The men, and
their excitement on very ordinary occasions, are altogether
removed from the general taciturnity and reserve of the Malay.
The language of the Ke people consists of words of one, two, or
three syllables in about equal proportions, and has many
aspirated and a few guttural sounds. The different villages have
slight differences of dialect, but they are mutually
intelligible, and, except in words that have evidently been
introduced during a long-continued commercial intercourse, seem
to have no affinity whatever with the Malay languages.
Jan. 6th.-The small boats being finished, we sailed for Aru at 4
P.M., and as we left the shores of Ke had a line view of its
rugged and mountainous character; ranges of hills, three or four
thousand feet high, stretching southwards as far as the eye could
reach, everywhere covered with a lofty, dense, and unbroken
forest. We had very light winds, and it therefore took us thirty
hours to make the passage of sixty miles to the low, or flat, but
equally forest-covered Aru Islands, where we anchored in the
harbour of Dobbo at nine in the evening of the next day.
My first voyage in a prau being thus satisfactorily terminated, I
must, before taking leave of it for some months, bear testimony
to the merits of the queer old-world vessel.
