CHAP. XXXI.] NATIVE TALK. 249 



my country ; and tlien a long string of compliments, to the 

 effect that I was a much better sort of a person than the 

 Bugis and Chinese, who sometimes came to trade with 

 them, for I gave them things for nothing, and did not try 

 to cheat them. How long would I stop ? was the next 

 earnest inquiry. Would I stay two or three months ? 

 They would get me plenty of birds and animals, and I 

 might soon finish all the goods I had brought, and then, 

 said the old spokesman, " Don't go away, but send for 

 more things from Dobbo, and stay here a year or two." 

 And then again the old story, "Do tell us the name of 

 your country. We know the Bugis men, and the Macassar 

 men, and the Java men, and the China men ; only you, we 

 don't know' from what country you come. Ung-lung ! it 

 can't be ; I know that is not the name of your country." 

 Seeing no end to this long talk, I said I was tired, and 

 wanted to go to sleep; so after begging — one a little bit of 

 dry fish for his supper, and another a little salt to eat with 

 his sago — they went off very quietly, and I went outside 

 and took a stroll round the house by moonlight, thinking of 

 the simple people and the strange productions of Aru, and 

 then turned in under my mosquito curtain, to sleep with 

 a sense of perfect security in the midst of these good- 

 natured savages. 



We now had seven or eight days of hot and dry 

 weather, which reduced the little river to a succession of 



