through patches of second-growth forest to cane-fields, gardens, and scattered
houses, beyond which again the dark wall of verdure striped with tree-trunks,
marked out the limits of the primeval forests. The voices of many birds promised
good shooting, and on my return I found that my boys had already obtained two
or three kinds I had not seen before; and in the evening a native brought me a
rare and beautiful species of ground-thrush (Pitta novaeguinaeae) hitherto only
known from New Guinea.
As I improved my acquaintance with them I became much interested in these
people, who are a fair sample of the true savage inhabitants of the Aru Islands,
tolerably free from foreign admixture. The house I lived in contained four or five
families, and there were generally from six to a dozen visitors besides. They kept
up a continual row from morning till night—talking, laughing, shouting, without
intermission—not very pleasant, but interesting as a study of national character.
My boy Ali said to me, "Banyak quot bitchara Orang Aru" (The Aru people are
very strong talkers), never having been accustomed to such eloquence either in
his own or any other country he had hitherto visited. Of an evening the men,
having got over their first shyness, began to talk to me a little, asking about my
country, &c., and in return I questioned them about any traditions they had of
their own origin. I had, however, very little success, for I could not possibly
make them understand the simple question of where the Aru people first came
from. I put it in every possible way to them, but it was a subject quite beyond
their speculations; they had evidently never thought of anything of the kind, and
were unable to conceive a thing so remote and so unnecessary to be thought
about, as their own origin. Finding this hopeless, I asked if they knew when the
trade with Aru first began, when the Bugis and Chinese and Macassar men first
came in their praus to buy tripang and tortoise-shell, and birds' nests, and
Paradise birds?
This they comprehended, but replied that there had always been the same
trade as long as they or their fathers recollected, but that this was the first time a
real white man had come among them, and, said they, "You see how the people
come every day from all the villages round to look at you." This was very
flattering, and accounted for the great concourse of visitors which I had at first
imagined was accidental. A few years before I had been one of the gazers at the
Zoolus, and the Aztecs in London. Now the tables were turned upon me, for I
was to these people a new and strange variety of man, and had the honour of
affording to them, in my own person, an attractive exhibition, gratis.
All the men and boys of Aru are expert archers, never stirring without their
bows and arrows. They shoot all sorts of birds, as well as pigs and kangaroos