IN TIMOR-LAUT. 381 



bad day of the same about the hour the village was going to 

 rest for the night. A terrific shot from a native gun— always 

 charged to the very muzzle — startled the whole community. 

 Shouts of " Kaleobar " resounded everywhere. Like a dis- 

 turbed ant's-nest the villagers, every man with his arrow on 

 the string or a sheaf of javelins in his hand, one of them ready 

 poised, clustered out round the barricades shouting and ges- 

 ticulating. We were alone — the Postholder and our men not 

 having returned from Molu — except for one servant, use- 

 less in such a case. After barricading the door and sliding 

 an explosive shell into my Martini, with a cheery word to 

 my companion who held ready a handful of cartridges, and a 

 hasty look to see if the boat which, unknown to her, I had 

 purchased expressly for perhaps such an emergency was still 

 riding by its line to the pillar of the house, to serve as a last 

 means of escape, I stood ready at the open window for what 

 might follow. A sudden silence of the shouting supervened, a 

 period of acute suspense to us, whose window did not look out 

 on the barricades, and then the chief's son came to tell us 

 that the shot was an accidental discharge of a late-returning 

 villager's gun. It was a mauvais quart dlieure, short but 

 terribly trying, which showed how tense was the nervous ex- 

 pectancy under which the whole village was living. The 

 eaction of relief was nearly as difficult to endure as the 

 suspense had been. 



Besides fever, which affected the natives also, few diseases 

 existed on the islands. With the exception of that curious 

 fungoid skin disease so common among the Papuan races, of a 

 little scrofula, and, among the old people, rheumatic affections 

 of the hands and limbs, the people were very healthy. 



Among other interesting facts, I learned from the inhabi- 

 tants that the name of Timor-laut was quite unknown to 

 them. This is ^ Malay appellation, probably given by the 

 Macassar traders, who, falling on a large island farther in the 

 sea than the one they best knew as the Easterly isle — which 

 the name Timor signifies — designated this, by Timor-laut or 

 the Eastern Island in the Sea. Another derivation of the name 

 has been given that the appellation of the group is not Timor- 

 laut but Timorlao, in which the termination lao means far, 

 and that, therefore, their designation signifies the Far-east 



