150 WHITE— A Sketch of the Life of Samuel White. 



aboard ten small birds and two "Bunongmatti" {great birds of 

 Paradise). The guns are all gone now, and it is difficult to 

 ideal with some of these natives; they know not what they 

 ;want. We have cleared up this evening, and have no speci- 

 mens left to skin. The weather has been showery; the first 

 strong wind for several days blew for a few hours to-day." 

 The next day Samuel White intended putting things straight 

 on board the yacht, washing up, etc. He often said his cabin 

 (where he kept Ms trade ammunition and a thousand and one 

 things) "was like a pawn shop" upside down after haggling 

 ,and bartering with twenty or thirty natives. From a rough 

 ,note it appears that thirty to forty birds came in during the 

 day besides mammals, shells, reptile, insects, Crustacea, etc., 

 etc., so it can be easily seen that my father or any of his staff 

 ,had little time to clean up. My father says : — "Amongst the 

 birds brought in to-day were two fully-plumed "great birds", 

 and one king bird. I have to pay very heavily for everything, 

 ,as I can see it is the only way to ensure a supply being broughit 

 in. Most of the men and the boys about the island prefer, 

 tobacco, but the Wonambi people want "mama mama" (beads) 

 for everything. The people who visit us now up here are 

 mostly Aru men, the Malays, and Macassar men generally live 

 near the coast. The weather is still showery although we 

 have a little sunshine between, the wind blew strongly and 

 ,cool most of the day. 



On Monday, 26th, my father and Cockerell stayed on board 

 skinning all day. Andrews did some work amongst the mam- 

 mals and reptiles, but seems to have been given up for odd 

 jobs. He was not suited for hard work in the tropics. It 

 can be easily seen that the work of trading with the natives 

 was quite enough for my father without doing the bulk of the 

 Skinning, and he over-taxed himself far too much. The 

 natives took so long in deciding what they would take for the 

 stuff they brought in, haggled over it for hours, and the great 

 .naturalist could not lose his temper for it may offend them, 

 and they would not come again. When a man brought any- 

 thing for sale he would sit or stand about for an hour at least 

 -before he could make up his mind what price to ask. When 

 jhe did make an offer to deal he would ask ten times as much 

 as he would take. They did not mind standing about 

 ^between decks filling up all the space on the yacht so that it 

 ,'was with great difficulty the crew could move about. In 

 some notes upon this subject my father says : — "I have made 

 it a practice now to offer a fair price for what is offered, and 



