The Back Of
The Comb Is Fastened Into A Piece Of Wood, Which Is Plated With
Tin In Front, And Above Is Attached A Plume Of Feathers From A
Cock's Tail.
In other respects they scarcely differed from the
people I was living with.
They brought me a couple of birds, some
shells and insects; showing that the report of the white man and
his doing had reached their country. There was probably hardly a
man in Aru who had not by this time heard of me.
Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable
property of a native is very scanty. He has a good supply of
spears and bows and arrows for hunting, a parang, or chopping-
knife, and an axe-for the stone age has passed away here, owing
to the commercial enterprise of the Bugis and other Malay races.
Attached to a belt, or hung across his shoulder, he carrion a
little skin pouch and an ornamented bamboo, containing betel-nut,
tobacco, and lime, and a small German wooden-handled knife is
generally stuck between his waist-cloth of bark and his bare
shin. Each man also possesses a °cadjan," or sleeping-mat, made
of the broad leaves of a pandanus neatly sewn together in- three
layers. This mat is abort four feet square, and when folded has
one end sewn up, so that it forms a kind of sack open at one
side. In the closed corner the head or feet can be placed, or by
carrying it on the head in a shower it forms both coat and
umbrella. It doubles up ix a small compass for convenient
carriage, and then forms a light and elastic cushion, so that on
a journey it becomes clothing, house, bedding, and furniture, all
in one.
The only ornaments in an Aru horse are trophies of the chase -
jaws of wild pigs, the heads and backbones of cassowaries, and
plumes made from the feathers of the Bird of Paradise, cassowary,
and domestic fowl. The spears, shields, knife-handles, and other
utensils are more or less carved in fanciful designs, and the
mats and leaf boxes are painted or plaited in neat patterns of
red, black, and yellow colours. I must not forget these boxes,
which are most ingeniously made of the pith of a balm leaf pegged
together, lined inside with pandanus leaves, and outside with the
same, or with plaited grass. All the joints and angles are
coffered with strips of split rattan sewn neatly on. The lid is
covered with the brown leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which
is impervious to water, and the whole box is neat, strong, and
well finished. They are made from a few inches to two or three
feet long, and being much esteemed by the Malay as clothes-boxes,
are a regular article of export from Aru. The natives use the
smaller ones for tobacco or betel-nut, but seldom have clothes
enough to require the larger ones, which are only made for sale.
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