CHAP. XXX.] I PUZZLE THE NATIVES. 201 



Almost all, or I may safely say all, the new arrivals pay 

 lue a visit, to see with their own eyes the irnheard-of phe- 

 nomenon of a person come to stay at Dohbo who does not 

 trade ! They have their own ideas of the uses that may 

 possibly be made of stuffed birds, beetles, and shells which 

 are not the right shells— that is, " mother-of-pearl." They 

 every day bring me dead and broken shells, such as I can 

 pick up by hundreds on the beach, and seem quite puzzled 

 and distressed when I decline them. If, however, there 

 are any snail shells among a lot, I take them, and ask for 

 more — a principle of selection so utterly unintelligible to 

 them, that they give it up in despair, or solve the problem 

 by imputing hidden medical virtue to those which they 

 see me preserve so carefully. 



These traders are all of the Malay race, or a mixture of 

 which Malay is the chief ingredient, with the exception of 

 a few Chinese. The natives of Aru, on the other hand, 

 are Papuans, with black or sooty brown skins, woolly 

 or frizzly hair, thick-ridged prominent noses, and rather 

 slender limbs. Most of them wear nothing but a waist- 

 cloth, and a few of them may be seen all day long wan- 

 dering about the half-deserted streets of Dobbo offering 

 their little bit of merchandise for sale. 



Living in a trader's house everything is brought to me as 

 well as to the rest, — bundles of smoked tripang, or " beche 

 de mer," looking like sausages which have been rolled in 



