Finding It Quite
Impossible To Get Men Here To Accompany Me On The Whole Voyage, I
Was Obliged To Be Content With A Crew To Take Me As Far As Wahai,
On The Middle Of The North Coast Of Ceram, And The Chief Dutch
Station In The Island.
The journey took us five days, owing to
calms and light winds, and no incident of any interest occurred
on it, nor did I obtain at our stopping places a single addition
to my collections worth naming.
At Wahai, which I reached on the
15th of June, I was hospitably received by the Commandant and my
old friend Herr Rosenberg, who was now on an official visit here.
He lent me some money to pay my men, and I was lucky enough to
obtain three others willing to make the voyage with me to
Ternate, and one more who was to return from Mysol. One of my
Amboyna lads, however, left me, so that I was still rather short
of hands.
I found here a letter from Charles Allen, who was at Silinta in
Mysol, anxiously expecting me, as he was out of rice and other
necessaries, and was short of insect-pins. He was also ill, and
if I did not soon come would return to Wahai.
As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among islands
inhabited by the Papuan race, and was an eventful and disastrous
one, I will narrate its chief incidents in a separate chapter in
that division of my work devoted to the Papuan Islands. I now
have to pass over a year spent in Waigiou and Timor, in order to
describe my visit to the island of Bouru, which concluded my
explorations of the Moluccas.
CHAPTER XXVI.
BOURU.
MAY AND JUNE 1861.
I HAD long wished to visit the large island of Bouru, which lies
due west of Ceram, and of which scarcely anything appeared to be
known to naturalists, except that it contained a babirusa very
like that of Celebes. I therefore made arrangements for staying
there two months after leaving Timor Delli in 1861. This I could
conveniently do by means of the Dutch mail-steamers, which make a
monthly round of the Moluccas.
We arrived at the harbour of Cajeli on the 4th of May; a gun was
fired, the Commandant of the fort came alongside in a native boat
to receive the post-packet, and took me and my baggage on shore,
the steamer going off again without coming to an anchor. We went
to the horse of the Opzeiner, or overseer, a native of Amboyna -
Bouru being too poor a place to deserve even an Assistant
Resident; yet the appearance of the village was very far superior
to that of Delli, which possesses "His Excellency the Governor,"
and the little fort, in perfect order, surrounded by neat brass-
plots and straight walks, although manned by only a dozen
Javanese soldiers with an Adjutant for commander, was a very
Sebastopol in comparison with the miserable mud enclosure at
Delli, with its numerous staff of Lieutenants, Captain, and
Major. Yet this, as well as most of the forts in the Moluccas,
was originally built by the Portuguese themselves. Oh! Lusitania,
how art thou fallen!
While the Opzeiner was reading his letters, I took a walk round
the village with a guide in search of a horse. The whole place
was dreadfully damp and muddy, being built in a swamp with not a
spot of ground raised a foot above it, and surrounded by swamps
on every side. The houses were mostly well built, of wooden
framework filled in with gaba-gaba (leaf-stems of the sago-palm),
but as they had no whitewash, and the floors were of bare black
earth like the roads, and generally on the same level, they were
extremely damp and gloomy. At length I found one with the floor
raised about a foot, and succeeded in making a bargain with the
owner to turn out immediately, so that by night I had installed
myself comfortably. The chairs and tables were left for me; and
as the whole of the remaining furniture in the house consisted of
a little crockery and a few clothes-boxes, it was not much
trouble for the owners to move into the house of some relatives,
and thus obtain a few silver rupees very easily. Every foot of
ground between the homes throughout the village is crammed with
fruit trees, so that the sun and air have no chance of
penetrating. This must be very cool and pleasant in the dry
season, but makes it damp and unhealthy at other times of the
year. Unfortunately I had come two months too soon, for the rains
were not yet over, and mud and water were the prominent features
of the country.
About a mile behind and to the east of the village the hills
commence, but they are very barren, being covered with scanty
coarse grass and scattered trees of the Melaleuca cajuputi, from
the leaves of which the celebrated cajeput oil is made. Such
districts are absolutely destitute of interest for the zoologist.
A few miles further on rose higher mountains, apparently well
covered with forest, but they were entirely uninhabited and
trackless, and practically inaccessible to a traveller with
limited time and means. It became evident, therefore, that I must
leave Cajeli for some better collecting ground, and finding a man
who was going a few miles eastward to a village on the coast
where he said there were hills and forest, I sent my boy Ali with
him to explore and report on the capabilities of the district. At
the same time I arranged to go myself on a little excursion up a
river which flows into the bay about five miles north of the
town, to a village of the Alfuros, or indigenes, where I thought
I might perhaps find a good collecting ground.
The Rajah of Cajeli, a good-tempered old man, offered to
accompany me, as the village was under his government; and we
started one morning early, in a long narrow boat with eight
rowers.
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