CHAPTER XXXII. THE ARU ISLANDS.—
SECOND RESIDENCE AT DOBBO.
(MAY AND JUNE 1857.)
DOBBO was full to overflowing, and I was obliged to occupy the court-house
where the Commissioners hold their sittings. They had now left the island, and I
found the situation agreeable, as it was at the end of the village, with a view
down the principal street. It was a mere shed, but half of it had a roughly
boarded floor, and by putting up a partition and opening a window I made it a
very pleasant abode. In one of the boxes I had left in charge of Herr Warzbergen,
a colony of small ants had settled and deposited millions of eggs. It was luckily a
fine hot day, and by carrying the box some distance from the house, and placing
every article in the sunshine for an hour or two, I got rid of them without
damage, as they were fortunately a harmless species.
Dobbo now presented an animated appearance. Five or six new houses had
been added to the street; the praus were all brought round to the western side of
the point, where they were hauled up on the beach, and were being caulked and
covered with a thick white lime-plaster for the homeward voyage, making them
the brightest and cleanest looking things in the place. Most of the small boats
had returned from the "blakang-tana" (back country), as the side of the islands
towards New Guinea is called. Piles of firewood were being heaped up behind
the houses; sail-makers and carpenters were busy at work; mother-of-pearl shell
was being tied up in bundles, and the black and ugly smoked tripang was having
a last exposure to the sun before loading. The spare portion of the crews were
employed cutting and squaring timber, and boats from Ceram and Goram were
constantly unloading their cargoes of sago-cake for the traders' homeward
voyage. The fowls, ducks, and goats all looked fat and thriving on the refuse
food of a dense population, and the Chinamen's pigs were in a state of obesity
that foreboded early death. Parrots and Tories and cockatoos, of a dozen
different binds, were suspended on bamboo perches at the doors of the houses,
with metallic green or white fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and
eventide. Young cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered
about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in the hot