We Had Arrived At Dorey About The End Of The Wet Season, When The
Whole Country Was Soaked With Moisture The Native Paths Were So
Neglected As To Be Often Mere Tunnels Closed Over With
Vegetation, And In Such Places There Was Always A Fearful
Accumulation Of Mud.
To the naked Papuan this is no obstruction.
He wades through it, and the next watercourse makes him clean
again; but to myself, wearing boots and trousers, it was a most
disagreeable thing to have to go up to my knees in a mud-hole
every morning.
The man I brought with me to cut wood fell ill
soon after we arrived, or I would have set him to clear fresh
paths in the worst places. For the first ten days it generally
rained every afternoon and all night r but by going out every
hour of fine weather, I managed to get on tolerably with my
collections of birds and insects, finding most of those collected
by Lesson during his visit in the Coquille, as well as many new
ones. It appears, however, that Dorey is not the place for Birds
of Paradise, none of the natives being accustomed to preserve
them. Those sold here are all brought from Amberbaki, about a
hundred miles west, where the Doreyans go to trade.
The islands in the bay, with the low lands near the coast, seem
to have been formed by recently raised coral reef's, and are much
strewn with masses of coral but little altered.
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