/.V TIMOR'LAUr. 



307 



CHAPTER IV. 



SOJOURN IN TIMOR-LAUT— ^On^inK^. 



The iiRlives — lliiir ond coiffvirt^t — Vftnity — Stature and living: cbftrflctoriatics 

 — Graniftl chiiraciers — VU Ahm% — Tjikalele daocfr— Arms — Marriage 

 — Artialic skill — Indivirkml and morAi cbnracttr — Treatment of ilieir 

 cliildren— Games— Pine figures — Graves — Gotid butterfly resort*. 



jrAXY trying and yesatious delays — the laziness of the RatiTea, 

 quarrels in the village, and fear of attacks from our neigh- 

 bours, which are easier to look back on from the midst of cirili- 

 sation than to bear at the time, with equanimity — prevented onr 

 house, which taxed all our energies, from being finished till 

 the nineteenth day after our arrival, and not till then was I 

 aide to commence making any close study of the surrounding 

 country, or of its flora and fauna. But we had no useless time 

 on our hands, everything was so new to us. The people that 

 came about us to gazCj were all subjects deserving the closest 

 study. Their every gesture and every custom had to be 

 watched with microscopic acntencss, if we were to improve our 

 opportunities and not fail in deciphering the story — ^only tlius 

 recorded and to be ere long blurred and blotted by foreign 

 contact— of their race, incessantly being nnfolded before us 

 in their every unconscions word and commonest action. 



All the natives of the islands we saw were handsome-featured 

 fellows, lithe, tall, erect, and with splendidly formed bodie.«i. 

 They dyed their hair of a rich golden colour by a preparation 

 made of cocoa-nut ash and Hme, var}^ing, however, in shafle 

 with the time, from a dirty grey through a red or rnsset colour, 

 till the second day, when the approved tint appeared. Several 

 modes of arranging their hair were in vogue. It was either 

 carefully combed out, transfixed with a hmg fork-like comb, 

 and confined within a single girdle of paltn-leaf, or a black, red 



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