194 THE KE ISLANDS. [chap. xxix. 



evidently been introduced during a long- continued com- 

 mercial intercourse, seem to have no affinity whatever with 

 the Malay languages. 



Jan. 6th. — Tlie small boats being finished, we sailed 

 for Aru at 4 p.m., and as we left the shores of Ke had a 

 fine view of its rugged and mountainous character; ranges 

 of hills, three or four thousand feet high, stretching south- 

 wards as far as the eye could reach, everywhere covered 

 with a lofty, dense, and unbroken forest. We had very 

 light winds, and it therefore took us thirty hours to make 

 the passage of sixty miles to the low, or flat, but equally 

 forest-covered Aru Islands, where we anchored in the 

 liarbour of Dobbo at nine in the evening of the next day. 



My first voyage in a prau being thus satisfactorily 

 terminated, I must, before taking leave of it for some 

 months, bear testimony to the merits of the qiieer old- 

 world vessel. Setting aside all ideas of danger, which is 

 probably, after all, not more than in any other craft, I 

 must declare that I have never, either before or since, 

 made a tw^enty days' voyage so pleasantly, or perhaps, 

 more correctly speaking, with so little discomfort. This I 

 attribute chiefly to having my small cabin on deck, and 

 entirely to myself, to having my own servants to wait 

 upon me, and to the absence of all those marine-store ] 

 smells of paint, pitch, tallowy and new cordage, which are 

 to me insupportable. Something is also to be put down 



