IX TIMOM-LAUT. 



331 



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

 rest for the night. A terriflc shot from a native gim— always 

 charged to the very muzzle— startled the whole community. 

 Sht>ut^i 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 sueh a case. After barric-ading 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, 1 had 

 purchased expressly for perhaps such an emergency was still 

 riding by Its line to the pillar of the house, to sen^e as a last 

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

 miglit 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 chiefs son came to tell us 

 that the shot was au accidental discharge of a late-roturning 

 villager's gun. It was a mauvais quart dlimre^ short but 

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

 pectancy under which the whole village was living. The 

 Reaction of relief was nearly as difficult to endure as the 

 suspense had been. 



Eesiileg 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, rheimiatic affections 

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



Among other interesting facts, I learned from the inhabi- 

 tants that the name of Timordaut was quite unknown to 

 them. This is a Jfalay appellation, probably given the 

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

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

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

 the Eastern hhnd in tlia Sea, Another derivation of the name 

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

 hint but TwiorlaOj in which the termination loo means /ar, ' 

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



