The Path, However, Was A Most Trying One.

Where there was earth, it was a deposit of reddish clay overlying the rock, and was worn so smooth by the attrition of naked feet that my shoes could obtain no hold on the sloping surface.

A little farther we came to the bare rock, and this was worse, for it was so rugged and broken, and so honeycombed and weatherworn into sharp points and angles, that my boys, who had gone barefooted all their lives, could not stand it. Their feet began to bleed, and I saw that if I did not want them completely lamed it would be wise to turn lack. My own shoes, which were rather thin, were but a poor protection, and would soon have been cut to pieces; yet our little naked guides tripped along with the greatest ease and unconcern, and seemed much astonished at our effeminacy in not being able to take a walk which to them was a perfectly agreeable one. During the rest of our stay in the island we were obliged to confine ourselves to the vicinity of the shore and the cultivated grounds, and those more level portions of the forest where a little soil had accumulated and the rock had been less exposed to atmospheric action.

The island of Ke (pronounced exactly as the letter K, but erroneously spelt in our maps Key or Ki) is long and narrow, running in a north and south direction, and consists almost entirely of rock and mountain. It is everywhere covered with luxuriant forests, and in its bays and inlets the sand is of dazzling whiteness, resulting from the decomposition of the coralline limestone of which it is entirely composed. In all the little swampy inlets and valleys sago trees abound, and these supply the main subsistence of the natives, who grow no rice, and have scarcely any other cultivated products but cocoa-nuts, plantains, and yams. From the cocoa-nuts, which surround every hut, and which thrive exceedingly on the porous limestone soil and under the influence of salt breezes, oil is made which is sold at a good price to the Aru traders, who all touch here to lay in their stuck of this article, as well as to purchase boats and native crockery. Wooden bowls, pans, and trays are also largely made here, hewn out of solid blocks of wood with knife and adze; and these are carried to all parts of the Moluccas. But the art in which the natives of Ke pre-eminently excel is that of boat building. Their forests supply abundance of fine timber, though, probably not more so than many other islands, and from some unknown causes these remote savages have come to excel in what seems a very difficult art. Their small canoes are beautifully formed, broad and low in the centre, but rising at each end, where they terminate in high-pointed beaks more or less carved, and ornamented with a plume of feathers.

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