occupations at home, they wander about on petty trading or fishing expeditions
to the neighbouring islands; and as far as the comforts of life are concerned, are
much inferior to the wild hill-Dyaks of Borneo, or to many of the more
barbarous tribes of the Archipelago.
The country round Warus-warus is low and swampy, and owing to the
absence of cultivation there were scarcely any paths leading into the forest. I was
therefore unable to collect much during my enforced stay, and found no rare
birds or insects to improve my opinion of Ceram as a collecting ground. Finding
it quite impossible to get men here to accompany me on the whole voyage, I was
obliged to be content with a crew to take me as far as Wahai, on the middle of
the north coast of Ceram, and the chief Dutch station in the island. The journey
took us five days, owing to calms and light winds, and no incident of any interest
occurred on it, nor did I obtain at our stopping places a single addition to my
collections worth naming. At Wahai, which I reached on the 15th of June, I was
hospitably received by the Commandant and my old friend Herr Rosenberg, who
was now on an official visit here. He lent me some money to pay my men, and I
was lucky enough to obtain three others willing to make the voyage with me to
Ternate, and one more who was to return from Mysol. One of my Amboyna
lads, however, left me, so that I was still rather short of hands.
I found here a letter from Charles Allen, who was at Silinta in Mysol,
anxiously expecting me, as he was out of rice and other necessaries, and was
short of insect-pins. He was also ill, and if I did not soon come would return to
Wahai.
As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among islands inhabited by the
Papuan race, and was an eventful and disastrous one, I will narrate its chief
incidents in a separate chapter in that division of my work devoted to the Papuan
Islands. I now have to pass over a year spent in Waigiou and Timor, in order to
describe my visit to the island of Bouru, which concluded my explorations of the
Moluccas.