A short distance from the mouth of the river at Andai we 

 came upon the hut of a Dutch missionary, Mr. Woelders, who had 

 been established there for some little time. His predecessor had 

 been ]\Ir. Jens, whose wife, a victim to the climate, lies buried in 

 the little garden adjoinmg. j\lr. "VVoelders greeted us with effusion 

 in his native tongue, — the only European language with which he 

 was acquainted, — and we had little difficulty in understanding how 

 welcome must be the sight of a white face in such a remote cornei- 

 of the earth. The mission, we learnt, had not been attended with 

 much success, but to have got the natives accustomed to having a 

 European li^'ing among them was, no doulit, a point gained. Mr. 

 Woelders had a small printing-press, and occupied himself in 

 prmting a little book of hymns in the Xufoor language for the use 

 of the mission at Mansinam. 



The heat was excessive, and the hot steam wliich rose from a 

 little tract of marshy forest surrounding the house was unpleasantly 

 suggestive of malaria. "We were glad to rest in the house and chat 

 with our liost. He took, we discovered, a (pecuniary) interest in 

 birds, and told us that he had two native hunters collecting for 

 liim at Hatam, a village a few miles off on the slopes of the 

 mountains, where Beccari and D'Albertis had gathered their rich 

 harvests in botany and ornithology. They were expected to return 

 at any moment, and an hour or two later the distant firing of guns 

 announced their approach. They were accompanied by a number 

 of the Hatam people who had assisted them, and were come to 

 claim payment in " trade " from Mr. Woelders, — -old and young 



