I rather regretted leaving, because my host was one of the most remarkable
men and most entertaining companions I had ever met with. He was a Fleeting
by birth, and, like so many of his countrymen, had a wonderful talent for
languages. When quite a youth he had accompanied a Government official who
was sent to report on the trade and commerce of the Mediterranean, and had
acquired the colloquial language of every place they stayed a few weeks at. He
had afterwards made voyages to St. Petersburg, and to other parts of Europe,
including a few weeks in London, and had then come out to the past, where he
had been for some years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now
spoke Dutch, French, Malay, and Javanese, all equally well; English with a very
slight accent, but with perfect fluency, axed a most complete knowledge of
idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German and Italian were also
quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance with European languages included
Modern Greek, Turkish, Russian, and colloquial Hebrew and Latin. As a test of
his power, I may mention that he had made a voyage to the out-of-the-way
island of Salibaboo, and had stayed there trading a few weeks. As I was
collecting vocabularies, he told me he thought he could remember some words,
and dictated considerable number. Some time after I met with a short list of
words taken down in those islands, and in every case they agreed with those he
had given me. He used to sing a Hebrew drinking-song, which he had learned
from some Jews with whom he had once travelled, and astonished by joining in
their conversation, and had a never-ending fund of tale and anecdote about the
people he had met and the places he had visited.
In most of the villages of this part of Ceram are schools and native
schoolmasters, and the inhabitants have been long converted to Christianity. In
the larger villages there are European missionaries; but there is little or no
external difference between the Christian and Alfuro villages, nor, as far as I
have seen, in their inhabitants. The people seem more decidedly Papuan than
those of Gilolo. They are darker in colour, and a number of them have the frizzly
Papuan hair; their features also are harsh and prominent, and the women in
particular are far less engaging than those of the Malay race. Captain Van der
Beck was never tired of abusing the inhabitants of these Christian villages as
thieves, liars, and drunkards, besides being incorrigibly lazy. In the city of
Amboyna my friends Doctors Mohnike and Doleschall, as well as most of the
European residents and traders, made exactly the same complaint, and would
rather have Mahometans for servants, even if convicts, than any of the native
Christians. One great cause of this is the fact, that with the Mahometans
temperance is a part of their religion, and has become so much a habit that