His Business Was
That Of A Coffee And Opium Merchant.
He had a coffee estate at
Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands
near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell.
About one
he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain,
first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers
and bare feet, and then take a siesta with a book. About four,
after a cup of tea, he would walk round his premises, and
generally stroll down to Mamajam to pay me a visit, and look
after his farm.
This consisted of a coffee plantation and an orchard of fruit
trees, a dozen horses and a score of cattle, with a small village
of Timorese slaves and Macassar servants. One family looked after
the cattle and supplied the house with milk, bringing me also a
large glassful every morning, one of my greatest luxuries. Others
had charge of the horses, which were brought in every afternoon
and fed with cut grass. Others had to cut grass for their
master's horses at Macassar - not a very easy task in the dry
season, when all the country looks like baked mud; or in the
rainy season, when miles in every direction are flooded. How they
managed it was a mystery to me, but they know grass must be had,
and they get it. One lame woman had charge of a flock of ducks.
Twice a day she took them out to feed in the marshy places, let
them waddle and gobble for an hour or two, and then drove them
back and shut them up in a small dark shed to digest their meal,
whence they gave forth occasionally a melancholy quack.
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