402 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



legends, words and thoughts, will die out a chapter of far- 

 past history that can never be recovered again on the globe. 



The men are of medium height — averaging about 5 feet 

 2 inches — and a little taller than the women. They are a 

 weak, emaciated, ill-conditioned, and somewhat effeminate- 

 looking race. Many of them suffer from the fungoid skin 

 disease so often met with among the badly nurtured peoples 

 further to the east. They are not a warlike people, and are 

 not head-hunters like the Ceramese. 



In colour they are brown, or yellowish brown, and, as far as 

 my observations go, none of them are black as the Aru people 

 are. Their hair is fairly abundant on the head, but not 

 profuse, in fact rather scanty on other parts of the body. 

 Their faces are bare, as a rule, though a few have a few long 

 hairs at the corners of the mouth and the upper lip. The 

 head-hair is not worn in the high-matted frizzled coiff^e 

 as seen among some of the Papuans, but it is curled in 

 a more or less loose manner well seen in the figure on the 

 opposite page. It is parted in the centre as a rule, and 

 allowed to hang down on both sides in loose irregular curls, 

 appearing through and above the kerchief which is worn 

 round the head. Dr. Bastian, in his ' Indonesien,' states that 

 the Wakolo Lake Buruese have smooth hair ; but this is not 

 absolutely the case. Nearer the coast, however, hair as straight 

 as in any Sundanese is met with. That form of. nose with 

 high dorsum and over-hanging tip which I observed conspicu- 

 ously in Timor-laut, and subsequently in the interior of Timor, 

 as seen in the concluding Part of this book, was not observed 

 among the Buruese ; nor yet that tall and more athletic build 

 of man (and woman) which could not escape observation in 

 both of the islands just named. The Wakolo women had the 

 same meek and submissive bearing that I had noticed in those 

 met with nearer the coast. 



Very few of them wear ornaments beyond a small stud of 

 silver in the ear ; the children are provided with a piece of 

 dried intestine of the Cuscus in their ear-lobes, and round their 

 necks ; while both sexes wear armlets of shell, of a thong-like 

 corneous coralline called by the Malays akar hahar, and of the 

 intestine of the Cuscus. 



The garments worn by the men were the usual T-bandage, 



