deep crimson on the inside. The edible portion is pure white, and 
consists of from five to seven segments of juicy, delicate, slightly 
acidic fruit. Kanari nuts are tender, white, rather like almonds in 
liavor. Each nut unfolds into closely packed segments, and in fact 
consists of tiny new leaves, ready to unfold and sprout. Sago bread 
is neavy and tasteless, and is bad ed in a mold which turns out five 
little loaves all joined together across the bottom. 
After lunch we tasted our first durian. The odor when the 
fruit is cut is of sourness and decay. Inside are large white 
segments of fruit, and you take one in your fingers and get a 
violent smell of limburger cheese. Summoning up your courage you 
bite into it, and find a rich, custardy fruit, that tastes like 
strawberries and chocolate and coffe with cream. We thought that 
the flavor had been slightly overestimated, the smell, however , is 
not quite as bad as we had been led to believe, though it is far 
from pleasant. In fact, as the day wore on, and the odor of 
durian pervaded the house and the beach and the forest, it was 
a little sickening. 
Rain threatened all afternoon. We slept, and sat on the 
verandah and watched the bay through the coconut pflms, and at 
si>: o'clock the lights of Ambon showed on the opposite shore. B. 
heard that a man in the next village had two cuecus, and we sent 
out a runner to see if we could buy them. He started off with 
a flashlight along the beach, for a five-hour walk each way. B. 
explained that the nearby village was Christian, and that Christians 
shot the cuscus, so they were very shy and hard, to catch. The 
village farther away was Mohammedan, and as they did not hunt the 
cuscus it was much easier to catch themthere. 
Dinner was a similar reistafel to the one we had at noon. 
Bill and I gorged ourselves on mangosteens, which are now at the 
height of the season, and fresh off the tree. As I reached for 
my sixteenth a voice oflt of a dark corner said in English "Eat 
more fruit." Startled I turned to find Tais Papalayo, satr a 
hunting companion of B's, grinning at me. He is Ambonese, with 
a strange collection of tags of English which I think he has picked 
up at the movies. He whistles fairly recent jazz, and is always 
coming out with some remark such as "O.K.", "Yes we Have No Bananas" 
The movies are a great help to students of English! B. tells us 
that he learned his English In school in Java and in Holland, but 
keeps in practise by listening carefully to the dialogue in the 
films . 
April 17 - 
Up early and went for a walk along the beach. Hundred* 
of hermit crabs in the gaudiest shells imaginable scurried about. 
Most of them were tiny things, but each shell was different - some 
striped, so e pearly, some with long tails on them, and of everv color 
of the rainbow. Fairy crabs flitted about. Coral is on the beach 
i n ^S U !u tlties * Mso huge j ell yfish, sea urchins, and the shells of 
both the pearly nautilus and the ch? bered nautilus. We walked through 
a neighbor's plantation, ?nd picked up Will em, a youngster but a good 
bush boy, with keen eyes. Bill found Polyrachus, making two different 
kinds of nests of siik and chewed-up bark, and Odontoma chus of the 
Imperator group, as well as something that he thinks is Rogeria and 
possibly a new species. Willem located several Polyrachus nests for 
