280 THE ARU ISLANDS. [chap, xxxii. 



their parting feast, and kindly sent me some pork, and a 

 basin of birds'-nest stew, which had very little more taste 

 than a dish of vermicelli. My boy Ali returned from 

 Wanumbai, where I had sent him alone for a fortnight to 

 buy Paradise birds and prepare the skins ; he brought 

 me sixteen glorious specimens, and had he not been very 

 ill with fever and ague might have obtained twice the 

 number. He had lived -with the people whose house I 

 had occupied, and it is a proof of their goodness, if fairly 

 treated, that although he took with him a quantity of 

 silver dollars to pay for the birds they caught, no attempt 

 was made to rob him, which might have been done with 

 the moat perfect impunity. He was kindly treated when 

 ill, and was brought back to me with the balance of the 

 dollars he had not spent. 



The Wanumbai people, like almost all the inhabitants of 

 the Aru Islands, are perfect savages, and I saw no signs of 

 any reKgion. There are, however, three or four villages on 

 the coast where schoolmasters from Amboyna reside, and 

 the people are nominally Christians, and are to some extent 

 educated and civilized. I could not get much real know- 

 ledge of the customs of the Aru people during the short 

 time I was among them, but they have evidently been con- 

 siderably influenced by their long association with Maho- 

 metan traders. They often bury their dead, although the 

 national custom is to expose the body on a raised stage till 



