186 WHITE— A SUM of tie Life of Samuel White. 



out of temper, having Suffered all night, and to-day very much 

 with my sores, the wetting yesterday has not done them any 

 good. Rain has been falling all day/' The man referred to 

 in the above note remained on till the morning when my 

 father tried all kinds of ways to get rid of him or purchase 

 the bird, but to no purpose the fellow wanted a gun and was 

 fearfully disappointed about not getting one, as last when he 

 found that the owner was leaving his ship he accepted a 

 sovereign and 1 a variety of other things. These other Malays 

 are the worst class of men to deal with for they will remain 

 or come back day after day and renew their bartering. The 

 Aru men are quite bad enough in their persistent ways, but 

 the Macassar and Malay men are far worse. As soon as my 

 father got rid of all the natives on board he ordered out the 

 big boat and a crew, and made up the Watalli Channel, a light 

 breeze sprang up, and a sail was hoisted, but after a mile or 

 so it died away and they resumed pulling, which was con- 

 tinued for four hours and arrived within a few miles of the 

 end of the channel. When the tide changed and became too 

 strong, and he had to turn back owing to the wet, and not hav- 

 ing a tent with them. In some notes written some time after- 

 wards, my father says: "The channel did not turn suddenly to 

 the north-west as I expected it might, but kept in an easterly 

 and north-easterly direction, the bends were not excessive 

 although not straight anywhere. 



After we left the yacht a few miles behind, the channel 

 became a little narrower, (about 400 yards in the narrowest 

 place). The scenery was exceedingly beautiful as we passed 

 along, the channel looked like a broad and noble river, the 

 tide-like stream running at the rate of two or three miles 

 an hour. The banks in some places were perpendicular rock, 

 and in others low and muddy, the land on either side was low, 

 very uneven, indeed rugged, and densely clothed with luxu- 

 rious vegetation of many species, amongst it here and there a 

 cocoanut struggled through and showed its head amongst the 

 rest of the vegetation. The very edge of the cliff grew thick 

 scrub, and trees at times grew on the bare face of the cliff, 

 spreading their- roots and grasping every inequality of surface 

 or every bole in the rock. During the first four miles we 

 passed about a dozen houses of the natiA 7 es, generally not 

 more than one at one spot placed on the points of land that, 

 jut out into the water here and there, and where the soil on the 

 rock is a little deeper than usual, here the natives half clear 

 the land, and plant their food stuffs, the houses are built in 



