and surmounted by a dense and varied growth of timber. Canoes and boats of
various sizes were drawn up on the beach and one or two idlers, with a few
children and a dog, gazed at our prau as we came to an anchor.
When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us was a large and well-
constructed shed, under which a long boat was being built, while others in
various stages of completion were placed at intervals along the beach. Our
captain, who wanted two of moderate size for the trade among the islands at Aru,
immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short tine had arranged the
nuns number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs, handkerchiefs, axes, white plates,
tobacco, and arrack, which he was to give for a hair which could be got ready in
four days. We then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four
huts, situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rocky piece of ground
overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas, and other fruit trees. The houses
were very rude, black, and half rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides
of bamboo or planks, and high thatched roofs. They had small doors and no
windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the smoke out and a
little light in. The floors were of strips of bamboo, thin, slippery, and elastic, and
so weak that my feet were in danger of plunging through at every step. Native
boxes of pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed, mats
of the same, jars and cooking pots of native pottery, and a few European plates
and basins, were the whole furniture, and the interior was throughout dark and
smoke-blackened, and dismal in the extreme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some
explorations, and we were followed by a train of boys eager to see what we were
going to do. The most trodden path from the beach led us into a shady hollow,
where the trees were of immense height and the undergrowth scanty. From the
summits of these trees came at intervals a deep booming sound, which at first
puzzled us, but which we soon found to proceed from some large pigeons. My
boys shot at them, and after one or two misses, brought one down. It was a
magnificent bird twenty inches long, of a bluish white colour, with the back
wings and tail intense metallic green, with golden, blue, and violet reflexions,
the feet coral red, and the eyes golden yellow. It is a rare species, which I have
named Carpophaga concinna, and is found only in a few small islands, where,
however, it abounds. It is the same species which in the island of Banda is called
the nutmeg-pigeon, from its habit of devouring the fruits, the seed or nutmeg
being thrown up entire and uninjured. Though these pigeons have a narrow beak,
yet their jaws and throat are so extensible that they can swallow fruits of very
large size. I had before shot a species much smaller than this one, which had a