above is attached a plume of feathers from a cock's tail. In other respects they
scarcely differed from the people I was living with. They brought me a couple of
birds, some shells and insects; showing that the report of the white man and his
doing had reached their country. There was probably hardly a man in Aru who
had not by this time heard of me.
Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable property of a
native is very scanty. He has a good supply of spears and bows and arrows for
hunting, a parang, or chopping-knife, and an axe-for the stone age has passed
away here, owing to the commercial enterprise of the Bugis and other Malay
races. Attached to a belt, or hung across his shoulder, he carries a little skin
pouch and an ornamented bamboo, containing betel-nut, tobacco, and lime, and
a small German wooden-handled knife is generally stuck between his waist-cloth
of bark and his bare shin. Each man also possesses a "cadjan," or sleeping-mat,
made of the broad leaves of a pandanus neatly sewn together in three layers.
This mat is abort four feet square, and when folded has one end sewn up, so that
it forms a kind of sack open at one side. In the closed corner the head or feet can
be placed, or by carrying it on the head in a shower it forms both coat and
umbrella. It doubles up ix a small compass for convenient carriage, and then
forms a light and elastic cushion, so that on a journey it becomes clothing,
house, bedding, and furniture, all in one.
The only ornaments in an Aru horse are trophies of the chase—jaws of wild
pigs, the heads and backbones of cassowaries, and plumes made from the
feathers of the Bird of Paradise, cassowary, and domestic fowl. The spears,
shields, knife-handles, and other utensils are more or less carved in fanciful
designs, and the mats and leaf boxes are painted or plaited in neat patterns of
red, black, and yellow colours. I must not forget these boxes, which are most
ingeniously made of the pith of a balm leaf pegged together, lined inside with
pandanus leaves, and outside with the same, or with plaited grass. All the joints
and angles are coffered with strips of split rattan sewn neatly on. The lid is
covered with the brown leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which is impervious
to water, and the whole box is neat, strong, and well finished. They are made
from a few inches to two or three feet long, and being much esteemed by the
Malay as clothes-boxes, are a regular article of export from Aru. The natives use
the smaller ones for tobacco or betel-nut, but seldom have clothes enough to
require the larger ones, which are only made for sale.
Among the domestic animals which may generally be seen in native houses,
are gaudy parrots, green, red, and blue, a few domestic fowls, which have
baskets hung for them to lay in under the eaves, and who sleep on the ridge, and