Would I stay two or three months? They would get
me plenty of birds and animals, and I might soon finish all the
goods I had brought, and then, said the old spokesman, "Don't go
away, but send for more things from Dobbo, and stay here a year
or two." And then again the old story, "Do tell us the name of
your country. We know the Bugis men, and the Macassar men, and
the Java men, and the China men; only you, we don't know from
what country you come. Ung-lung! it can't be; I know that is not
the name of your country." Seeing no end to this long talk, I
said I was tired, and wanted to go to sleep; so after begging -
one a little bit of dry fish for his supper, and another a little
salt to eat with his sago - they went off very quietly, and I went
outside and took a stroll round the house by moonlight, thinking
of the simple people and the strange productions of Aru, and then
turned in under my mosquito curtain; to sleep with a sense of
perfect security in the midst of these good-natured savages.
We now had seven or eight days of hot and dry weather, which
reduced the little river to a succession of shallow pools
connected by the smallest possible thread of trickling water. If
there were a dry season like that of Macassar, the Aru Islands
would be uninhabitable, as there is no part of them much above a
hundred feet high; and the whole being a mass of porous coralline
rock, allows the surface water rapidly to escape. The only dry
season they have is for a month or two about September or
October, and there is then an excessive scarcity of water, so
that sometimes hundreds of birds and other animals die of
drought. The natives then remove to houses near the sources of
the small streams, where, in the shady depths of the forest, a
small quantity of water still remains. Even then many of them
have to go miles for their water, which they keep in large
bamboos and use very sparingly. They assure me that they catch
and kill game of all kinds, by watching at the water holes or
setting snares around them. That would be the time for me to make
my collections; but the want of water would be a terrible
annoyance, and the impossibility of getting away before another
whole year had passed made it out of the question.
Ever since leaving Dobbo I had suffered terribly from insects,
who seemed here bent upon revenging my long-continued persecution
of their race. At our first stopping-place sand-flies were very
abundant at night, penetrating to every part of the body, and
producing a more lasting irritation than mosquitoes. My feet and
ankles especially suffered, and were completely covered with
little red swollen specks, which tormented me horribly. On
arriving here we were delighted to find the house free from sand-
flies or mosquitoes, but in the plantations where my daily walks
led me, the day-biting mosquitoes swarmed, and seemed especially
to delight in attaching my poor feet. After a month's incessant
punishment, those useful members rebelled against such treatment
and broke into open insurrection, throwing out numerous inflamed
ulcers, which were very painful, and stopped me from walking. So
I found myself confined to the house, and with no immediate
prospect of leaving it. Wounds or sores in the feet are
especially difficult to heal in hot climates, and I therefore
dreaded them more than any other illness. The confinement was
very annoying, as the fine hot weather was excellent for insects,
of which I had every promise of obtaining a fine collection; and
it is only by daily and unremitting search that the smaller
kinds, and the rarer and more interesting specimens, can be
obtained. When I crawled down to the river-side to bathe, I often
saw the blue-winged Papilio ulysses, or some other equally rare
and beautiful insect; but there was nothing for it but patience,
and to return quietly to my bird-skinning, or whatever other work
I had indoors. The stings and bites and ceaseless irritation
caused by these pests of the tropical forests, would be borne
uncomplainingly; but to be kept prisoner by them in so rich and
unexplored a country where rare and beautiful creatures are to be
met with in every forest ramble - a country reached by such a long
and tedious voyage, and which might not in the present century be
again visited for the same purpose - is a punishment too severe
for a naturalist to pass over in silence.
I had, however, some consolation in the birds my boys brought
home daily, more especially the Paradiseas, which they at length
obtained in full plumage. It was quite a relief to my mind to get
these, for I could hardly have torn myself away from Aru had I
not obtained specimens.
But what I valued almost as much as the birds themselves was the
knowledge of their habits, which I was daily obtaining both from
the accounts of my hunters, and from the conversation of the
natives. The birds had now commenced what the people here call
their "sacaleli," or dancing-parties, in certain trees in the
forest, which are not fruit trees as I at first imagined, but
which have an immense tread of spreading branches and large but
scattered leaves, giving a clear space for the birds to play and
exhibit their plumes. On one of these trees a dozen or twenty
full-plumaged male birds assemble together, raise up their wings,
stretch out their necks, and elevate their exquisite plumes,
keeping them in a continual vibration. Between whiles they fly
across from branch to branch in great excitement, so that the
whole tree is filled with waving plumes in every variety of
attitude and motion.
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