CHAP. XXIX.] BARGAINING. 187 



with fish, cocoa-nuts, parrots and lories, earthen pans, 

 sirip leaf, wooden bowls, and trays, &c. &c., which every 

 one of the fifty inhabitants of our prau seemed to be 

 buying on his own account, till all available and most 

 unavailable space of our vessel was occupied with these 

 miscellaneous articles : for every man on board a prau 

 considers himself at liberty to trade, and to cany with 

 him whatever he can afford to buy. 



Money is unknown and valueless here — knives, cloth, 

 and arrack forming the only medium of exchange, with 

 tobacco for small coin. Every transaction is the subject of 

 a special bargain, and the cause of much talking. It is 

 absolutely necessary to offer very little, as the natives are 

 never satisfied till yoii add a little more. They are then 

 far better pleased than if you had given them twice the 

 amount at first and refused to increase it. 



I, too, was doing a little business, having persuaded 

 some of the natives to collect insects for me; and when 

 they really found that I gave them most fragrant tobacco 

 for worthless black and green beetles, I soon had scores of 

 visitors, men, women, and children, bringing bamboos full 

 of creeping things, which, alas ! too frequently had eaten 

 each other into fragments during the tedium of a day's 

 confinement. Of one grand new beetle, glittering with 

 ruby and emerald tints, I got a large quantity, having first 

 detected one of its wing-cases ornamenting the outside of 



