047- 
This Chinese seems to be the herd of the animal collectors 
here. They all haunt the shipyards end pick up what thev can from 
sailors coming in from Ternate and New Guinea and other' distant 
islands. Gerds gets what he can from all of them, but Yong is 
the most prosperous, respectable and respected of the Chinese clan. 
From him we hope to get a good collection on the way back. 
From his orchid collection Yong gave me several sprays of 
P apuan orchids, pale lavender with purple centers, smallish 
blossoms, but six or seven to a spray. He told me if I would keep 
them in water they would last for several days. 
On our way to the hotel we went out through the native 
quarter, the fishing village on the sea. Here were little houses 
built out over the water, woven of palm, and thatched of course. 
The harbor, and canals were full of native praus, built with a 
high bow, with multicolored sails, and sometimes one, sometimes 
two outriggers. The ones with two outriggers looked like 
enormous water boatmen skidding over the water. Men were mending 
their nets, women doing the washing, children ran after us laughing 
and shouting "Tabe, Tuan" but not begging. Here and there along 
the coast were lookout towers for the fishermen - where the 
watchman spends hours waiting for a school of fish to appear and 
then shouts the good word ihxfc 
Beyond the village was the tomb of "Captain China" - not 
a sea-faring man as I had supposed, but the head man of the 
village. His tomb, and the nearby temple, were ornate with 
carved and colored stucco. There were some nice bits of porcelain, 
small and complicated rock gardens, and some grotesoue figures 
of the Captfin, of Malay soldiers, and two Dutch soldiers on 
guard. 
The famous prau harbor is near here, but the boats are 
anchored so close together, their sails furled, that one really 
gets little idea of what they look like. Housekeeping goes on 
busily aboard; people are born, grow up into f j shermen, spend 
their whole lives on these praus and never know any other home. 
Back at the hotel our various Chinese agents, and also 
rather embarassingly Herr Gerds, kept eppearaing and reappearing. 
Rather than have them think we were playing one against the 
other we told them we were going to buy from all of them, and 
wanted Yong to supervise the lot. They all managed to extract 
considerable guilders as guaranty of good faith, but we are 
assured that they are honest, and we will not lose by financing 
them in advance. 
In the evening we went to a Chinese restaurant, seeking 
a change from the pseudo-French of the hotel, but the Chinese 
food was not as good as we had had in Semarang. In fact, the 
tummy-ache that woke me in the night was probably due to the 
fried shrimps, or the crab eggs, that had been a bit heavy with 
Coenraad and Bill are still worrying about permits. 
No word has come from Batavia. Coenraad tried to telephone to 
Batavia, and learned that the telephone can be used on Sunday 
only m case of a volcanic eruption - just what good it would be 
then seems uncertain. At any rate he was able to get a cable 
