CHAP. xxtSL] TEE SJFAOES BOAllD US. 



41.'i 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE K£ islands, 

 (jawaut 1857.) 



THE native boats that had come to meet us were three 

 or four in number, containing in all alu^iit fifty men. 

 They were long canoea, with the bow and stern rising up 

 into a beak six or eight feet high, decorated witli shells 

 and waving plumes of cassowaries hair, I now had my iiret 

 view of Papuans in their own country, and in less than five 

 minutes was convinced that the opinion already arrived at 

 by the examination of a few Timor and New Guinea slaves 

 was substantially correct, and that the people I now had 

 an opportunity of comparing side by side belonged to two 

 of the most distinct and stnangly marked races that the 

 earth contains. Had I been blind, I coidd have been 

 certain that these ialauders were not Malays. The loud, 

 rapid, eager tones, the incessant motion, the intense vitid 

 activity manifested in speech and action, are the very 

 antipodes of the quiet, unimpukive, unanimated Malay. 

 These Ki men came up singing and shouting, dipping 

 tbeir paddies deep in the water and throwing up clouds of 

 spray ; as they approached nearer they stood up in their 

 canoes and increased tlieir noise and gesticulations ; and 

 on coming alongside, without asking leave, and without a 

 moment's hesitation, the greater part of them scrambled up 

 on our deck just as if tbey were come to take possession of 

 a captured vessel. Then commenced a scene of indeseribable 

 confusion. Tbese forty black, naked, mop-headed savages 

 seemed intoxicated with joy and excitement. Not one of 

 them could remain still for, a moment. Every individual 

 of our crew wfts in turn surrounded and examined, asked 

 for tobacco or arrack, grmned at and deserted for another. 

 All talked at once, and our captain was regularly mobbed 

 by the chief men, who wanted to be employed to tow us 

 in, and who begged vociferously to be paid in advance. A 

 few jtreaents of tobacco made their eyes glisten; they 



