They Are Under The Rule Of The Sultan Of
Tidore, And Every Year Have To Pay A Small Tribute Of Paradise
Birds, Tortoiseshell, Or Sago.
To obtain these, they go in the
fine season on a trading voyage to the mainland of New Guinea,
And getting a few goods on credit from some Ceram or Bugis
trader, make hard bargains with the natives, and gain enough to
pay their tribute, and leave a little profit for themselves.
Such a country is not a very pleasant one to live in, for as
there are no superfluities, there is nothing to sell; and had it
not been for a trader from Ceram who was residing there during my
stay, who had a small vegetable garden, and whose men
occasionally got a few spare fish, I should often have had
nothing to eat. Fowls, fruit, and vegetables are luxuries very
rarely to be purchased at Muka; and even cocoa-nuts, so
indispensable for eastern cookery, are not to be obtained; for
though there are some hundreds of trees in the village, all the
fruit is eaten green, to supply the place of the vegetables the
people are too lazy to cultivate. Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, or
plantains, we had very short commons, and the boisterous weather
being unpropitious for fishing, we had to live on what few
eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional cuscus, or
eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, inhabiting the
island.
I had only shot two male Paradiseas on my tree when they ceased
visiting it, either owing to the fruit becoming scarce, or that
they were wise enough to know there was danger.
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