430 



THE ARU ISLANDS. 



[chap. ixi. 



ahining out amid the silent gloom of a dark and tangled 

 ibrest. The village of Dobbo held that evening at least 

 one contented man, 



Jan. 2&h. — Having now been here a fortnight, I 

 began to understand a Little of the place and its pecu- 

 liarities, Pmus continually arrived, and the mercliant 

 population increased almost daily. Every two or three 

 days a fresh house %vas opened, and the necessary repairs 

 made. In every direction men were bringing in poles, 

 bamboos, rattans, and the leaves of the nipa palm to 

 constnict or repair the walls, thatcli, doors, and shutters of 

 their houses, which they do with gi-eat celerity. Some of 

 the arrivals were Macassar men or Bngis, but more from 

 the small island of Goram, at the east end of Ceram, 

 whose inhabitants are the petty traders of the far East. 

 Then the natives of Aru come in from the other side of 

 the islands (called here '* blakang tana," or " back of the 

 country ") with the produce they have collected during 

 the preceding six moutlis, and which they now sell to the 

 traders, to some of whom they are most likely in debt. 

 Almost all, or I may safely say allj the new arrivals pay 

 me a visit, to see with their own eyes the unheard-of phe- 

 nomenon of a person come to stay at Dohbo who does nob 

 trade I They have their own ideas of the uses that may 

 possibly be made of stulfed birds, beetles, and shells wbicli 

 are not the right shells — that is, " mother-of-pearL" They 

 every day bring me dead and broken shells, such as I can 

 pick up by hundreds on the beach, and seem quite puzzled 

 and distressed when 1 decline them. If, however, there 

 are any snaU shells among a lot, I take them, and ask lor 

 more— a principle of selection so utterly unintelligible to 

 them, that they give it up in despair, or solve the problem 

 \}y imputing hidden medical virtue to those which they 

 see nie preserve so carefully. 



These traders are all of the Malay race, or a mixture of 

 which Malay is the chief ingredient, with the exception of 

 a few Chinese. The natives of Aru, on the other hand, 

 arc Papuans, with black or sooty brovrn skins, woolly 

 or friiizly hair, thick-ridged prominent noses, and rather 

 slender limbs. Most of them wear nothing but a waist- 

 cloth, and a few of them may be seen all day long wau* 



