236 WHITE -A Sketch of the Life of Samuel White. 



still waiting for the crew from Cape York to shift the yacht, 

 and under the date my father writes: — "This morning I 

 nailed down some boxes of specimens, and found that some of 

 the boxes had been opened, and many of the specimens re- 

 moved, and upon examination I found some one had been in 

 my cabin, and taken most of my tortoiseshell and all my 

 pearls. Thus I have been robbed by my crew from the time 

 I started till they left me." 



On the 26th of September Samuel White, with one taxi- 

 dermist (Cockerell) boarded the Somerset bound down the 

 coast, and the yacht was to sail for Cape York that day to be 

 under the care of Mr. Jardine. Samuel White joined his wife 

 in Sydney, and had only been there a few days when on the 

 very day he arranged to purchase a home on north shore 

 for his wife and family while he was away to finish his expedi- 

 tion, he caught a chill, inflammation set in, and on 

 November 17th, 1880 there passed away one of (if not) the 

 greatest field ornithologist the world has ever seen. He pos- 

 sessed a most kindly and loveable disposition, by far too good 

 natured. He was a great musician, chemist, photographer, in- 

 trepid explorer, a keen soldier, a sailor as this brief sketch 

 shows, but above all and in every sense of the word a Man. 



Among my father's papers were some notes evidently 

 written upon his last voyage from Thursday Island to Sydney; 

 they were very brief, pointing to the fact that he intended 

 enlarging upon them at a later date. The first notes deal 

 with the islands on which my father collected the birds, 

 he says: — ''The Aru Islands consist of a great number of 

 islands of all sizes. The largest are divided from each other 

 by narrow channels holding salt water, and appear no more 

 than rivers, or such was the appearance of those I was in. 

 The names of the principal are Tragan on the south, Kobror, 

 Maykor, Wokan, and Wamma. The last named is much the 

 smallest, and most northerly, but is notable as containing the 

 old trading village of "Dobbo", and is situated at the northern 

 end of the group, which extends from north to south for about 

 100 miles. The islands are variously laid down and divided 

 in different charts, and I believe the two admiralty charts 

 that I have are quite wrong so far as they apply to the parts I 

 have visited. Wallace's Chart at page 442 of his "Malay 

 Archipelesro" is by far the most correct, indeed had it not 

 been for this map I should have been a long time finding the 

 Watalli Channel, had I been in it I should not have known it 

 bv the Admiralty Charts, for it is quite absent from them. 

 Tho land evervwhere is very low and even swampy at this 



