The Trade Carried On At Dobbo Is Very Considerable.
This year
there were fifteen large praus from Macassar, and perhaps a
hundred small boats from Ceram, Goram, and Ke.
The Macassar
cargoes are worth about £1,000. each, and the other boats take
away perhaps about £3,000, worth, so that the whole exports may
be estimated at £18,000. per annum. The largest and most bulky
items are pearl-shell and tripang, or "beche-de-mer," with
smaller quantities of tortoise-shell, edible birds' nests,
pearls, ornamental woods, timber, and Birds of Paradise. These
are purchased with a variety of goods. Of arrack, about equal in
strength to ordinary West India rum, 3,000 boxes, each containing
fifteen half-gallon bottles, are consumed annually. Native cloth
from Celebes is much esteemed for its durability, and large
quantities are sold, as well as white English calico and American
unbleached cottons, common crockery, coarse cutlery, muskets,
gunpowder, gongs, small brass cannon, and elephants' tusks. These
three last articles constitute the wealth of the Aru people, with
which they pay for their wives, or which they hoard up as "real
property." Tobacco is in immense demand for chewing, and it must
be very strong, or an Aru man will not look at it. Knowing how
little these people generally work, the mass of produce obtained
annually shows that the islands must be pretty thickly inhabited,
especially along the coasts, as nine-tenths of the whole are
marine productions.
It was on the 2d of July that we left Aru, followed by all the
Macassar praus, fifteen in number, who had agreed to sail in
company. We passed south of Banda, and then steered due west,
not seeing land for three days, till we sighted some low islands
west of Bouton. We had a strong and steady south-east wind day
and night, which carried us on at about five knots an hour, where
a clipper ship would have made twelve. The sky was continually
cloudy, dark, and threatening, with occasional drizzling showers,
till we were west of Bouru, when it cleared up and we enjoyed the
bright sunny skies of the dry season for the rest of our voyage.
It is about here, therefore that the seasons of the eastern and
western regions of the Archipelago are divided. West of this line
from June to December is generally fine, and often very dry, the
rest of the year being the wet season. East of it the weather is
exceedingly uncertain, each island, and each side of an island,
having its own peculiarities. The difference seems to consist not
so much in the distribution of the rainfall as in that of the
clouds and the moistness of the atmosphere. In Aru, for example,
when we left, the little streams were all dried up, although the
weather was gloomy; while in January, February, and March, when
we had the hottest sunshine and the finest days, they were always
flowing. The driest time of all the year in Aru occurs in
September and October, just as it does in Java and Celebes. The
rainy seasons agree, therefore, with those of the western
islands, although the weather is very different. The Molucca sea
is of a very deep blue colour, quite distinct from the clear
light blue of the Atlantic. In cloudy and dull weather it looks
absolutely black, and when crested with foam has a stern and
angry aspect. The wind continued fair and strong during our whole
voyage, and we reached Macassar in perfect safety on the evening
of the 11th of July, having made the passage from Aru (more than
a thousand miles) in nine and a half days.
My expedition to the Aru Islands had been eminently successful.
Although I had been for months confined to the house by illness,
and had lost much time by the want of the means of locomotion,
and by missing the right season at the right place, I brought
away with me more than nine thousand specimens of natural
objects, of about sixteen hundred distinct species. I had made
the acquaintance of a strange and little-known race of men; I had
become familiar with the traders of the far East; I had revelled
in the delights of exploring a new fauna and flora, one of the
most remarkable and most beautiful and least-known in the world;
and I had succeeded in the main object for which I had undertaken
the journey-namely, to obtain fine specimens of the magnificent
Birds of Paradise, and to be enabled to observe them in their
native forests. By this success I was stimulated to continue my
researches in the Moluccas and New Guinea for nearly five years
longer, and it is still the portion of my travels to which I look
back with the most complete satisfaction.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE ARU ISLANDS - PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ASPECTS OF NATURE.
IN this chapter I propose to give a general sketch of the
physical geography of the Aru Islands, and of their relation to
the surrounding countries; and shall thus be able to incorporate
the information obtained from traders, and from the works of
other naturalists with my own observations in these exceedingly
interesting and little-known regions.
The Aru group may be said to consist of one very large central
island with a number of small ones scattered round it. The great
island is called by the natives and traders "Tang-busar" (great
or mainland), to distinguish it as a whole from Dobbo, or any of
the detached islands. It is of an irregular oblong form, about
eighty miles from north to south, and forty or fifty from east to
west, in which direction it is traversed by three narrow
channels, dividing it into four portions. These channels are
always called rivers by the traders, which puzzled me much till I
passed through one of them, and saw how exceedingly applicable
the name was. The northern channel, called the river of Watelai,
is about a quarter of a mile wide at its entrance, but soon
narrows to abort the eighth of a mile, which width it retains,
with little variation, during its whole, length of nearly fifty
miles, till it again widens at its eastern mouth.
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