Some selected extracts from the book 'The Malay Archipelago' by Alfred Russel Wallace, concentrating on islands which will be visited on the cruise.
CHAPTER XXI. THE MOLUCCAS - TERNATE
On the morning of the 8th of January, 1858, I arrived at Ternate, the fourth of a row of fine conical volcanic islands which shirt the west coast of the large and almost unknown island of Gilolo. The largest and most perfectly conical mountain is Tidore, which is over four thousand feet high—Ternate being very nearly the same height, but with a more rounded and irregular summit. [footnote: The officers of the Challenger found that Ternate was 5,600 feet high and Tidore 5,900 feet.] The town of Ternate is concealed from view till we enter between the two islands, when it is discovered stretching along the shore at the very base of the mountain. Its situation is fine, and there are grand views on every side. Close opposite is the rugged promontory and beautiful volcanic cone of Tidore; to the east is the long mountainous coast of Gilolo, terminated towards the north by a group of three lofty volcanic peaks, while immediately behind the town rises the huge mountain, sloping easily at first and covered with thick groves of fruit trees, but soon becoming steeper, and furrowed with deep gullies. Almost to the summit, whence issue perpetually faint wreaths of smoke, it is clothed with vegetation, and looks calm and beautiful, although beneath are hidden fires which occasionally burst forth in lava-streams, but more frequently make their existence known by the earthquakes which have many times devastated the town.
I brought letters of introduction to Mr. Duivenboden, a native of Ternate, of an ancient Dutch family, but who was educated in England, and speaks our language perfectly. He was a very rich man, owned half the town, possessed many ships, and above a hundred slaves. He was moreover, well educated, and fond of literature and science—a phenomenon in these regions. He was generally known as the king of Ternate, from his large property and great influence with the native Rajahs and their subjects. Through his assistance I obtained a house; rather ruinous, but well adapted to my purpose, being close to the town, yet with a free outlet to the country and the mountain. A few needful repairs were soon made, some bamboo furniture and other necessaries obtained, and after a visit to the Resident and Police Magistrate I found myself an inhabitant of the earthquake-tortured island of Ternate, and able to look about me and lay down the plan of my campaign for the ensuing year. I retained this house for three years, as I found it very convenient to have a place to return to after my voyages to the various islands of the Moluccas and New Guinea, where I could pack my collections, recruit my health, and make preparations for future journeys. To avoid repetitions, I will in this chapter combine what notes I have about Ternate.
A description of my house (the plan of which is here shown) will enable the reader to understand a very common mode of building in these islands. There is of course only one floor. The walls are of stone up to three feet high; on this are strong squared posts supporting the roof, everywhere except in the verandah filled in with the leaf-stems of the sago-palm, fitted neatly in wooden lathing. The floor is of stucco, and the ceilings are like the walls. The house is forty feet square, consists of four rooms, a hall, and two verandahs, and is surrounded by a wilderness of fruit trees. A deep well supplied me with pure cold water, a great luxury in this climate. Five minutes’ walk down the road brought me to the market and the beach, while in the opposite direction there were no more European houses between me and the mountain. In this house I spent many happy days. Returning to it after a three or four months’ absence in some uncivilized region, I enjoyed the unwonted luxuries of milk and fresh bread, and regular supplies of fish and eggs, meat and vegetables, which were often sorely needed to restore my health and energy. I had ample space and convenience for unpacking, sorting, and arranging my treasures, and I had delightful walks in the suburbs of the town, or up the lower slopes of the mountain, when I desired a little exercise, or had time for collecting.
The lower part of the mountain, behind the town of Ternate, is almost entirely covered with a forest of fruit trees, and during the season hundreds of men and women, boys and girls, go up every day to bring down the ripe fruit. Durians and Mangoes, two of the very finest tropical fruits, are in greater abundance at Ternate than I have ever seen them, and some of the latter are of a quality not inferior to any in the world. Lansats and Mangustans are also abundant, but these do not ripen till a little later. Above the fruit trees there is a belt of clearings and cultivated grounds, which creep up the mountain to a height of between two and three thousand feet, above which is virgin forest, reaching nearly to the summit, which on the side next the town is covered with a high reedy grass. On the further side it is more elevated, of a bare and desolate aspect, with a slight depression marking the position of the crater. From this part descends a black scoracious tract; very rugged, and covered with a scanty vegetation of scattered bushes as far down as the sea. This is the lava of the great eruption near a century ago, and is called by the natives “batu-angas” (burnt rock).
Just below my house is the fort, built by the Portuguese, below which is an open space to the peach, and beyond this the native town extends for about a mile to the northeast. About the centre of it is the palace of the Sultan, now a large untidy, half-ruinous building of stone. This chief is pensioned by the Dutch Government, but retains the sovereignty over the native population of the island, and of the northern part of Gilolo. The sultans of Ternate and Tidore were once celebrated through the East for their power and regal magnificence. When Drake visited Ternate in 1579, the Portuguese had been driven out of the island, although they still had a settlement at Tidore. He gives a glowing account of the Sultan: “The King had a very rich canopy with embossings of gold borne over him, and was guarded with twelve lances. From the waist to the ground was all cloth of gold, and that very rich; in the attire of his head were finely wreathed in, diverse rings of plaited gold, of an inch or more in breadth, which made a fair and princely show, somewhat resembling a crown in form; about his neck he had a chain of perfect gold, the links very great and one fold double; on his left hand was a diamond, an emerald, a ruby, and a turky; on his right hand in one ring a big and perfect turky, and in another ring many diamonds of a smaller size.”
All this glitter of barbaric gold was the produce of the spice trade, of which the Sultans kept the monopoly, and by which they became wealthy. Ternate, with the small islands in a line south of it, as far as Batchian, constitute the ancient Moluccas, the native country of the clove, as well as the only part in which it was cultivated. Nutmegs and mace were procured from the natives of New Guinea and the adjacent islands, where they grew wild; and the profits on spice cargoes were so enormous, that the European traders were glad to give gold and jewels, and the finest manufactures of Europe or of India, in exchange. When the Dutch established their influence in these seas, and relieved the native princes from their Portuguese oppressors, they saw that the easiest way to repay themselves would be to get this spice trade into their own hands. For this purpose they adopted the wise principle of concentrating the culture of these valuable products in those spots only of which they could have complete control. To do this effectually it was necessary to abolish the culture and trade in all other places, which they succeeded in doing by treaty with the native rulers. These agreed to have all the spice trees in their possessions destroyed. They gave up large though fluctuating revenues, but they gained in return a fixed subsidy, freedom from the constant attacks and harsh oppressions of the Portuguese, and a continuance of their regal power and exclusive authority over their own subjects, which is maintained in all the islands except Ternate to this day.
It is no doubt supposed by most Englishmen, who have been accustomed to look upon this act of the Dutch with vague horror, as something utterly unprincipled and barbarous, that the native population suffered grievously by this destruction of such valuable property. But it is certain that this was not the case. The Sultans kept this lucrative trade entirely in their own hands as a rigid monopoly, and they would take care not to give their subjects more than would amount to their usual wages, while: they would surely exact as large a quantity of spice as they could possibly obtain. Drake and other early voyagers always seem to have purchased their spice-cargoes from the Sultans and Rajahs, and not from the cultivators. Now the absorption of so much labour in the cultivation of this one product must necessarily have raised the price of food and other necessaries; and when it was abolished, more rice would be grown, more sago made, more fish caught, and more tortoise-shell, rattan, gum-dammer, and other valuable products of the seas and the forests would be obtained. I believe, therefore, that this abolition of the spice trade in the Moluccas was actually beneficial to the inhabitants, and that it was an act both wise in itself and morally and politically justifiable. [footnote: See ante, p.222, and footnote]
In the selection of the places in which to carry on the cultivation, the Dutch were not altogether fortunate or wise. Banda was chosen for nutmegs, and was eminently successful, since it continues to this day to produce a large supply of this spice, and to yield a considerable revenue. Amboyna was fixed upon for establishing the clove cultivation; but the soil and climate, although apparently very similar to that of its native islands, is not favourable, and for some years the Government have actually been paying to the cultivators a higher rate than they could purchase cloves elsewhere, owing to a great fall in the price since the rate of payment was fixed for a term of years by the Dutch Government, and which rate is still most honourably paid.
In walking about the suburbs of Ternate, we find everywhere the ruins of massive stone and brick buildings, gateways and arches, showing at once the superior wealth of the ancient town and the destructive effects of earthquakes. It was during my second stay in the town, after my return from New Guinea, that I first felt an earthquake. It was a very slight one, scarcely more than has been felt in this country, but occurring in a place that had been many times destroyed by it was rather exciting. I had just awoke at gun-fire (5 A.M.), when suddenly the thatch began to rustle and shake as if an army of cats were galloping over it, and immediately afterwards my bed shook too, so that for an instant I imagined myself back in New Guinea, in my fragile house, which shook when an old cock went to roost on the ridge; but remembering that I was now on a solid earthen floor, I said to myself, "Why, it’s an earthquake," and lay still in the pleasing expectation of another shock; but none came, and this was the only earthquake I ever felt in Ternate.
The last great one was in February 1840, when almost every house in the place was destroyed. It began about midnight on the Chinese New Year’s festival, at which time every one stays up nearly all night feasting at the Chinamen’s houses and seeing the processions. This prevented any lives being lost, as every one ran out of doors at the first shock, which was not very severe. The second, a few minutes afterwards, threw down a great many houses, and others, which continued all night and part of the next day, completed the devastation. The line of disturbance was very narrow, so that the native town a mile to the east scarcely suffered at all. The wave passed from north to south, through the islands of Tidore and Makian, and terminated in Batchian, where it was not felt till four the following afternoon, thus taking no less than sixteen hours to travel a hundred miles, or about six miles an hour. It is singular that on this occasion there was no rushing up of the tide, or commotion of the sea, as is usually the case during great earthquakes.
The people of Ternate are of three well-marked races the Ternate Malays, the Orang Sirani, and the Dutch. The first are an intrusive Malay race somewhat allied to the Macassar people, who settled in the country at a very early epoch, drove out the indigenes, who were no doubt the same as those of the adjacent mainland of Gilolo, and established a monarchy. They perhaps obtained many of their wives from the natives, which will account for the extraordinary language they speak--in some respects closely allied to that of the natives of Gilolo, while it contains much that points to a Malayan origin. To most of these people the Malay language is quite unintelligible, although such as are engaged in trade are obliged to acquire it. "Orang Sirani," or Nazarenes, is the name given by the Malays to the Christian descendants of the Portuguese, who resemble those of Amboyna, and, like them, speak only Malay. There are also a number of Chinese merchants, many of them natives of the place, a few Arabs, and a number of half-breeds between all these races and native women. Besides these there are some Papuan slaves, and a few natives of other islands settled here, making up a motley and very puzzling population, till inquiry and observation have shown the distinct origin of its component parts.
Soon after my first arrival in Ternate I went to the island of Gilolo, accompanied by two sons of Mr. Duivenboden, and by a young Chinaman, a brother of my landlord, who lent us the boat and crew. These latter were all slaves, mostly Papuans, and at starting I saw something of the relation of master and slave in this part of the world. The crew had been ordered to be ready at three in the morning, instead of which none appeared till five, we having all kept waiting in the dark and cold for two hours. When at length they came they were scolded by their master, but only in a bantering manner, and laughed and joked with him in reply. Then, just as we were starting, one of the strongest men refused to go at all, and his master had to beg and persuade him to go, and only succeeded by assuring him that I would give him something; so with this promise, and knowing that there would be plenty to eat and drink and little to do, the black gentleman was induced to favour us with his company and assistance. In three hours’ rowing and sailing we reached our destination, Sedingole, where there is a house belonging to the Sultan of Tidore, who sometimes goes there hunting. It was a dirty ruinous shed, with no furniture but a few bamboo bedsteads. On taking a walk into the country, I saw at once that it was no place for me. For many miles extends a plain covered with coarse high grass, thickly dotted here and there with trees, the forest country only commencing at the hills a good way in the interior. Such a place would produce few birds and no insects, and we therefore arranged to stay only two days, and then go on to Dodinga, at the narrow central isthmus of Gilolo, whence my friends would return to Ternate. We amused ourselves shooting parrots, lories, and pigeons, and trying to shoot deer, of which we saw plenty, but could not get one; and our crew went out fishing with a net, so we did not want for provisions. When the time came for us to continue our journey, a fresh difficulty presented itself, for our gentlemen slaves refused in a body to go with us; saying very determinedly that they would return to Ternate. So their masters were obliged to submit, and I was left to get to Dodinga as I could. Luckily I succeeded in hiring a small boat, which took me there the same night, with my two men and my baggage.
Two or three years after this, and about the same length of time before I left the East, the Dutch emancipated all their slaves, paying their owners a small compensation. No ill results followed. Owing to the amicable relations which had always existed between them and their masters, due no doubt in part to the Government having long accorded them legal rights and protection against cruelty and ill-usage, many continued in the same service, and, after a little temporary difficulty in some cases, almost all returned to work either for their old or for new masters. The Government took the very proper step of placing every emancipated slave under the surveillance of the police—magistrates. They were obliged to show that they were working for a living, and had some honestly-acquired means of existence. All who could not do so were placed upon public works at low wages, and thus were kept from the temptation to peculation or other crimes, which the excitement of newly-acquired freedom, and disinclination to labour, might have led them into.
CHAPTER XXII. GILOLO (Halmahera)
MARCH AND SEPTEMBER 1858
I MADE but few and comparatively short visits to this large and little known island, but obtained a considerable knowledge of its natural history by sending first my boy Ali, and then my assistant, Charles Allen, who stayed two or three months each in the northern peninsula, and brought me back large collections of birds and insects. In this chapter I propose to give a sketch of the parts which I myself visited. My first stay was at Dodinga, situated at the head of a deep-bay exactly opposite Ternate, and a short distance up a little stream which penetrates a few miles inland. The village is a small one, and is completely shut in by low hills.
As soon as I arrived, I applied to the head man of the village for a house to live in, but all were occupied, and there was much difficulty in finding one. In the meantime I unloaded my baggage on the beach and made some tea, and afterwards discovered a small hut which the owner was willing to vacate if I would pay him five guilders for a month's rent. As this was something less than the fee-simple value of the dwelling, I agreed to give it him for the privilege of immediate occupation, only stipulating that he was to make the roof water-tight. This he agreed to do, and came every day to tally and look at me; and when I each time insisted upon his immediately mending the roof according to contract, all the answer I could get was, "Ea nanti," (Yes, wait a little.) However, when I threatened to deduct a quarter guilder from the rent for every day it was not done, and a guilder extra if any of my things were wetted, he condescended to work for half an hour, which did all that was absolutely necessary.
On the top of a bank, of about a hundred feet ascent from the water, stands the very small but substantial fort erected by the Portuguese. Its battlements and turrets have long since been overthrown by earthquakes, by which its massive structure has also been rent; but it cannot well be thrown down, being a solid mass of stonework, forming a platform about ten feet high, and perhaps forty feet square. It is approached by narrow steps under an archway, and is now surmounted by a row of thatched hovels, in which live the small garrison, consisting of, a Dutch corporal and four Javanese soldiers, the sole representatives of the Netherlands Government in the island. The village is occupied entirely by Ternate men. The true indigenes of Gilolo, "Alfuros" as they are here called, live on the eastern coast, or in the interior of the northern peninsula. The distance across the isthmus at this place is only two miles, and there, is a good path, along which rice and sago are brought from the eastern villages. The whole isthmus is very rugged, though not high, being a succession of little abrupt hills and valleys, with angular masses of limestone rock everywhere projecting, and often almost blocking up the pathway. Most of it is virgin forest, very luxuriant and picturesque, and at this time having abundance of large scarlet Ixoras in flower, which made it exceptionally gay. I got some very nice insects here, though, owing to illness most of the time, my collection was a small one, and my boy Ali shot me a pair of one of the most beautiful birds of the East, Pitta gigas, a lame ground-thrush, whose plumage of velvety black above is relieved by a breast of pure white, shoulders of azure blue, and belly of vivid crimson. It has very long and strong legs, and hops about with such activity in the dense tangled forest, bristling with rocks, as to make it very difficult to shoot.
In September 1858, after my return from New Guinea, I went to stay some time at the village of Djilolo, situated in a bay on the northern peninsula. Here I obtained a house through the kindness of the Resident of Ternate, who sent orders to prepare one for me. The first walk into the unexplored forests of a new locality is a moment of intense interest to the naturalist, as it is almost sure to furnish him with something curious or hitherto unknown. The first thing I saw here was a flock of small parroquets, of which I shot a pair, and was pleased to find a most beautiful little long-tailed bird, ornamented with green, red, and blue colours, and quite new to me. It was a variety of the Charmosyna placentis, one of the smallest and most elegant of the brush-tongued lories. My hunters soon shot me several other fine birds, and I myself found a specimen of the rare and beautiful day-flying moth, Cocytia d'Urvillei.
The village of Djilolo (Jailolo) was formerly the chief residence of the Sultans of Ternate, till about eighty years ago, when at the request of the Dutch they removed to their present abode. The place was then no doubt much more populous, as is indicated by the wide extent of cleared land in the neighbourhood, now covered with coarse high grass, very disagreeable to walk through, and utterly barren to the naturalist. A few days' exploring showed me that only some small patches of forest remained for miles wound, and the result was a scarcity of insects and a very limited variety of birds, which obliged me to change my locality. There was another village called Sahoe (Sahu), to which there was a road of about twelve miles overland, and this had been recommended to me as a good place for birds, and as possessing a large population both of Mahomotans and Alfuros, which latter race I much wished to see. I set off one morning to examine this place myself, expecting to pass through some extent of forest on my way. In this however I was much disappointed, as the whole road lies through grass and scrubby thickets, and it was only after reaching the village of Sahoe that some high forest land was perceived stretching towards the mountains to the north of it. About half-way we dad to pass a deep river on a bamboo raft, which almost sunk beneath us. This stream was said to rise a long way off to the northward.
Although Sahoe did not at all appear what I expected, I determined to give it a trial, and a few days afterwards obtained a boat to carry my things by sea while I walked overland. A large house on the beach belonging to the Sultan was given me. It stood alone, and was quite open on every side, so that little privacy could be had, but as I only intended to stay a short time I made it do. However, a few days dispelled all hopes I might have entertained of making good collections in this place. Nothing was to be found in every direction but interminable tracts of reedy grass, eight or ten feet high, traversed by narrow paths, often almost impassable. Here and there were clumps of fruit trees, patches of low wood, and abundance of plantations and rice grounds, all of which are, in tropical regions, a very desert for the entomologist. The virgin forest that I was in search of, existed only on the summits and on the steep rocky sides of the mountains a long way off, and in inaccessible situations. In the suburbs of the village I found a fair number of bees and wasps, and some small but interesting beetles. Two or three new birds were obtained by my hunters, and by incessant inquiries and promises Í succeeded in getting the natives to bring me some land shells, among which was a very fine and handsome one, Helix pyrostoma. I was, however, completely wasting my time here compared with what I might be doing in a good locality, and after a week returned to Ternate, quite disappointed with my first attempts at collecting in Gilolo.
In the country round about Sahoe, and in the interior, there is a large population of indigenes, numbers of whom came daily into the village, bringing their produce for sale, while others were engaged as labourers by the Chinese and Ternate traders. A careful examination convinced me that these people are radically distinct from all the Malay races. Their stature and their features, as well as their disposition and habits, are almost the same as those of the Papuans; their hair is semi-Papuan - neither straight, smooth, and glossy, like all true Malays', nor so frizzly and woolly as the perfect Papuan type, but always crisp, waved, and rough, such as often occurs among the true Papuans, but never among the Malays. Their colour alone is often exactly that of the Malay, or even lighter. Of course there has been intermixture, and there occur occasionally individuals which it is difficult to classify; but in most cases the large, somewhat aquiline nose, with elongated apex, the tall stature, the waved hair, the bearded face, and hairy body, as well as the less reserved manner and louder voice, unmistakably proclaim the Papuan type. Here then I had discovered the exact boundary lies between the Malay and Papuan races, and at a spot where no other writer had expected it. I was very much pleased at this determination, as it gave me a clue to one of the most difficult problems in Ethnology, and enabled me in many other places to separate the two races, and to unravel their intermixtures.
On my return from Waigiou in 1860, I stayed some days on the southern extremity of Gilolo; but, beyond seeing something more of its structure and general character, obtained very little additional information. It is only in the northern peninsula that there are any indígenes, the whole of the rest of the island, with Batchian and the other islands westward, being exclusively inhabited by Malay tribes, allied to those of Ternate and Tidore. This would seem to indicate that the Alfuros were a comparatively recent immigration, and that they lead come from the north or east, perhaps from some of the islands of the Pacific. It is otherwise difficult to understand how so many fertile districts should possess no true indigenes.
Gilolo, or Halmaheira as it is called by the Malays and Dutch, seems to have been recently modified by upheaval and subsidence. In 1673, a mountain is said to stave been upheaved at Gamokonora on the northern peninsula. All the parts that I have seen have either been volcanic or coralline, and along the coast there are fringing coral reefs very dangerous to navigation. At the same time, the character of its natural history proves it to be a rather ancient land, since it possesses a number of animals peculiar to itself or common to the small islands around it, but almost always distinct from those of New Guinea on the east, of Ceram on the south, and of Celebes and the Sula islands on the west.
The island of Morty (Morotai), close to the north-eastern extremity of Gilolo, was visited by my assistant Charles Allen, as well as by Dr. Bernstein; and the collections obtained there present some curious differences from those of the main island. About fifty-six species of land-birds are known to inhabit this island, and of these, a kingfisher (Tanysiptera Boris), a honey-sucker (Tropidorhynchus fuscicapillus), and a large crow-like starling (Lycocorax morotensis), are quite distinct from allied species found in Gilolo. The island is coralline and sandy, and we must therefore believe it to have been separated from Gilolo at a somewhat remote epoch; while we learn from its natural history that an arm of the sea twenty-five miles wide serves to limit the range even of birds of considerable powers of flight.
CHAPTER XXIII. TERNATE TO THE KAIÓA (Kayoa) ISLANDS AND BATCHIAN (Bacan)
(OCTOBER 1858)
ON returning to Ternate from Sahoe, I at once began making preparations for a journey to Batchian (Bacan), an island which I had been constantly recommended to visit since I had arrived in this part of the Moluccas. After all was ready I found that I should have to hire a boat, as no opportunity of obtaining a passage presented itself. I accordingly went into the native town, and could only find two boats for hire, one much larger than I required, and the other far smaller than I wished. I chose the smaller one, chiefly because it would not cost me one-third as much as the larger one, and also because in a coasting voyage a small vessel can be more easily managed, and more readily got into a place of safety during violent gales, than a large one. I took with me my Bornean lad Ali, who was now very useful to me; Lahagi, a native of Ternate, a very good steady man, and a fair shooter, who had been with me to New Guinea; Lahi, a native of Gilolo, who could speak Malay, as woodcutter and general assistant; and Garo, a boy who was to act as cook. As the boat was so small that we had hardly room to stow ourselves away when all my stores were on board, I only took one other man named Latchi, as pilot. He was a Papuan slave, a tall, strong black fellow, but very civil and careful. The boat I had hired from a Chinaman named Lau Keng Tong, for five guilders a month.
We started on the morning of October 9th, but had not got a hundred yards from land, when a strong head wind sprung up, against which we could not row, so we crept along shore to below the town, and waited till the turn of the tide should enable us to cross over to the coast of Tidore. About three in the afternoon we got off, and found that our boat sailed well, and would keep pretty close to the wind. We got on a good way before the wind fell and we had to take to our oars again. We landed on a nice sandy beach to cook our suppers, just as the sun set behind the rugged volcanic hills, to the south of the great cone of Tidore, and soon after beheld the planet Venus shining in the twilight with the brilliancy of a new moon, and casting a very distinct shadow. We left again a little before seven, and as we got out from the shadow of the mountain I observed a bright light over one part of the edge, and soon after, what seemed a fire of remarkable whiteness on the very summit of the hill. I called the attention of my men to it, and they too thought it merely a fire; but a few minutes afterwards, as we got farther off shore, the light rose clear up above the ridge of the hill, and some faint clouds clearing away from it, discovered the magnificent comet which was at the same time, astonishing all Europe. The nucleus presented to the naked eye a distinct disc of brilliant white light, from which the tail rose at an angle of about 30° or 35° with the horizon, curving slightly downwards, and terminating in a broad brush of faint light, the curvature of which diminished till it was nearly straight at the end. The portion of the tail next the comet appeared three or four tunes as bright as the most luminous portion of the milky way, and what struck me as a singular feature was that its upper margin, from the nucleus to very near the extremity, was clearly and almost sharply defined, while the lower side gradually shaded off into obscurity. Directly it rose above the ridge of the hill, I said to my men, "See, it's not a fire, it's a bintang ber-ekor" ("tailed-star," the Malay idiom for a comet). "So it is," said they; and all declared that they had often heard tell of such, but had never seen one till now. I had no telescope with me, nor any instrument at hand, but I estimated the length of the tail at about 20°, and the width, towards the extremity, about 4° or 5°.
The whole of the next day we were obliged to stop near the village of Tidore, owing to a strong wind right in our teeth. The country was all cultivated, and I in vain searched for any insects worth capturing. One of my men went out to shoot, but returned home without a single bird. At sunset, the wind having dropped, we quitted Tidore, and reached the next island, March, where we stayed till morning. The comet was again visible, but not nearly so brilliant, being partly obscured by clouds; and dimmed by the light of the new moon. We then rowed across to the island of Motir (Moti), which is so surrounded with coral-reefs that it is dangerous to approach. These are perfectly flat, and are only covered at high water, ending in craggy vertical walls of coral in very deep water. When there is a little wind, it is dangerous to come near these rocks; but luckily it was quite smooth, so we moored to their edge, while the men crawled over the reef to the land, to make; a fire and cook our dinner-the boat having no accommodation for more than heating water for my morning and evening coffee. We then rowed along the edge of the reef to the end of the island, and were glad to get a nice westerly breeze, which carried us over the strait to the island of Makian, where we arrived about 8 P.M, The sky was quite clear, and though the moon shone brightly, the comet appeared with quite as much splendour as when we first saw it.
The coasts of these small islands are very different according to their geological formation. The volcanoes, active or extinct, have steep black beaches of volcanic sand, or are fringed with rugged masses of lava and basalt. Coral is generally absent, occurring only in small patches in quiet bays, and rarely or never forming reefs. Ternate, Tidore, and Makian belong to this class. Islands of volcanic origin, not themselves volcanoes, but which have been probably recently upraised, are generally more or less completely surrounded by fringing reefs of coral, and have beaches of shining white coral sand. Their coasts present volcanic conglomerates, basalt, and in some places a foundation of stratified rocks, with patches of upraised coral. Mareh and Motir are of this character, the outline of the latter giving it the appearance of having been a true volcano, and it is said by Forrest to have thrown out stones in l778. The next day (Oct. 12th), we coasted along the island of Makian, which consists of a single grand volcano. It was now quiescent, but about two centuries ago (in 1646) there was a terrible eruption, which blew up the whole top of the mountain, leaving the truncated jagged summit and vast gloomy crater valley which at this time distinguished it. It was said to have been as lofty as Tidore before this catastrophe. [footnote: Soon after I left the Archipelago, on the 29th of December, 1862, another eruption of this mountain suddenly took place, which caused great devastation in the island. All the villages and crops were destroyed, and numbers of the inhabitants killed. The sand and ashes fell so thick that the crops were partially destroyed fifty miles off, at Ternate, where it was so dark the following day that lamps had to be lighted at noon. For the position of this and the adjacent islands, see the map in Chapter XXXVII.]
I stayed some time at a place where I saw a new clearing on a very steep part of the mountain, and obtained a few interesting insects. In the evening we went on to the extreme southern point, to be ready to pass across the fifteen-mile strait to the island of Kaióa. At five the next morning we started, but the wind, which had hitherto been westerly, now got to the south and southwest, and we had to row almost all the way with a burning sun overhead. As we approached land a fine breeze sprang up, and we went along at a great pace; yet after an hour we were no nearer, and found we were in a violent current carrying us out to sea. At length we overcame it, and got on shore just as the sun set, having been exactly thirteen hours coming fifteen miles. We landed on a beach of hard coralline rock, with rugged cliffs of the same, resembling those of the Ké Islands (Chap. XXIX.) It was accompanied by a brilliancy and luxuriance of the vegetation, very like what I had observed at those islands, which so much pleased me that I resolved to stay a few days at the chief village, and see if their animal productions were correspondingly interesting. While searching for a secure anchorage for the night we again saw the comet, still apparently as brilliant as at first, but the tail had now risen to a higher angle.
October 14th. - All this day we coasted along the Kaióa Islands, which have much the appearance and outline of Ké on a small scale, with the addition of flat swampy tracts along shore, and outlying coral reefs. Contrary winds and currents had prevented our taking the proper course to the west of them, and we had to go by a circuitous route round the southern extremity of one island, often having to go far out to sea on account of coral reefs. On trying to pass a channel through one of these reefs we were grounded, and all had to get out into the water, which in this shallow strait had been so heated by the sun as to be disagreeably warm, and drag our vessel a considerable distance among weeds and sponges, corals and prickly corallines. It was late at night when we reached the little village harbour, and we were all pretty well knocked up by hard work, and having had nothing but very brackish water to drink all day-the best we could find at our last stopping-place. There was a house close to the shore, built for the use of the Resident of Ternate when he made his official visits, but now occupied by several native travelling merchants, among whom I found a place to sleep.
The next morning early I went to the village to find the "Kapala," or head man. I informed him that I wanted to stay a few days in the house at the landing, and begged him to have it made ready for me. He was very civil, and came down at once to get it cleared, when we found that the traders had already left, on hearing that I required it. There were no doors to it, so I obtained the loan of a couple of hurdles to keep out dogs and other animals. The land here was evidently sinking rapidly, as shown by the number of trees standing in salt water dead and dying. After breakfast I started for a walk to the forest-covered hill above the village, with a couple of boys as guides. It was exceedingly hot and dry, no rain having fallen for two months. When we reached an elevation of about two hundred feet, the coralline rock which fringes the shore was succeeded by a hard crystalline rock, a kind of metamorphic sandstone. This would indicate flat there had been a recent elevation of more than two hundred feet, which had still more recently clanged into a movement of subsidence. The hill was very rugged, but among dry sticks and fallen trees I found some good insects, mostly of forms and species I was already acquainted with from Ternate and Gilolo. Finding no good paths I returned, and explored the lower ground eastward of the village, passing through a long range of plantain and tobacco grounds, encumbered with felled and burnt logs, on which I found quantities of beetles of the family Buprestidae of six different species, one of which was new to me. I then reached a path in the swampy forest where I hoped to find some butterflies, but was disappointed. Being now pretty well exhausted by the intense heat, I thought it wise to return and reserve further exploration for the next day.
When I sat down in the afternoon to arrange my insects, the house was surrounded by men, women, and children, lost in amazement at my unaccountable proceedings; and when, after pinning out the specimens, I proceeded to write the name of the place on small circular tickets, and attach one to each, even the old Kapala, the Mahometan priest, and some Malay traders could not repress signs of astonishment. If they had known a little more about the ways and opinions of white men, they would probably have looked upon me as a fool or a madman, but in their ignorance they accepted my operations as worthy of all respect, although utterly beyond their comprehension.
The next day (October 16th) I went beyond the swamp, and found a place where a new clearing was being made in the virgin forest. It was a long and hot walk, and the search among the fallen trunks and branches was very fatiguing, but I was rewarded by obtaining about seventy distinct species of beetles, of which at least a dozen were new to me, and many others rare and interesting. I have never in my life seen beetles so abundant as they were on this spot. Some dozen species of good-sized golden Buprestidae, green rose-chafers (Lomaptera), and long-horned weevils (Anthribidae), were so abundant that they rose up in swarms as I walked along, filling the air with a loud buzzing hum. Along with these, several fine Longicorns were almost equally common, forming such au assemblage as for once to realize that idea of tropical luxuriance which one obtains by looking over the drawers of a well-filled cabinet. On the under sides of the trunks clung numbers of smaller or more sluggish Longicorns, while on the branches at the edge of the clearing others could be detected sitting with outstretched antenna ready to take flight at the least alarm. It was a glorious spot, and one which will always live in my memory as exhibiting the insect-life of the tropics in unexampled luxuriance. For the three following days I continued to visit this locality, adding each time many new species to my collection-the following notes of which may be interesting to entomologists. October l5th, 33 species of beetles; 16th, 70 species; 17th, 47 species; 18th, 40 species; 19th, 56 species--in all about a hundred species, of which forty were new to me. There were forty-four species of Longicorns among them, and on the last day I took twenty-eight species of Longicorns, of which five were new to me.
Wallace’s Longhorn Beetle (Batocera wallacei)
My boys were less fortunate in shooting. The only birds at all common were the great red parrot (Eclectus grandis), found in most of the Moluccas, a crow, and a Megapodius, or mound-maker. A few of the pretty racquet-tailed kingfishers were also obtained, but in very poor plumage. They proved, however, to be of a different species from those found in the other islands, and come nearest to the bird originally described by Linnaeus under the name of Alcedo dea, and which came from Ternate. This would indicate that the small chain of islands parallel to Gilolo have a few peculiar species in common, a fact which certainly occurs in insects.
Vosmaer’s Eclectus parrot
The people of Kaióa interested me much. They are evidently a mixed race, having Malay and Papuan affinities, and are allied to the peoples of Ternate and of Gilolo. They possess a peculiar language, somewhat resembling those of the surrounding islands, but quite distinct. They are now Mahometans, and are subject to Ternate. The only fruits seen here were papaws and pine-apples, the rocky soil and dry climate being unfavourable. Rice, maize, and plantains flourish well, except that they suffer from occasional dry seasons like the present one. There is a little cotton grown, from which the women weave sarongs (Malay petticoats). There is only one well of good water on the islands, situated close to the landing-place, to which all the inhabitants come for drinking water. The men are good boat-builders, and they make a regular trade of it and seem to be very well off.
After five days at Kaióa we continued our journey, and soon got among the narrow straits and islands which lead down to the town of Batchian. In the evening we stayed at a settlement of Galela men. These are natives of a district in the extreme north of Gilolo, and are great wanderers over this part of the Archipelago. They build large and roomy praus with outriggers, and settle on any coast or island they take a fancy for. They hunt deer and wild pig, drying the meat; they catch turtle and tripang; they cut down the forest and plant rice or maize, and are altogether remarkably energetic and industrious. They are very fine people, of light complexion, tall, and with Papuan features, coming nearer to the drawings and descriptions of the true Polynesians of Tahiti and Owyhee than any I have seen.
During this voyage I had several times had an opportunity of seeing my men get fire by friction. A sharp-edged piece of bamboo is rubbed across the convex surface of another piece, on which a small notch is first cut. The rubbing is slow at first and gradually quicker, till it becomes very rapid, and the fine powder rubbed off ignites and falls through the hole which the rubbing has cut in the bamboo. This is done with great quickness and certainty. The Ternate, people use bamboo in another way. They strike its flinty surface with a bit of broken china, and produce a spark, which they catch in some kind of tinder.
On the evening of October 21st we reached our destination, having been twelve days on the voyage. It had been fine weather all the time, and, although very hot, I had enjoyed myself exceedingly, and had besides obtained some experience in boat work among islands and coral reefs, which enabled me afterwards to undertake much longer voyages of the same kind. The village or town of Batchian is situated at the head of a wide and deep bay, where a low isthmus connects the northern and southern mountainous parts of the island. To the south is a fine. range of mountains, and I had noticed at several of our landing-places that the geological formation of the island was very different from those around it. Whenever rock was visible it was either sandstone in thin layers, dipping south, or a pebbly conglomerate. Sometimes there was a little coralline limestone, but no volcanic rocks. The forest had a dense luxuriance and loftiness seldom found on the dry and porous lavas and raised coral reefs of Ternate and Gilolo; and hoping for a corresponding richness in the birds and insects, it was with much satisfaction and with considerable expectation that I began my explorations in the hitherto unknown island of Batchian.
CHAPTER XXIV. BATCHIAN (Bacan)
(OCTOBER 1858 To APRIL 1859)
I LANDED opposite the house kept for the use of the Resident of Ternate, and was met by a respectable middle-aged Malay, who told me he was Secretary to the Sultan, and would receive the official letter with which I had been provided. On giving it him, he at once informed me I might have the use of the official residence which was empty. I soon got my things on shore, but on looking about me found that the house would never do to stay long in. There was no water except at a considerable distance, and one of my men would be almost entirely occupied getting water and firewood, and I should myself have to walk all through the village every day to the forest, and live almost in public, a thing I much dislike. The rooms were all boarded, and had ceilings, which are a great nuisance, as there are no means of hanging anything up except by driving nails, and not half the conveniences of a native bamboo and thatch cottage. I accordingly inquired for a house outside of the village on the road to the coal mines, and was informed by the Secretary that there was a small one belonging to the Sultan, and that he would go with me early next morning to see it.
We had to pass one large river, by a rude but substantial bridge, and to wade through another fine pebbly stream of clear water, just beyond which the little but was situated. It was very small, not raised on posts, but with the earth for a floor, and was built almost entirely of the leaf-stems of the sago-palm, called here "gaba-gaba." Across the river behind rose a forest-clad bank, and a good road close in front of the horse led through cultivated grounds to the forest about half a mile on, and thence to the coal mines tour miles further. These advantages at once decided me, and I told the Secretary I would be very glad to occupy the house. I therefore sent my two men immediately to buy "ataps" (palm-leaf thatch) to repair the roof, and the next day, with the assistance of eight of the Sultan's men, got all my stores and furniture carried up and pretty comfortably arranged. A rough bamboo bedstead was soon constructed, and a table made of boards which I had brought with me, fixed under the window. Two bamboo chairs, an easy cane chair, and hanging shelves suspended with insulating oil cups, so as to be safe from ants, completed my furnishing arrangements.
In the afternoon succeeding my arrival, the Secretary accompanied me to visit the Sultan. We were kept waiting a few minutes in an outer gate-house, and then ushered to the door of a rude, half- fortified whitewashed house. A small table and three chairs were placed in a large outer corridor, and an old dirty-faced man with grey hair and a grimy beard, dressed in a speckled blue cotton jacket and loose red trousers, came forward, shook hands, and asked me to be seated. After a quarter of an hour's conversation on my pursuits, in which his Majesty seemed to take great interest, tea and cakes, of rather better quality than usual on such occasions, were brought in. I thanked him for the house, and offered to show him my collections, which he promised to come and look at. He then asked me to teach him to take views, to make maps, to get him a small gun from England, and a milch-goat from Bengal; all of which requests I evaded as skilfully as I was able, and we parted very good friends. He seemed a sensible old man, and lamented the small population of the island, which he assured me was rich in many valuable minerals, including gold; but there were not people enough to look after them and work them. I described to him the great rush of population on the discovery of the Australian gold mines, and the huge nuggets found there, with which he was much interested, and exclaimed, "Oh? if we had but people like that, my country would be quite as rich "
The morning after I had got into my new house, I sent my boys out to shoot, and went myself to explore the road to the coal mines. In less than half a mile it entered the virgin forest, at a place where some magnificent trees formed a kind of natural avenue. The first part was flat and swampy, but it soon rose a little, and ran alongside the fine stream which passed behind my house, and which here rushed and gurgled over a rocky or pebbly bed, sometimes leaving wide sandbanks on its margins, and at other places flowing between high banks crowned with a varied and magnificent forest vegetation. After about two miles, the valley narrowed, and the road was carried along the steep hill-side which rose abruptly from the water's edge. In some places the rock had been cut away, but its surface was already covered with elegant ferns and creepers. Gigantic tree-ferns were abundant, and the whole forest had an air of luxuriance and rich variety which it never attains in the dry volcanic soil to which I had been lately accustomed. A little further the road passed to the other side of the valley by a bridge across the stream at a place where a great mass of rock in the middle offered an excellent support for it, and two miles more of most picturesque and interesting road brought me to the mining establishment.
This is situated in a large open space, at a spot where two tributaries fall into the main stream. Several forest-paths and new clearings offered fine collecting grounds, and I captured some new and interesting insects; but as it was getting late I had to reserve a more thorough exploration for future occasions. Coal had been discovered here some years before, and the road was made in order to bring down a sufficient quantity for a fair trial on the Dutch steamers. The quality, however, was not thought sufficiently good, and the mines were abandoned. Quite recently, works had been commenced in another spot, in Hopes of finding a better vein. There ware about eighty men employed, chiefly convicts; but this was far too small a number for mining operations in such a country, where the mere keeping a few miles of road in repair requires the constant work of several men. If coal of sufficiently good quality should be found, a tramroad would be made, and would be very easily worked, owing to the regular descent of the valley.
Just as I got home I overtook Ali returning from shooting with some birch hanging from his belt. He seemed much pleased, and said, "Look here, sir, what a curious bird," holding out what at first completely puzzled me. I saw a bird with a mass of splendid green feathers on its breast, elongated into two glittering tufts; but, what I could not understand was a pair of long white feathers, which stuck straight out from each shoulder. Ali assured me that the bird stuck them out this way itself, when fluttering its wings, and that they had remained so without his touching them. I now saw that I had got a great prize, no less than a completely new form of the Bird of Paradise, differing most remarkably from every other known bird. The general plumage is very sober, being a pure ashy olive, with a purplish tinge on the back; the crown of the head is beautifully glossed with pale metallic violet, and the feathers of the front extend as much over the beak as inmost of the family. The neck and breast are scaled with fine metallic green, and the feathers on the lower part are elongated on each side, so as to form a two-pointed gorget, which can be folded beneath the wings, or partially erected and spread out in the same way as the side plumes of most of the birds of paradise. The four long white plumes which give the bird its altogether unique character, spring from little tubercles close to the upper edge of the shoulder or bend of the wing; they are narrow, gentle curved, and equally webbed on both sides, of a pure creamy white colour. They arc about six inches long, equalling the wing, and can be raised at right angles to it, or laid along the body at the pleasure of the bird. The bill is horn colour, the legs yellow, and the iris pale olive. This striking novelty has been named by Mr. G. R. Gray of the British Museum, Semioptera Wallacei, or "Wallace's Standard wing."
WALLACE'S STANDARD WING, MALE AND FEMALE
A few days later I obtained an exceedingly beautiful new butterfly, allied to the fine blue Papilio Ulysses, but differing from it in the colour being of a more intense tint, and in having a row of blue stripes around the margin of the lower wings. This good beginning was, however, rather deceptive, and I soon found that insects, and especially butterflies, were somewhat scarce, and birds in tar less variety than I had anticipated. Several of the fine Moluccan species were however obtained. The handsome red lory with green wings and a yellow spot in the back (Lorius garrulus), was not uncommon. When the Jambu, or rose apple (Eugenic sp.), was in flower in the village, flocks of the little lorikeet (Charmosyna placentis), already met with in Gilolo, came to feed upon the nectar, and I obtained as many specimens as I desired. Another beautiful bird of the parrot tribe was the Geoffroyus cyanicollis, a green parrot with a red bill and head, which colour shaded on the crown into azure blue, and thence into verditer blue and the green of the back. Two large and handsome fruit pigeons, with metallic green, ashy, and rufous plumage, were not uncommon; and I was rewarded by finding a splendid deep blue roller (Eurystomus azureus); a lovely golden-capped sunbird (Nectarinea auriceps), and a fine racquet-tailed kingfisher (Tanysiptera isis), all of which were entirely new to ornithologists. Of insects I obtained a considerable number of interesting beetles, including many fine longicorns, among which was the largest and handsomest species of the genus Glenea yet discovered. Among butterflies the beautiful little Danis sebae was abundant, making the forests gay with its delicate wings of white and the richest metallic blue; while showy Papilios, and pretty Pieridae, and dark, rich Euphaeas, many of them new, furnished a constant source of interest and pleasing occupation.
The island of Batchian possesses no really indigenous inhabitants, the interior being altogether uninhabited; and there are only a few small villages on various parts of the coast; yet I found here four distinct races, which would wofully mislead an ethnological traveller unable to obtain information as to their origin, first there are the Batchian Malays, probably the earliest colonists, differing very little from those of Ternate. Their language, however, seems to have more of the Papuan element, with a mixture of pure Malay, showing that the settlement is one of stragglers of various races, although now sufficiently homogeneous. Then there are the "Orang Sirani," as at Ternate and Amboyna. Many of these have the Portuguese physiognomy strikingly preserved, but combined with a skin generally darker than the Malays. Some national customs are retained, and the Malay, which is their only language, contains a large number of Portuguese words and idioms. The third race consists of the Galela men from the north of Gilolo, a singular people, whom I have already described; and the fourth is a colony from Tomóre, in the eastern peninsula of Celebes. These people were brought here at their own request a few years ago, to avoid extermination by another tribe. They have a very light complexion, open Tartar physiognomy, low stature, and a language of the Bugis type. They are an industrious agricultural people, and supply the town with vegetables. They make a good deal of bark cloth, similar to the tapa of the Polynesians, by cutting down the proper trees and taping off large cylinders of bark, which is beaten with mallets till it separates from the wood. It is then soaked, and so continuously and regularly beaten out that it becomes as thin and as tough as parchment. In this foam it is much used for wrappers for clothes; and they also make jackets of it, sewn neatly together and stained with the juice of another kind of bark, which gives it a dark red colour and renders it nearly waterproof.
Here are four very distinct kinds of people who may all be seen any day in and about the town of Batchian. Now if we suppose a traveller ignorant of Malay, picking up a word or two here and there of the "Batchian language," and noting down the "physical and moral peculiarities, manners, and customs of the Batchian people"--(for there are travellers who do all this in four-and- twenty hours)--what an accurate and instructive chapter we should have' what transitions would be pointed out, what theories of the origin of races would be developed while the next traveller might flatly contradict every statement and arrive at exactly opposite conclusions.
Soon after I arrived here the Dutch Government introduced a new copper coinage of cents instead of doits (the 100th instead of the 120th part of a guilder), and all the old coins were ordered to be sent to Ternate to be changed. I sent a bag containing 6,000 doits, and duly received the new money by return of the boat. Then Ali went to bring it, however, the captain required a written order; so I waited to send again the next day, and it was lucky I did so, for that night my house was entered, all my boxes carried out and ransacked, and the various articles left on the road about twenty yards off, where we found them at five in the morning, when, on getting up and finding the house empty, we rushed out to discover tracks of the thieves. Not being able to find the copper money which they thought I had just received, they decamped, taking nothing but a few yards of cotton cloth and a black coat and trousers, which latter were picked up a few days afterwards hidden in the grass. There was no doubt whatever who were the thieves. Convicts are employed to guard the Government stores when the boat arrives from Ternate. Two of them watch all night, and often take the opportunity to roam about and commit robberies.
The next day I received my money, and secured it well in a strong box fastened under my bed. I took out five or six hundred cents for daily expenses, and put them in a small japanned box, which always stood upon my table. In the afternoon I went for a short walk, and on my return this box and my keys, which I had carelessly left on the table, were gone. Two of my boys were in the house, but had heard nothing. I immediately gave information of the two robberies to the Director at the mines and to the Commandant at the fort, and got for answer, that if I caught the thief in the act I might shoot him. By inquiry in the village, we afterwards found that one of the convicts who was on duty at the Government rice-store in the village had quitted his guard, was seen to pass over the bridge towards my house, was seen again within two hundred yards of my house, and on returning over the bridge into the village carried something under his arm, carefully covered with his sarong. My box was stolen between the hours he was seen going and returning, and it was so small as to be easily carried in the way described. This seemed pretty clear circumstantial evidence. I accused the man and brought the witnesses to the Commandant. The man was examined, and confessed having gone to the river close to my house to bathe; but said he had gone no farther, having climbed up a cocoa-nut tree and brought home two nuts, which he had covered over, _because he was ashamed to be seen carrying them!_ This explanation was thought satisfactory, and he was acquitted. I lost my cash and my box, a seal I much valued, with other small articles, and all my keys- the severest loss by far. Luckily my large cash-box was left locked, but so were others which I required to open immediately. There was, however, a very clever blacksmith employed to do ironwork for the mines, and he picked my locks for me when I required them, and in a few days made me new keys, which I used all the time I was abroad.
Towards the end of November the wet season set in, and we had daily and almost incessant rains, with only about one or two hours' sunshine in the morning. The flat parts of the forest became flooded, the roads filled with mud, and insects and birds were scarcer than ever. On December Lath, in the afternoon, we had a sharp earthquake shock, which made the house and furniture shale and rattle for five minutes, and the trees and shrubs wave as if a gust of wind had passed over them. About the middle of December I removed to the village, in order more easily to explore the district to the west of it, and to be near the sea when I wished to return to Ternate. I obtained the use of a good- sized house in the Campong Sirani (or Christian village), and at Christmas and the New Year had to endure the incessant gun- firing, drum-beating, and fiddling of the inhabitants.
These people are very fond of music and dancing, and it would astonish a European to visit one of their assemblies. We enter a gloomy palm-leaf hut, in which two or three very dim lamps barely render darkness visible. The floor is of black sandy earth, the roof hid in a smoky impenetrable blackness; two or three benches stand against the walls, and the orchestra consists of a fiddle, a fife, a drum, and a triangle. There is plenty of company, consisting of young men and women, all very neatly dressed in white and black--a true Portuguese habit. Quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas are danced with great vigour and much skill. The refreshments are muddy coffee and a few sweetmeats. Dancing is kept up for hours, and all is conducted with much decorum and propriety. A party of this kind meets about once a week, the principal inhabitants taking it by turns, and all who please come in without much ceremony.
It is astonishing how little these people have altered in three hundred years, although in that time they have changed their language and lost all knowledge of their own nationality. They are still in manners and appearance almost pure Portuguese, very similar to those with whom I had become acquainted on the banks of the Amazon. They live very poorly as regards their house and furniture, but preserve a semi-European dress, and have almost all full suits of black for Sundays. They are nominally Protestants, but Sunday evening is their grand day for music and dancing. The men are often good hunters; and two or three times a week, deer or wild pigs are brought to the village, which, with fish and fowls, enables them to live well. They are almost the only people in the Archipelago who eat the great fruit-eating bats called by us "flying foxes." These ugly creatures are considered a great delicacy, and are much sought after. At about the beginning of the year they come in large flocks to eat fruit, and congregate during the day on some small islands in the bay, hanging by thousands on the trees, especially on dead ones. They can then be easily caught or knocked down with sticks, and are brought home by basketsfull. They require to be carefully prepared, as the skin and fur has a rank end powerful foxy odour; but they are generally cooked with abundance of spices and condiments, and are really very good eating, something like hare. The Orang Sirani are good cooks, having a much greater variety of savoury dishes than the Malays. Here, they live chiefly on sago as bread, with a little rice occasionally, and abundance of vegetables and fruit.
It is a curious fact that everywhere in the Past where the Portuguese have mixed with the native races they leave become darker in colour than either of the parent stocks. This is the case almost always with these "Orang Sirani" in the Moluccas, and with the Portuguese of Malacca. The reverse is the case in South America, where the mixture of the Portuguese or Brazilian with the Indian produces the "Mameluco," who is not unfrequently lighter than either parent, and always lighter than the Indian. The women at Batchian, although generally fairer than the men, are coarse in features, and very far inferior in beauty to the mixed Dutch-Malay girls, or even to many pure Malays.
The part of the village in which I resided was a grove of cocoa- nut trees, and at night, when the dead leaves were sometimes collected together and burnt, the effect was most magnificent-- the tall stems, the fine crowns of foliage, and the immense fruit-clusters, being brilliantly illuminated against a dark sky, and appearing like a fairy palace supported on a hundred columns, and groined over with leafy arches. The cocoa-nut tree, when well grown, is certainly the prince of palms both for beauty and utility.
During my very first walk into the forest at Batchian, I had seen sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of a dark colour marked with white and yellow spots. I could not capture it as it flew away high up into the forest, but I at once saw that it was a female of a new species of Ornithoptera or "bird-winged butterfly," the pride of the Eastern tropics. I was very anxious to get it and to find the male, which in this genus is always of extreme beauty. During the two succeeding months I only saw it once again, and shortly afterwards I saw the male flying high in the air at the mining village. I had begun to despair of ever getting a specimen, as it seemed so rare and wild; till one day, about the beginning of January, I found a beautiful shrub with large white leafy bracts and yellow flowers, a species of Mussaenda, and saw one of these noble insects hovering over it, but it was too quick for me, and flew away. The next clay I went again to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a female, and the day after a fine male. I found it to be as I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one of the most gorgeously coloured butterflies in the world. Fine specimens of the male are more than seven inches across the wings, which are velvety black and fiery orange, the latter colour replacing the green of the allied species. The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause.
I had decided to return to Ternate in a week or two more, but this grand capture determined me to stay on till I obtained a good series of the new butterfly, which I have since named Ornithoptera croesus. The Mussaenda bush was an admirable place, which I could visit every day on my way to the forest; and as it was situated in a dense thicket of shrubs and creepers, I set my man Lahi to clear a space all round it, so that I could easily get at any insect that might visit it. Afterwards, finding that it was often necessary to wait some time there, I had a little seat put up under a tree by the side of it, where I came every day to eat my lunch, and thus had half an hour's watching about noon, besides a chance as I passed it in the morning. In this way I obtained on an average one specimen a day for a long time, but more than half of these were females, and more than half the remainder worn or broken specimens, so that I should not have obtained many perfect males had I not found another station for them.
As soon as I had seen them come to flowers, I sent my man Lahi with a net on purpose to search for them, as they had also been seen at some flowering trees on the beach, and I promised him half a day's wages extra for every good specimen he could catch. After a day or two he brought me two very fair specimens, and told me he had caught them in the bed of a large rocky stream that descends from the mountains to the sea abort a mile below the village. They flew down this river, settling occasionally on stones and rocks in the water, and he was obliged to wade up it or jump from rock to rock to get at them. I went with him one day, but found that the stream was far too rapid and the stones too slippery for me to do anything, so I left it entirely to him, and all the rest of the time we stayed in Batchian he used to be out all day, generally bringing me one, and on good days two or three specimens. I was thus able to bring away with me more than a hundred of both sexes, including perhaps twenty very fine males, though not more than five or six that were absolutely perfect.
My daily walk now led me, first about half a mile along the sandy beach, then through a sago swamp over a causeway of very shaky poles to the village of the Tomore people. Beyond this was the forest with patches of new clearing, shady paths, and a considerable quantity of felled timber. I found this a very fair collecting ground, especially for beetles. The fallen trunks in the clearings abounded with golden Buprestidae and curious Brenthidae, and longicorns, while in the forest I found abundance of the smaller Curculionidae, many longicorns, and some fine green Carabidae.
Butterflies were not abundant, but I obtained a few more of the fine blue Papilio, and a number of beautiful little Lycaenidae, as well as a single specimen of the very rare Papilio Wallacei, of which I had taken the hitherto unique specimen in the Aru Islands.
The most interesting birds I obtained here, were the beautiful blue kingfisher, Todiramphus diops; the fine green and purple doves, Ptilonopus superbus and P. iogaster, and several new birds of small size. My shooters still brought me in specimens of the Semioptera Wallacei, and I was greatly excited by the positive statements of several of the native hunters that another species of this bird existed, much handsomer and more remarkable. They declared that the plumage was glossy black, with metallic green breast as in my species, but that the white shoulder plumes were twice as long, and hung down far below the body of the bird. They declared that when hunting pigs or deer far in the forest they occasionally saw this bird, but that it was rare. I immediately offered twelve guilders (a pound) for a specimen; but all in vain, and I am to this day uncertain whether such a bird exists. Since I left, the German naturalist, Dr. Bernstein, stayed many months in the island with a large staff of hunters collecting for the Leyden Museum; and as he was not more successful than myself, we must consider either that the bird is very rare, or is altogether a myth.
Batchian is remarkable as being the most eastern point on the globe inhabited by any of the Quadrumana. A large black baboon- monkey (Cynopithecus nigrescens) is abundant in some parts of the forest. This animal has bare red callosities, and a rudimentary tail about an inch long--a mere fleshy tubercle, which may be very easily overlooked. It is the same species that is found all over the forests of Celebes, and as none of the other Mammalia of that island extend into Batchian I am inclined to suppose that this species has been accidentally introduced by the roaming Malays, who often carry about with them tame monkeys and other animals. This is rendered more probable by the fact that the animal is not found in Gilolo, which is only separated from Batchian by a very narrow strait. The introduction may have been very recent, as in a fertile and unoccupied island such an animal would multiply rapidly. The only other mammals obtained were an Eastern opossum, which Dr. Gray has described as Cuscus ornatus; the little flying opossum, Belideus ariel; a Civet cat, Viverra zebetha; and nice species of bats, most of the smaller ones being caught in the dusk with my butterfly net as they flew about before the house.
After much delay, owing to bad weather and the illness of one of my men, I determined to visit Kasserota (formerly the chief village), situated up a small stream, on an island close to the north coast of Batchian; where I was told that many rare birds were found. After my boat was loaded and everything ready, three days of heavy squalls prevented our starting, and it was not till the 21st of March that we got away. Early next morning we entered the little river, and in about an hour we reached the Sultan's house, which I had obtained permission to use. It was situated on the bank of the river, and surrounded by a forest of fruit trees, among which were some of the very loftiest and most graceful cocoa-nut palms I have ever seen. It rained nearly all that day, and I could do little but unload and unpack. Towards the afternoon it cleared up, and I attempted to explore in various directions, but found to my disgust that the only path was a perfect mud swamp, along which it was almost impossible to walk, and the surrounding forest so damp and dark as to promise little in the way of insects. I found too on inquiry that the people here made no clearings, living entirely on sago, fruit, fish, and game; and the path only led to- a steep rocky mountain equally impracticable and unproductive. The next day I sent my men to this hill, hoping it might produce some good birds; but they returned with only two common species, and I myself had been able to get nothing; every little track I had attempted to follow leading to a dense sago swamp. I saw that I should waste time by staying here, and determined to leave the following day.
This is one of those spots so hard for the European naturalist to conceive, where with all the riches of a tropical vegetation, and partly perhaps from the very luxuriance of that vegetation, insects are as scarce as in the most barren parts of Europe, and hardly more conspicuous. In temperate climates there is a tolerable uniformity in the distribution of insects over those parts of a country in which there is a similarity in the vegetation, any deficiency being easily accounted for by the absence of wood or uniformity of surface. The traveller hastily passing through such a country can at once pick out a collecting ground which will afford him a fair notion of its entomology. Here the case is different. There are certain requisites of a good collecting ground which can only be ascertained to exist by some days' search in the vicinity of each village. In some places there is no virgin forest, as at Djilolo and Sahoe; in others there are no open pathways or clearings, as here. At Batchian there are only two tolerable collecting places,--the road to the coal mines, and the new clearings made by the Tomóre people, the latter being by far the most productive. I believe the fact to be that insects are pretty uniformly distributed over these countries (where the forests have not been cleared away), and are so scarce in any one spot that searching for them is almost useless. If the forest is all cleared away, almost all the insects disappear with it; but when small clearings and paths are made, the fallen trees in various stages of drying and decay, the rotting leaves, the loosening bark and the fungoid growths upon it, together with the flowers that appear in much greater abundance where the light is admitted, are so many attractions to the insects for miles around, and cause a wonderful accumulation of species and individuals. When the entomologist can discover such a spot, he does more in a mouth than he could possibly do by a year's search in the depths of the undisturbed forest.
The next morning we left early, and reached the mouth of the little river in about au hour. It flows through a perfectly flat alluvial plain, but there are hills which approach it near the mouth. Towards the lower part, in a swamp where the salt-water must enter at high tides, were a number of elegant tree-ferns from eight to fifteen feet high. These are generally considered to be mountain plants, and rarely to occur on the equator at an elevation of less than one or two thousand feet. In Borneo, in the Aru Islands, and on the banks of the Amazon, I have observed them at the level of the sea, and think it probable that the altitude supposed to be requisite for them may have been deduced from facts observed in countries where the plains and lowlands are largely cultivated, and most of the indigenous vegetation destroyed. Such is the case in most parts of Java, India, Jamaica, and Brazil, where the vegetation of the tropics has been most fully explored.
Coming out to sea we turned northwards, and in about two hours' sail reached a few huts, called Langundi, where some Galela men had established themselves as collectors of gum-dammar, with which they made torches for the supply of the Ternate market. About a hundred yards back rises a rather steep hill, and a short walk having shown me that there was a tolerable path up it, I determined to stay here for a few days. Opposite us, and all along this coast of Batchian, stretches a row of fine islands completely uninhabited. Whenever I asked the reason why no one goes to live in them, the answer always was, "For fear of the Magindano pirates." Every year these scourges of the Archipelago wander in one direction or another, making their rendezvous on some uninhabited island, and carrying devastation to all the small settlements around; robbing, destroying, killing, or taking captive all they nee with. Their long well-manned praus escape from the pursuit of any sailing vessel by pulling away right in the wind's eye, and the warning smoke of a steamer generally enables them to hide in some shallow bay, or narrow river, or forest-covered inlet, till the danger is passed. The only effectual way to put a stop to their depredations would be to attack them in their strongholds and villages, and compel them to give up piracy, and submit to strict surveillance. Sir James Brooke did this with the pirates of the north-west coast of Borneo, and deserves the thanks of the whole population of the Archipelago for having rid them of half their enemies.
All along the beach here, and in the adjacent strip of sandy lowland, is a remarkable display of Pandanaceae or Screw-pines. Some are like huge branching candelabra, forty or fifty feet high, and bearing at the end of each branch a tuft of immense sword-shaped leaves, six or eight inches wide, and as many feet long. Others have a single unbranched stem, six or seven feet high, the upper part clothed with the spirally arranged leaves, and bearing a single terminal fruit ac large as a swan's egg. Others of intermediate size have irregular clusters of rough red fruits, and all have more or less spiny-edged leaves and ringed stems. The young plants of the larger species have smooth glossy thick leaves, sometimes ten feet long and eight inches wide, which are used all over the Moluccas and New Guinea, to make "cocoyas" or sleeping mats, which are often very prettily ornamented with coloured patterns. Higher up on the bill is a forest of immense trees, among which those producing the resin called dammar (Dammara sp.) are abundant. The inhabitants of several small villages in Batchian are entirely engaged in searching for this product, and making it into torches by pounding it and filling it into tubes of palm leaves about a yard long, which are the only lights used by many of the natives. Sometimes the dammar accumulates in large masses of ten or twenty pounds weight, either attached to the trunk, or found buried in the ground at the foot of the trees. The most extraordinary trees of the forest are, however, a kind of fig, the aerial roots of which form a pyramid near a hundred feet high, terminating just where the tree branches out above, so that there is no real trunk. This pyramid or cone is formed of roots of every size, mostly descending in straight lines, but more or less obliquely- and so crossing each other, and connected by cross branches, which grow from one to another; as to form a dense and complicated network, to which nothing but a photograph could do justice (see illustration at Vol. I. page 130). The Kanary is also abundant in this forest, the nut of which has a very agreeable flavour, and produces an excellent oil. The fleshy outer covering of the nut is the favourite food of the great green pigeons of these islands (Carpophaga, perspicillata), and their hoarse copings and heavy flutterings among the branches can be almost continually heard.
After ten days at Langundi, finding it impossible to get the bird I was particularly in search of (the Nicobar pigeon, or a new species allied to it), and finding no new birds, and very few insects, I left early on the morning of April 1st, and in the evening entered a river on the main island of Batchian (Langundi, like Kasserota, being on a distinct island), where some Malays and Galela men have a small village, and have made extensive rice-fields and plantain grounds. Here we found a good house near the river bank, where the water was fresh and clear, and the owner, a respectable Batchian Malay, offered me sleeping room and the use of the verandah if I liked to stay. Seeing forest all round within a short distance, I accepted his offer, and the next morning before breakfast walked out to explore, and on the skirts of the forest captured a few interesting insects.
Afterwards, I found a path which led for a mile or more through a very fine forest, richer in palms than any I had seen in the Moluccas. One of these especially attracted my attention from its elegance. The stein was not thicker than my wrist, yet it was very lofty, and bore clusters of bright red fruit. It was apparently a species of Areca. Another of immense height closely resembled in appearance the Euterpes of South America. Here also grew the fan-leafed palm, whose small, nearly entire leaves are used to make the dammar torches, and to form the water-buckets in universal use. During this walk I saw near a dozen species of palms, as well as two or three Pandani different from those of Langundi. There were also some very fine climbing ferns and true wild Plantains (Musa), bearing an edible fruit not so large as one's thumb, and consisting of a mass of seeds just covered with pulp and skin. The people assured me they had tried the experiment of sowing and cultivating this species, but could not improve it. They probably did not grow it in sufficient quantity, and did not persevere sufficiently long.
Batchian is an island that would perhaps repay the researches of a botanist better than any other in the whole Archipelago. It contains a great variety of surface and of soil, abundance of large and small streams, many of which are navigable for some distance, and there being no savage inhabitants, every part of it can be visited with perfect safety. It possesses gold, copper, and coal, hot springs and geysers, sedimentary and volcanic rocks and coralline limestone, alluvial plains, abrupt hills and lofty mountains, a moist climate, and a grand and luxuriant forest vegetation.
The few days I stayed here produced me several new insects, but scarcely any birds. Butterflies and birds are in fact remarkably scarce in these forests. One may walk a whole day and not see more than two or three species of either. In everything but beetles, these eastern islands are very deficient compared with the western (Java, Borneo, &c.), and much more so if compared with the forests of South America, where twenty or thirty species of butterflies may be caught every day, and on very good days a hundred, a number we can hardly reach here in months of unremitting search. In birds there is the same difference. In most parts of tropical America we may always find some species of woodpecker tanager, bush shrike, chatterer, trogon, toucan, cuckoo, and tyrant-flycatcher; and a few days' active search will produce more variety than can be here met with in as many months. Yet, along with this poverty of individuals and of species, there are in almost every class and order, some one, or two species of such extreme beauty or singularity, as to vie with, or even surpass, anything that even South America can produce.
One afternoon when I was arranging my insects, and surrounded by a crowd of wondering spectators, I showed one of them how to look at a small insect with a hand-lens, which caused such evident wonder that all the rest wanted to see it too. I therefore fixed the glass firmly to a piece of soft wood at the proper focus, and put under it a little spiny beetle of the genus Hispa, and then passed it round for examination. The excitement was immense. Some declared it was a yard long; others were frightened, and instantly dropped it, and all were as much astonished, and made as much shouting and gesticulation, as children at a pantomime, or at a Christmas exhibition of the oxyhydrogen microscope. And all this excitement was produced by a little pocket lens, an inch and a half focus, and therefore magnifying only four or five times, but which to their unaccustomed eyes appeared to enlarge a hundred fold.
On the last day of my stay here, one of my hunters succeeded in finding and shooting the beautiful Nicobar pigeon, of which I had been so long in search. None of the residents had ever seen it, which shows that it is rare and slay. My specimen was a female in beautiful condition, and the glassy coppery and green of its plumage, the snow-white tail and beautiful pendent feathers of the neck, were greatly admired. I subsequently obtained a specimen in New Guinea; and once saw it in the Kaióa islands. It is found also in some small islands near Macassar, in others near Borneo; and in the Nicobar islands, whence it receives its name. It is a ground feeder, only going upon trees to roost, and is a very heavy fleshy bird. This may account far the fact of its being found chiefly on very small islands, while in the western half of the Archipelago, it seems entirely absent from the larger ones. Being a ground feeder it is subject to the attacks of carnivorous quadrupeds, which are not found in the very small islands. Its wide distribution over the whole length of the Archipelago; from extreme west to east, is however very extraordinary, since, with the exception of a few of the birds of prey, not a single land bird has so wide a range. Ground-feeding birds are generally deficient in power of extended flight, and this species is so bulky and heavy that it appears at first sight quite unable to fly a mile. A closer examination shows, however, that its wings are remarkably large, perhaps in proportion to its size larger than those of any other pigeon, and its pectoral muscles are immense. A fact communicated to me by the son of my friend Mr. Duivenboden of Ternate, would show that, in accordance with these peculiarities of structure, it possesses the power of flying long distances. Mr. D. established an oil factory on a small coral island, a hundred miles north of New Guinea, with no intervening land. After the island had been settled a year, and traversed in every direction, his son paid it a visit; and just as the schooner was coming to an anchor, a bird was seen flying from seaward which fell into the water exhausted before it could reach the shore. A boat was sent to pick it up, and it was found to be a Nicobar pigeon, which must have come from New Guinea, and flown a hundred miles, since no such bird previously inhabited the island.
This is certainly a very curious case of adaptation to an unusual and exceptional necessity. The bird does not ordinarily require great powers of flight, since it lives in the forest, feeds on fallen fruits, and roosts in low trees like other ground pigeons. The majority of the individuals, therefore, can never make full use of their enormously powerful wings, till the exceptional case occurs of an individual being blown out to sea, or driven to emigrate by the incursion of some carnivorous animal, or the pressure of scarcity of food. A modification exactly opposite to that which produced the wingless birds (the Apteryx, Cassowary, and Dodo), appears to have here taken place; and it is curious that in both cases an insular habitat should have been the moving cause. The explanation is probably the same as that applied by Mr. Darwin to the case of the Madeira beetles, many of which are wingless, while some of the winged ones have the wings better developed than the same species on the continent. It was advantageous to these insects either never to fly at all, and thus not run the risk of being blown out to sea, or to fly so well as to he able either to return to land, or to migrate safely to the continent. Pad flying was worse than not flying at all. So, while in such islands as New Zealand and Mauritius far from all land, it vas safer for a ground-feeding bird not to fly at all, and the short-winged individuals continually surviving, prepared the way for a wingless group of birds; in a vast Archipelago thickly strewn with islands and islets it was advantageous to be able occasionally to migrate, arid thus the long and strong-winged varieties maintained their existence longest, and ultimately supplanted all others, and spread the race over the whole Archipelago.
Besides this pigeon, the only new bird I obtained during the trip was a rare goat-sucker (Batrachostomus crinifrons), the only species of the genus yet found in the Moluccas. Among my insects the best were the rare Pieris arum, of a rich chrome yellow colour, with a black border and remarkable white antenna--perhaps the very finest butterfly of the genus; and a large black wasp- like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle, which has been named Megachile Pluto by Mr. B. Smith. I collected about a hundred species of beetles quite new to me, but mostly very minute, and also many rare and handsome ones which I had already found in Batchian. On the whole I was tolerably satisfied with my seventeen days' excursion, which was a very agreeable one, and enabled me to sea a good deal of the island. I had hired a roomy boat, and brought with me a small table and my rattan chair. These were great comforts, as, wherever there was a roof, I could immediately instal myself, and work and eat at ease. When I could not find accommodation on shore I slept in the boat, which was always drawn up on the beach if we stayed for a few days at one spot.
On my return to Batchian I packed up my collections, and prepared for my return to Ternate. When I first came I had sent back my boat by the pilot, with two or three other men who had been glad of the opportunity. I now took advantage of a Government boat which had just arrived with rice for the troops, and obtained permission to return in her, and accordingly started on the 13th of April, having resided only a week short of six months on the island of Batchian. The boat was one of the kind called "Kora- kora," quite open, very low, and about four tons burthen. It had outriggers of bamboo about five feet off each side, which supported a bamboo platform extending the whole length of the vessel. On the extreme outside of this sit the twenty rowers, while within was a convenient passage fore and aft. The middle portion of the boat was covered with a thatch-house, in which baggage and passengers are stowed; the gunwale was not more than a foot above water, and from the great top and side weight, and general clumsiness, these boats are dangerous in heavy weather, and are not unfrequently lost. A triangle mast and mat sail carried us on when the wind was favourable,--which (as usual) it never was, although, according to the monsoon, it ought to have been. Our water, carried in bamboos, would only last two days, and as the voyage occupied seven, we had to touch at a great many places. The captain was not very energetic, and the men rowed as little as they pleased, or we might have reached Ternate in three days, having had fine weather and little wind all the way.
There were several passengers besides myself: three or four Javanese soldiers, two convicts whose time had expired (one, curiously enough, being the man who had stolen my cash-box and keys), the schoolmaster's wife and a servant going on a visit to Ternate, and a Chinese trader going to buy goods. We had to sleep all together in the cabin, packed pretty close; but they very civilly allowed me plenty of room for my mattrass, and we got on very well together. There was a little cookhouse in the bows, where we could boil our rice and make our coffee, every one of course bringing his own provisions, and arranging his meal-times as he found most convenient. The passage would have been agreeable enough but for the dreadful "tom-toms," or wooden drums, which are beaten incessantly while the men are rowing. Two men were engaged constantly at them, making a fearful din the whole voyage. The rowers are men sent by the Sultan of Ternate. They get about threepence a day, and find their own provisions. Each man had a strong wooden "betel" box, on which he generally sat, a sleeping-mat, and a change of clothes--rowing naked, with only a sarong or a waistcloth. They sleep in their places, covered with their mat, which keeps out the rain pretty well. They chew betel or smoke cigarettes incessantly; eat dry sago and a little salt fish; seldom sing while rowing, except when excited and wanting to reach a stopping-place, and do not talk a great deal. They are mostly Malays, with a sprinkling of Alfuros from Gilolo, and Papuans from Guebe or Waigiou.
One afternoon we stayed at Makian; many of the men went on shore, and a great deal of plantains, bananas, and other fruits were brought on board. We then went on a little way, and in the evening anchored again. When going to bed for the night, I put out my candle, there being still a glimmering lamp burning, and, missing my handkerchief, thought I saw it on a box which formed one side of my bed, and put out my hand to take it. I quickly drew back on feeling something cool and very smooth, which moved as I touched it. "Bring the light, quick," I cried; "here's a snake." And there he was, sure enough, nicely coiled up, with his head just raised to inquire who had disturbed him. It was now necessary to catch or kill him neatly, or he would escape among the piles of miscellaneous luggage, and we should hardly sleep comfortably. One of the ex-convicts volunteered to catch him with his hand wrapped up in a cloth, but from the way he went about it I saw he was nervous and would let the thing go, so I would mot allow him to make the attempt. I them got a chopping-knife, and carefully moving my insect nets, which hung just over the snake and prevented me getting a free blow, I cut him quietly across the back, holding him down while my boy with another knife crushed his head. On examination, I found he had large poison fangs, and it is a wonder he did not bite me when I first touched him.
Thinking it very unlikely that two snakes had got on board at the same time, I turned in and went to sleep; but having all the time a vague dreamy idea that I might put my hand on another one, I lay wonderfully still, not turning over once all night, quite the reverse of my usual habits. The next day we reached Ternate, and I ensconced myself in my comfortable house, to examine all my treasures, and pack them securely for the voyage home.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MOLUCCAS
THE Moluccas consist of three large islands, Gilolo, Ceram, and Bouru, the two former being each about two hundred miles long; and a great number of smaller isles and islets, the most important of which are Batchian, Morty, Obi, Ke, Timor-Laut, and Amboyna; and among the smaller ones, Ternate, Tidore, Kaióa, and Banda. They occupy a space of ten degrees of latitude by eight of longitude, and they are connected by groups of small islets to New Guinea on the east, the Philippines on the north, Celebes on the west, and Timor on the south. It will be as well to bear in mind these main features of extent and geographical position, while we survey their animal productions and discuss their relations to the countries which surround them on every side in almost equal proximity.
We will first consider the Mammalia or warm-blooded quadrupeds, which present us with some singular anomalies. The land mammals are exceedingly few in number, only ten being yet known from the entire group. The bats or aerial mammals, on the other hand, are numerous--not less than twenty-five species being already known. But even this exceeding poverty of terrestrial mammals does not at all represent the real poverty of the Moluccas in this class of animals; for, as we shall soon see, there is good reason to believe that several of the species have been introduced by man, either purposely or by accident.
The only quadrumanous animal in the group is the curious baboon- monkey, Cynopithecus nigrescens, already described as being one of the characteristic animals of Celebes. This is found only in the island of Batchian; and it seems so much out of place there as it is difficult to imagine how it could have reached the island by any natural means of dispersal, and yet not have passed by the same means over the narrow strait to Gilolo--that it seems more likely to have originated from some individuals which had escaped from confinement, these and similar animals being often kept as pets by the Malays, and carried about in their praus.
Of all the carnivorous animals of the Archipelago the only one found in the Moluccas is the Viverra tangalunga, which inhabits both Batchian and Bouru, and probably come of the other islands. I am inclined to think that this also may have been introduced accidentally, for it is often made captive by the Malays, who procure civet from it, and it is an animal very restless and untameable, and therefore likely to escape. This view is rendered still more probable by what Antonio de Morga tells us was the custom in the Philippines in 1602. He says that "the natives of Mindanao carry about civet-cats in cages, and sell them in the islands; and they take the civet from them, and let them go again." The same species is common in the Philippines and in all the large islands of the Indo-Malay region.
The only Moluccan ruminant is a deer, which was once supposed to be a distinct species, but is now generally considered to be a slight variety of the Rusa hippelaphus of Java. Deer are often tamed and petted, and their flesh is so much esteemed by all Malays, that it is very natural they should endeavour to introduce them into the remote islands in which they settled, and whose luxuriant forests seem so well adapted for their subsistence.
The strange babirusa of Celebes is also found in Bouru; but in no other Moluccan island, and it is somewhat difficult to imagine how it got there. It is true that there is some approximation between the birds of the Sula Islands (where the babirusa is also found) and those of Bouru, which seems to indicate that these islands have recently been closer together, or that some intervening land has disappeared. At this time the babirusa may have entered Bouru, since it probably swims as well as its allies the pigs. These are spread all over the Archipelago, even to several of the smaller islands, and in many cases the species are peculiar. It is evident, therefore, that they have some natural means of dispersal. There is a popular idea that pigs cannot swim, but Sir Charles Lyell has shown that this is a mistake. In his "Principles of Geology" (10th Edit. vol. ii p. 355) he adduces evidence to show that pigs have swum many miles at sea, and are able to swim with great ease and swiftness. I have myself seen a wild pig swimming across the arm of the sea that separates Singapore from the Peninsula of Malacca, and we thus have explained the curious fact, that of all the large mammals of the Indian region, pigs alone extend beyond the Moluccas and as far as New Guinea, although it is somewhat curious that they have not found their way to Australia.
The little shrew, Sorex myosurus, which is common in Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, is also found in the larger islands of the Moluccas, to which it may have been accidentally conveyed in native praus.
This completes the list of the placental mammals which are so characteristic of the Indian region; and we see that, with the single exception of the pig, all may very probably have been introduced by man, since all except the pig are of species identical with those now abounding in the great Malay islands, or in Celebes.
The four remaining mammals are Marsupials, an order of the class Mammalia, which is very characteristic of the Australian fauna; and these are probably true natives of the Moluccas, since they are either of peculiar species, or if found elsewhere are natives only of New Guinea or North Australia. The first is the small flying opossum, Belideus ariel, a beautiful little animal, exactly line a small flying squirrel in appearance, but belonging to the marsupial order. The other three are species of the curious genus Cuscus, which is peculiar to the Austro-Malayan region. These are opossum-like animals, with a long prehensile tail, of which the terminal half is generally bare. They have small heads, large eyes, and a dense covering of woolly fur, which is often pure white with irregular black spots or blotches, or sometimes ashy brown with or without white spots. They live in trees, feeding upon the leaves, of which they devour large quantities, they move about slowly, and are difficult to kill, owing to the thickness of their fur, and their tenacity of life. A heavy charge of shot will often lodge in the slain and do them no harm, and even breaking the spine or piercing the brain will not kill them for some hours. The natives everywhere eat their flesh, and as their motions are so slow, easily catch them by climbing; so that it is wonderful they have not been exterminated. It may be, however, that their dense woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and the islands they live in are too thinly inhabited for man to be able to exterminate them. The figure represents Cuscus ornatus, a new species discovered by me in Batchian, and which also inhabits Ternate. It is peculiar to the Moluccas, while the two other species which inhabit Ceram are found also in New Guinea and Waigiou.
CUSCUS ORNATUS
In place of the excessive poverty of mammals which characterises the Moluccas, we have a very rich display of the feathered tribes. The number of species of birds at present known from the various islands of the Molluccan group is 265, but of these only 70 belong to the usually abundant tribes of the waders and swimmers, indicating that these are very imperfectly known. As they are also pre-eminently wanderers, and are thus little fitted for illustrating the geographical distribution of life in a limited area, we will here leave them out of consideration and confine our attention only to the 195 land birds.
When we consider that all Europe, with its varied climate and vegetation, with every mile of its surface explored, and with the immense extent of temperate Asia and Africa, which serve as storehouses, from which it is continually recruited, only supports 25l species of land birds as residents or regular immigrants, we must look upon the numbers already procured in the small and comparatively unknown islands of the Moluccas as indicating a fauna of fully average richness in this department. But when we come to examine the family groups which go to make up this number, we find the most curious deficiencies in some, balanced by equally striking redundancy in other. Thus if we compare the birds of the Moluccas with those of India, as given in Mr. Jerdon's work, we find that the three groups of the parrots, kingfishers, and pigeons, form nearly _one-third_ of the whole land-birds in the former, while they amount to only _one- twentieth_ in the latter country. On the other hand, such wide- spread groups as the thrushes, warblers, and finches, which in India form nearly _one-third_ of all the land-birds, dwindle down in the Moluccas to _one-fourteenth._
The reason of these peculiarities appears to be, that the Moluccan fauna has been almost entirely derived from that of New Guinea, in which country the same deficiency and the same luxuriance is to be observed. Out of the seventy-eight genera in which the Moluccan land-birds may be classed, no less than seventy are characteristic of Yew Guinea, while only six belong specially to the Indo-Malay islands. But this close resemblance to New Guinea genera does not extend to the species, for no less than 140 out of the 195 land-birds are peculiar to the Moluccan islands, while 32 are found also in New Guinea, and 15 in the Indo-Malay islands. [footnote: A few species have been added in Bouru, Obi, Batchian, and other of the less known islands, by Mr. H.O. Forbes, Dr. Guillemard, and the Dutch and German naturalists, but they only slightly alter the figures, and do not at all affect the conclusions here drawn.] These facts teach us, that though the birds of this group have evidently been derived mainly from New Guinea, yet the immigration has not been a recent one, since there has been time for the greater portion of the species to have become changed. We find, also, that many very characteristic New Guinea forms lave not entered the Moluccas at all, while others found in Ceram and Gilolo do not extend so far west as Bouru. Considering, further, the absence of most of the New Guinea mammals from the Moluccas, we are led to the conclusion that these islands are not fragments which have been separated from New Guinea, but form a distinct insular region, which has been upheaved independently at a rather remote epoch, and during all the mutations it has undergone has been constantly receiving immigrants from that great and productive island. The considerable length of time the Moluccas have remained isolated is further indicated by the occurrence of two peculiar genera of birds, Semioptera and Lycocorax, which are found nowhere else.
We are able to divide this small archipelago into two well marked groups--that of Ceram, including also Bouru. Amboyna, Banda, and Ke; and that of Gilolo, including Morty, Batchian, Obi, Ternate, and other small islands. These divisions have each a considerable number of peculiar species, no less than fifty-five being found in the Ceram group only; and besides this, most of the separate islands have some species peculiar to themselves. Thus Morty island has a peculiar kingfisher, honeysucker, and starling; Ternate has a ground-thrush (Pitta) and a flycatcher; Banda has a pigeon, a shrike, and a Pitta; Ké has two flycatchers, a Zosterops, a shrike, a king-crow and a cuckoo; and the remote Timor-Laut, which should probably come into the Moluccan group, has a cockatoo and lory as its only known birds, and both are of peculiar species. [footnote: Mr. H.O. Forbes visited these islands in 1882, and obtained a fine collection of birds which now amount to eighty species. Of these sixty-two are land-birds, and twenty-six of these are peculiar to the island. Their affinities are chiefly with the Moluccas and New Guinea, but to some extent also with Timor and Australia. (See Forbes' Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, p.355.) The butterflies collected by Mr. Forbes show similar affinities, but tending more towards Timor and Australia, due probably to the more immediate dependence of butterflies on vegetation.
The Moluccas are especially rich in the parrot tribe, no less than twenty-two species, belonging to ten genera, inhabiting them. Among these is the large red-crested cockatoo, so commonly seen alive in Europe, two handsome red parrots of the genus Eclectus, and five of the beautiful crimson lories, which are almost exclusively confined to these islands and the New Guinea group. The pigeons are hardly less abundant or beautiful, twenty- one species being known, including twelve of the beautiful green fruit pigeons, the smaller kinds of which are ornamented with the most brilliant patches of colour on the head and the under- surface. Next to these come the kingfishers, including sixteen species, almost all of which are beautiful, end many are among the most brilliantly-coloured birds that exist.
One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, or mound- makers, is very abundant in the Moluccas. They are gallinaceous birds, about the size of a small fowl, and generally of a dark ashy or sooty colour, and they have remarkably large and strong feet and long claws. They are allied to the "Maleo" of Celebes, of which an account has already been given, but they differ in habits, most of these birds frequenting the scrubby jungles along the sea-shore, where the soil is sandy, and there is a considerable quantity of debris, consisting of sticks, shells, seaweed, leaves, &c. Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms immense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease, by means of their large feet, with which they can grasp and throw backwards a quantity of material. In the centre of this mound, at a depth of two or three feet, the eggs are deposited, and are hatched by the gentle heat produced by the fermentation of the vegetable matter of the mound. When I first saw these mounds in the island of Lombock, I could hardly believe that they were made by such small birds, but I afterwards met with them frequently, and have once or twice come upon the birds engaged in making them. They run a few steps backwards, grasping a quantity of loose material in one foot, and throw it a long way behind them. When once properly buried the eggs seem to be no more cared for, the young birds working their way up through the heap of rubbish, and running off at once into the forest. They come out of the egg covered with thick downy feathers, and have no tail, although the wings are full developed.
I was so fortunate as to discover a new species (Megapodius wallacei), which inhibits Gilolo, Ternate, and Bouru. It is the handsomest bird of the genus, being richly banded with reddish brown on the back and wings; and it differs from the other species in its habits. It frequents the forests of the interior, and comes down to the sea-beach to deposit its eggs, but instead of making a mound, or scratching a hole to receive them, it burrows into the sand to the depth of about three feet obliquely downwards, and deposits its eggs at the bottom. It then loosely covers up the mouth of the hole, and is said by the natives to obliterate and disguise its own footmarks leading to and from the hole, by making many other tracks and scratches in the neighbourhood. It lays its eggs only at night, and at Bouru a bird was caught early one morning as it was coming out of its hole, in which several eggs were found. All these birds seem to be semi-nocturnal, for their loud wailing cries may be constantly heard late into the night and long before daybreak in the morning. The eggs are all of a rusty red colour, and very large for the size of the bird, being generally three or three and a quarter inches long, by two or two and a quarter wide. They are very good eating, and are much sought after by the natives.
Another large and extraordinary bird is the Cassowary, which inhabits the island of Ceram only. It is a stout and strong bird, standing five or six feet high, and covered with long coarse black hair-like feathers. The head is ornamented with a large horny calque or helmet, and the bare skin of the neck is conspicuous with bright blue and red colours. The wings are quite absent, and are replaced by a group of horny black spines like blunt porcupine quills.
These birds wander about the vast mountainous forests that cover the island of Ceram, feeding chiefly on fallen fruits, and on insects or crustacea. The female lays from three to five large and beautifully shagreened green eggs upon a bed of leaves, the male and female sitting upon them alternately for about a month. This bird is the helmeted cassowary (Casuarius galeatus) of naturalists, and was for a long time the only species known. Others have since been discovered in New Guinea, New Britain, and North Australia.
It was in the Moluccas that I first discovered undoubted cases of "mimicry" among birds, and these are so curious that I must briefly describe them. It will be as well, however, first to explain what is meant by mimicry in natural history. At page 205 of the first volume of this work, I have described a butterfly which, when at rest, so closely resembles a dead leaf, that it thereby escape the attacks of its enemies. This is termed a "protective resemblance." If however the butterfly, being itself savoury morsel to birds, had closely resembled another butterfly which was disagreeable to birds, and therefore never eaten by them, it would be as well protected as if it resembled a leaf; and this is what has been happily termed "mimicry" by Mr. Bates, who first discovered the object of these curious external imitations of one insect by another belonging to a distinct genus or family, and sometimes even to a distinct order. The clear- winged moth which resemble wasps and hornets are the best examples of "mimicry" in our own country.
For a long time all the known cases of exact resemblance of one creature to quite a different one were confined to insects, and it was therefore with great pleasure that I discovered in the island of Bouru two birds which I constantly mistook for each other, and which yet belonged to two distinct and somewhat distant families. One of these is a honeysucker named Tropidorhynchus bouruensis, and the other a kind of oriole, which has been called Mimeta bouruensis. The oriole resembles the honeysucker in the following particulars: the upper and under surfaces of the two birds are exactly of the same tints of dark and light brown; the Tropidorhynchus has a large bare black patch round the eyes; this is copied in the Mimeta by a patch of black feathers. The top of the head of the Tropidorhynchus has a scaly appearance from the narrow scale-formed feathers, which are imitated by the broader feathers of the Mimeta having a dusky line down each. The Tropidorhynchus has a pale ruff formed of curious recurved feathers on the nape (which has given the whole genus the name of Friar birds); this is represented in the Mimeta by a pale band in the same position. Lastly, the bill of the Tropidorhynchus is raised into a protuberant keel at the base, and the Mimeta has the same character, although it is not a common one in the genus. The result is, that on a superficial examination the birds are identical, although they leave important structural differences, and cannot be placed near each other in any natural arrangement.
In the adjacent island of Ceram we find very distinct species of both these genera, and, strange to say, these resemble each other quite as closely as do those of Bouru The Tropidorhynchus subcornutus is of an earthy brown colour, washed with ochreish yellow, with bare orbits, dusky: cheeks, and the usual recurved nape-ruff: The Mimeta forsteni which accompanies it, is absolutely identical in the tints of every part of the body, and the details are copied just as minutely as in the former species.
We have two kinds of evidence to tell us which bird in this case is the model, and which the copy. The honeysuckers are coloured in a manner which is very general in the whole family to which they belong, while the orioles seem to have departed from the gay yellow tints so common among their allies. We should therefore conclude that it is the latter who mimic the former. If so, however, they must derive some advantage from the imitation, and as they are certainly weak birds, with small feet and claws, they may require it. Now the Tropidorhynchi are very strong and active birds, having powerful grasping claws, and long, curved, sharp beaks. They assemble together in groups and small flocks, and they haw a very loud bawling note which can be heard at a great distance, and serves to collect a number together in time of danger. They are very plentiful and very pugnacious, frequently driving away crows and even hawks, which perch on a tree where a few of them are assembled. It is very probable, therefore, that the smaller birds of prey have learnt to respect these birds and leave them alone, and it may thus be a great advantage for the weaker and less courageous Mimetas to be mistaken for them. This being case, the laws of Variation and Survival of the Fittest, will suffice to explain how the resemblance has been brought about, without supposing any voluntary action on the part of the birds themselves; and those who have read Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" will have no difficulty in comprehending the whole process.
The insects of the Moluccas are pre-eminently beautiful, even when compared with the varied and beautiful productions of other parts of the Archipelago. The grand bird-winged butterflies (Ornithoptera) here reach their maximum of size and beauty, and many of the Papilios, Pieridae Danaidae, and Nymphalidae are equally preeminent. There is, perhaps, no island in the world so small as Amboyna where so many grand insects are to be found. Here are three of the very finest Ornithopterae--priamus, helena, and remiss; three of the handsomest and largest Papilios-- ulysses, deiphobus, and gambrisius; one of the handsomest Pieridae, Iphias leucippe; the largest of the Danaidae, Hestia idea; and two unusually large and handsome Nymphalidae--Diadema pandarus, and Charaxes euryalus. Among its beetles are the extraordinary Euchirus longimanus, whose enormous legs spread over a space of eight inches, and an unusual number of large and handsome Longicorns, Anthribidae, and Buprestidae.
MOLUCCAN BEATLES
Xenocerus semiluctuosus, fem. - - Arachnobas - - Eupholus (new species).
Xenocerus (new species), male - - (new species) - - Euchirus longimanus, male.
The beetles figured on the plate as characteristic of the Moluccas are: 1. A small specimen of the Euchirus longimanus, or Long-armed Chafer, which has been already mentioned in the account of my residence at Amboyna (Chapter XX.). The female has the fore legs of moderate length. 2. A fine weevil, (an undescribed species of Eupholus,) of rich blue and emerald green colours, banded with black. It is a native of Ceram and Goram, and is found on foliage. 3. A female of Xenocerus semiluctuosus, one of the Anthribidae of delicate silky white and black colours. It is abundant on fallen trunks and stumps in Ceram and Amboyna. 4. An undescribed species of Xenocerus; a male, with very long and curious antenna, and elegant black and white markings. It is found on fallen trunks in Batchian. 5. An undescribed species of Arachnobas, a curious genus of weevils peculiar to the Moluccas and New Guinea, and remarkable for their long legs, and their habit of often sitting on leaves, and turning rapidly round the edge to the under-surface when disturbed. It was found in Gilolo. All these insects are represented of the natural size.
Like the birds, the insects of the Moluccas show a decided affinity with those of New Guinea rather than with the productions of the great western islands of the Archipelago, but the difference in form and structure between the productions of the east and west is not nearly so marked here as in birds. This is probably due to the more immediate dependence of insects on climate and vegetation, and the greater facilities for their distribution in the varied stages of egg, pupa, and perfect insect. This has led to a general uniformity in the insect-life of the whole Archipelago, in accordance with the general uniformity of its climate and vegetation; while on the other hand the great susceptibility of the insect organization to the action of external conditions has led to infinite detailed modifications of form and colour, which have in many cases given a considerable diversity to the productions of adjacent islands.
Owing to the great preponderance among the birds, of parrots, pigeons, kingfishers, and sunbirds, almost all of gay or delicate colours, and many adorned with the most gorgeous plumage, and to the numbers of very large and showy butterflies which are almost everywhere to be met with, the forests of the Moluccas offer to the naturalist a very striking example of the luxuriance and beauty of animal life in the tropics. Yet the almost entire absence of Mammalia, and of such wide-spread groups of birds as woodpeckers, thrushes, jays, tits, and pheasants, must convince him that he is in a part of the world which has, in reality but little in common with the great Asiatic continent, although an unbroken chain of islands seems to link them to it.
CHAPTER XXXV. VOYAGE FROM CERAM TO WAIGIOU (JUNE AND JULY 1860)
IN my twenty-fifth chapter I have described my arrival at Wahai, on my way to Mysol and Waigiou, islands which belong to the Papuan district, and the account of which naturally follows after that of my visit to the mainland of New Guinea. I now take up my narrative at my departure from Wahai, with the intention of carrying various necessary stores to my assistant, Mr. Allen, at Silinta, in Mysol, and then continuing my journey to Waigiou. It will be remembered that I was travelling in a small prau, which I had purchased and fitted up in Goram, and that, having been deserted by my crew on the coast of Ceram, I had obtained four men at Wahai, who, with my Amboynese hunter, constituted my crew.
Between Ceram and Mysol there are sixty miles of open sea, and along this wide channel the east monsoon blows strongly; so that with native praus, which will not lay up to the wind, it requires some care in crossing. In order to give ourselves sufficient leeway, we sailed back from Wahai eastward, along the coast of Ceram, with the land-breeze; but in the morning (June 18th) had not gone nearly so far as I expected. My pilot, an old and experienced sailor, named Gurulampoko, assured me there was a current setting to the eastward, and that we could easily lay across to Silinta, in Mysol. As we got out from the land the wind increased, and there was a considerable sea, which made my short little vessel plunge and roll about violently. By sunset -we had not got halfway across, but could see Mysol distinctly. All night we went along uneasily, and at daybreak, on looking out anxiously, I found that we had fallen much to the westward during the night, owing, no doubt, to the pilot being sleepy and not keeping the boat sufficiently close to the wind. We could see the mountains distinctly, but it was clear we should not reach Silinta, and should have some difficulty in getting to the extreme westward point of the island. The sea was now very boisterous, and our prau was continually beaten to leeward by the waves, and after another weary day we found w e could not get to Mysol at all, but might perhaps reach the island called Pulo Kanary, about ten miles to the north-west. Thence we might await a favourable wind to reach Waigamma, on the north side of the island, and visit Allen by means of a small boat.
About nine o'clock at night, greatly to my satisfaction, we got under the lea of this island, into quite smooth water--for I had been very sick and uncomfortable, and had eaten scarcely anything since the preceding morning. We were slowly nearing the shore, which the smooth dark water told us we could safely approach; and were congratulating ourselves on soon being at anchor, with the prospect of hot coffee, a good supper, and a sound sleep, when the wind completely dropped, and we had to get out the oars to row. We were not more than two hundred yards from the shore, when I noticed that we seemed to get no nearer although the men were rowing hard, but drifted to the westward, and the prau would not obey the helm, but continually fell off, and gave us much trouble to bring her up again. Soon a laud ripple of water told us we were seized by one of those treacherous currents which so frequently frustrate all the efforts of the voyager in these seas; the men threw down the oars in despair, and in a few minutes we drifted to leeward of the island fairly out to sea again, and lost our last chance of ever reaching Mysol! Hoisting our jib, we lay to, and in the morning found ourselves only a few miles from the island, but wit, such a steady wind blowing from its direction as to render it impossible for us to get back to it.
We now made sail to the northward, hoping soon to get a more southerly wind. Towards noon the sea was much smoother, and with a S.S.E. wind we were laying in the direction of Salwatty, which I hoped to reach, as I could there easily get a boat to take provisions and stores to my companion in Mysol. This wind did not, however, last long, but died away into a calm; and a light west wind springing up, with a dark bank of clouds, again gave us hopes of reaching Mysol. We were soon, however, again disappointed. The E.S.E. wind began to blow again with violence, and continued all night in irregular gusts, and with a short cross sea tossed us about unmercifully, and so continually took our sails aback, that we were at length forced to run before it with our jib only, to escape being swamped by our heavy mainsail. After another miserable and anxious night, we found that we had drifted westward of the island of Poppa, and the wind being again a little southerly, we made all sail in order to reach it. This we did not succeed in doing, passing to the north-west, when the wind again blew hard from the E.S.E., and our last hope of finding a refuge till better weather was frustrated. This was a very serious matter to me, as I could not tell how Charles Allen might act, if, after waiting in vain for me, he should return to Wahai, and find that I had left there long before, and had not since been heard of. Such an event as our missing an island forty miles long would hardly occur to him, and he would conclude either that our boat had foundered, or that my crew had murdered me and run away with her. However, as it was physically impossible now for me to reach him, the only thing to be done was to make the best of my way to Waigiou, and trust to our meeting some traders, who might convey to him the news of my safety.
Finding on my map a group of three small islands, twenty-five miles north of Poppa, I resolved, if possible, to rest there a day or two. We could lay our boat's head N.E. by N.; but a heavy sea from the eastward so continually beat us off our course, and we made so much leeway, that I found it would be as much as we could do to reach them. It was a delicate point to keep our head in the best direction, neither so close to the wind as to stop our way, or so free as to carry us too far to leeward. I continually directed the steersman myself, and by incessant vigilance succeeded, just at sunset, in bringing our boat to an anchor under the lee of the southern point of one of the islands. The anchorage was, however, by no means good, there being a fringing coral reef, dry at low water, beyond which, on a bottom strewn with masses of coral, we were obliged to anchor. We had now been incessantly tossing about for four days in our small undecked boat, with constant disappointments and anxiety, and it was a great comfort to have a night of quiet and comparative safety. My old pilot had never left the helm for more than an hour at a time, when one of the others would relieve him for a little sleep; so I determined the next morning to look out for a secure and convenient harbour, and rest on shore for a day.
In the morning, finding it would be necessary for us to get round a rocky point, I wanted my men to go on shore and cut jungle- rope, by which to secure us from being again drafted away, as the wind was directly off shore. I unfortunately, however, allowed myself to be overruled by the pilot and crew, who all declared that it was the easiest thing possible, and that they would row the boat round the point in a few minutes. They accordingly got up the anchor, set the jib, and began rowing; but, just as I had feared, we drifted rapidly off shore, and had to drop anchor again in deeper water, and much farther off. The two best men, a Papuan and a Malay now swam on shore, each carrying a hatchet, and went into the jungle to seek creepers for rope. After about an hour our anchor loosed hold, and began to drag. This alarmed me greatly, and we let go our spare anchor, and, by running out all our cable, appeared tolerably secure again. We were now most anxious for the return of the men, and were going to fire our muskets to recall them, when we observed them on the beach, some way off, and almost immediately our anchors again slipped, and we drifted slowly away into deep water. We instantly seized the oars, but found we could not counteract the wind and current, and our frantic cries to the men were not heard till we had got a long way off; as they seemed to be hunting for shell-fish on the beach. Very soon, however, they stared at us, and in a few minutes seemed to comprehend their situation; for they rushed down into the water, as if to swim off, but again returned on shore, as if afraid to make the attempt. We had drawn up our anchors at first not to check our rowing; but now, finding we could do nothing, we let them both hang down by the full length of the cables. This stopped our way very much, and we drifted from shore very slowly, and hoped the men would hastily form a raft, or cut down a soft-wood tree, and paddle out, to us, as we were still not more than a third of a mile from shore. They seemed, however, to have half lost their senses, gesticulating wildly to us, running along the beach, then going unto the forest; and just when we thought they had prepared some mode of making an attempt to reach us, we saw the smoke of a fire they had made to cook their shell-fish! They had evidently given up all idea of coming after us, and we were obliged to look to our own position.
We were now about a mile from shore, and midway between two of the islands, but we were slowly drifting out, to sea to the westward, and our only chance of yet saving the men was to reach the opposite shore. We therefore sot our jib and rowed hard; but the wind failed, and we drifted out so rapidly that we had some difficulty in reaching the extreme westerly point of the island. Our only sailor left, then swam ashore with a rope, and helped to tow us round the point into a tolerably safe and secure anchorage, well sheltered from the wind, but exposed to a little swell which jerked our anchor and made us rather uneasy. We were now in a sad plight, having lost our two best men, and being doubtful if we had strength left to hoist our mainsail. We had only two days' water on board, and the small, rocky, volcanic island did not promise us much chance of finding any. The conduct of the men on shore was such as to render it doubtful if they would make any serious attempt to reach us, though they might easily do so, having two good choppers, with which in a day they could male a small outrigger raft on which they could safely cross the two miles of smooth sea with the wind right aft, if they started from the east end of the island, so as to allow for the current. I could only hope they would be sensible enough to make the attempt, and determined to stay as long as I could to give them the chance.
We passed an anxious night, fearful of again breaking our anchor or rattan cable. In the morning (23rd), finding all secure, I waded on shore with my two men, leaving the old steersman and the cook on board, with a loaded musketto recall us if needed. We first walked along the beach, till stopped by the vertical cliffs at the east end of the island, finding a place where meat had been smoked, a turtle-shell still greasy, and some cut wood, the leaves of which were still green, showing that some boat had been here very recently. We then entered the jungle, cutting our way up to the top of the hill, but when we got there could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the forest. Returning, we cut some bamboos, and sharpened them to dig for water in a low spot where some sago -trees were growing; when, just as we were going to begin, Hoi, the Wahai man, called out to say he had found water. It was a deep hole among the Sago trees, in stiff black clay, full of water, which was fresh, but smelt horribly from the quantity of dead leaves and sago refuse that had fallen in. Hastily concluding that it was a spring, or that the water had filtered in, we baled it all out as well as a dozen or twenty buckets of mud and rubbish, hoping by night to have a good supply of clean water. I then went on board to breakfast, leaving my two men to make a bamboo raft to carry us on shore and back without wading. I had scarcely finished when our cable broke, and we bumped against the rocks. Luckily it was smooth and calm, and no damage was done. We searched for and got up our anchor, and found teat the cable had been cut by grating all night upon the coral. Had it given way in the night, we might have drifted out to sea without our anchor, or been seriously damaged. In the evening we went to fetch water from the well, when, greatly to our dismay, we found nothing but a little liquid mud at the bottom, and it then became evident that the hole was one which had been made to collect rain water, and would never fill again as long as the present drought continued. As we did not know what we might suffer for want of water, we filled our jar with this muddy stuff so that it might settle. In the afternoon I crossed over to the other side of the island, and made a large fire, in order that our men might see we were still there.
The next day (24th) I determined to have another search for water; and when the tide was out rounded a rocky point and went to the extremity of the island without finding any sign of the smallest stream. On our way back, noticing a very small dry bed of a watercourse, I went up it to explore, although everything was so dry that my men loudly declared it was useless to expect water there; but a little way up I was rewarded by finding a few pints in a small pool. We searched higher up in every hole and channel where water marks appeared, but could find not a drop more. Sending one of my men for a large jar and teacup, we searched along the beach till we found signs of another dry watercourse, and on ascending this were so fortunate as to discover two deep sheltered rock-holes containing several gallons of water, enough to fill all our jars. When the cup came we enjoyed a good drink of the cool pure water, and before we left had carried away, I believe, every drop on the island.
In the evening a good-sized prau appeared in sight, making apparently for the island where our men were left, and we had some hopes they might be seen and picked up, but it passed along mid-channel, and did not notice the signals we tried to make. I was now, however, pretty easy as to the fate of the men. There was plenty of sago on our rocky island, and there world probably be some on the fiat one they were left on. They had choppers, and could cut down a tree and make sago, and would most likely find sufficient water by digging. Shell-fish were abundant, and they would be able to manage very well till some boat should touch there, or till I could send and fetch them. The next day we devoted to cutting wood, filling up our jars with all the water we could find, and making ready to sail in the evening. I shot a small lory closely resembling a common species at Ternate, and a glossy starling which differed from the allied birds of Ceram and Matabello. Large wood-pigeons and crows were the only other birds I saw, but I did not obtain specimens.
About eight in the evening of June 25th we started, and found that with all hands at work we could just haul up our mainsail. We had a fair wind during the night and sailed north-east, finding ourselves in the morning about twenty miles west of the extremity of Waigiou with a number of islands intervening. About ten o'clock we ran full on to a coral reef, which alarmed us a good deal, but luckily got safe off again. About two in the afternoon we reached an extensive coral reef, and were sailing close alongside of it, when the wind suddenly dropped, and we drifted on to it before we could get in our heavy mainsail, which we were obliged to let run down and fall partly overboard. We had much difficulty in getting off, but at last got into deep water again, though with reefs and islands all around us. At night we did not know what to do, as no one on board could tell where we were or what dangers might surround us, the only one of our crew who was acquainted with the coast of Waigiou having been. left on the island. We therefore took in all sail and allowed ourselves to drift, as we were some miles from the nearest land. A light breeze, however, sprang up, and about midnight we found ourselves again bumping over a coral reef. As it was very dark, and we knew nothing of our position, we could only guess how to get off again, and had there been a little more wind we might have been knocked to pieces. However, in about half an hour we did get off, and then thought it best to anchor on the edge of the reef till morning. Soon after daylight on the 7th, finding our prau had received no damage, we sailed on with uncertain winds and squalls, threading our way among islands and reefs, and guided only by a small map, which was very incorrect and quite useless, and by a general notion of the direction we ought to take. In the afternoon we found a tolerable anchorage under a small island and stayed for the night, and I shot a large fruit-pigeon new to me, which I have since named Carpophaga tumida. I also saw and shot at the rare white-headed kingfisher (Halcyon saurophaga), but did not kill it. The next morning we sailed on, and having a fair wind reached the shores of the large island of Waigiou. On rounding a point we again ran full on to a coral reef with our mainsail up, but luckily the wind had almost died away, and with a good deal of exertion we managed get safely off.
We now had to search for the narrow channel among islands, which we knew was somewhere hereabouts, and which leads to the villages on the south side ofWaigiou. Entering a deep bay which looked promising, we got to the end of it, but it was then dusk, so we anchored for the night, and having just finished all our water could cook no rice for supper. Next morning early (29th) we went on shore among the mangroves, and a little way inland found some water, which relieved our anxiety considerably, and left us free to go along the coast in search of the opening, or of some one who could direct us to it. During the three days we had now been among the reefs and islands, we had only seen a single small canoe, which had approached pretty near to us, and then, notwithstanding our signals, went off in another direction. The shores seemed all desert; not a house, or boat, or human being, or a puff of smoke was to be seen; and as we could only go on the course that the ever-changing wind would allow us (our hands being too few to row any distance), our prospects of getting to our destination seemed rather remote and precarious. Having gone to the eastward extremity of the deep bay we had entered, without finding any sign of an opening, we turned westward; and towards evening were so fortunate as to find a small village of seven miserable houses built on piles in the water. Luckily the Orang- kaya, or head man, could speak a little. Malay, and informed us that the entrance to the strait was really in the bay we had examined, but that it was not to be seen except when- close inshore. He said the strait was often very narrow, and wound among lakes and rocks and islands, and that it would take two days to reach the large village of Muka, and three more to get to Waigiou. I succeeded in hiring two men to go with us to Muka, bringing a small boat in which to return; but we had to wait a day for our guides, so I took my gun and made a little excursion info the forest. The day was wet and drizzly, and I only succeeded in shooting two small birds, but I saw the great black cockatoo, and had a glimpse of one or two Birds of Paradise, whose loud screams we had heard on first approaching the coast. Leaving the village the next morning (July 1st) with a light wind, it took us all day to reach the entrance to the channel, which resembled a small river, and was concealed by a projecting point, so that it was no wonder we did not discover it amid the dense forest vegetation which everywhere covers these islands to the water's edge. A little way inside it becomes bounded by precipitous rocks, after winding among which for about two miles, we emerged into what seemed a lake, but which was in fact a deep gulf having a narrow entrance on the south coast. This gulf was studded along its shores with numbers of rocky islets, mostly mushroom shaped, from the `eater having worn away the lower part of the soluble coralline limestone, leaving them overhanging from ten to twenty feet. Every islet was covered will strange-looping shrubs and trees, and was generally crowned by lofty and elegant palms, which also studded the ridges of the mountainous shores, forming one of the most singular and picturesque landscapes I have ever seen. The current which had brought us through the narrow strait now ceased, and we were obliged to row, which with our short and heavy prau was slow work. I went on shore several times, but the rocks were so precipitous, sharp, and honeycombed, that I found it impossible to get through the tangled thicket with which they were everywhere clothed. It took us three days to get to the entrance of the gulf, and then the wind was such as to prevent our going any further, and we might have had to wait for days or weeps, when, much to my surprise and gratification, a boat arrived from Muka with one of the head men, who had in some mysterious manner heard I was on my way, and had come to my assistance, bringing a present of cocoa-nuts and vegetables. Being thoroughly acquainted with the coast, and having several extra men to assist us, he managed to get the prau along by rowing, poling, or sailing, and by night had brought us safely into harbour, a great relief after our tedious and unhappy voyage. We had been already eight days among the reefs and islands of Waigiou, coming a distance of about fifty miles, and it was just forty days since we had sailed from Goram.
Immediately on our arrival at Muka, I engaged a small boat and three natives to go in search of my lost men, and sent one of my own men with them to make sure of their going to the right island. In ten days they returned, but to my great regret and disappointment, without the men. The weather had been very bad, and though they had reached an island within sight of that in which the men were, they could get no further. They had waited there six days for better weather, and then, having no more provisions, and the man I had sent with them being very ill and not expected to live, they returned. As they now knew the island, I was determined they should make another trial, and (by a liberal payment of knives, handkerchiefs, and tobacco, with plenty of provisions) persuaded them to start back immediately, and make another attempt. They did not return again till the 29th of July, having stayed a few days at their own village of Bessir on the way; but this time they had succeeded and brought with them my two lost men, in tolerable health, though thin and weak. They had lived exactly a month on the island had found water, and had subsisted on the roots and tender flower-stalks of a species of Bromelia, on shell-fish. and on a few turtles' eggs. Having swum to the island, they had only a pair of trousers and a shirt between them, but had made a hut of palm-leaves, and had altogether got on very well. They saw that I waited for them three days at the opposite island, but had been afraid to cross, lest the current should have carried them out to sea, when they would have been inevitably lost. They had felt sure I would send for them on the first opportunity, and appeared more grateful than natives usually are for my having done so; while I felt much relieved that my voyage, though sufficiently unfortunate, had not involved loss of life.
CHAPTER XXXVI. WAIGIOU
(JULY TO SEPTEMBER 1860)
THE village of Muka, on the south coast of Waigiou, consists of a number of poor huts, partly in the water and partly on shore, and scattered irregularly over a space of about half a mile in a shallow bay. Around it are a few cultivated patches, and a good deal of second-growth woody vegetation; while behind, at the distance of about half a mile, rises the virgin forest, through which are a few paths to some houses and plantations a mile or two inland. The country round is rather flat, and in places swampy, and there are one or two small streams which run behind the village into the sea below it. Finding that no house could be had suitable to my purpose, and hawing so often experienced the advantages of living close to or just within the forest, I obtained the assistance of half-a-dozen men; and having selected a spot near the path and the stream, and close to a fine fig- tree, which stood just within the forest, we cleared the ground and set to building a house. As I did not expect to stay here so long as I had done at Dorey, I built a long, low, narrow shed, about seven feet high on one side and four on the other, which required but little wood, and was put up very rapidly. Our sails, with a few old attaps from a deserted but in the village, formed the walls, and a quantity of "cadjans," or palm-leaf mats, covered in the roof. On the third day my house was finished, and all my things put in and comfortably arranged to begin work, and I was quite pleased at having got established so quickly and in such a nice situation.
It had been so far fine weather, but in the night it rained hard, and we found our mat roof would not keep out water. It first began to drop, and then to stream over everything. I had to get up in the middle of the night to secure my insect-boxes, rice, and other perishable articles, and to find a dry place to sleep in, for my bed was soaked. Fresh leaks kept forming as the rain continued, and w e all passed a very miserable and sleepless night. In the morning the sun shone brightly, and everything was put out to dry. We tried to find out why the mats leaked, and thought we had discovered that they had been laid on upside down. Having shifted there all, and got everything dry and comfortable by the evening, we again went to bed, and before midnight were again awaked by torrent of rain and leaks streaming in upon us as bad as ever. There was no more sleep for us that night, and the next day our roof was again taken to pieces, and we came to the conclusion that the fault was a want of slope enough in the roof for mats, although it would be sufficient for the usual attap thatch. I therefore purchased a few new and some old attaps, and in the parts these would not cover we put the mats double, and then at last had the satisfaction of finding our roof tolerably water-tight.
I was now able to begin working at the natural history of the island. When I first arrived I was surprised at being told that there were no Paradise Birds at Muka, although there were plenty at Bessir, a place where the natives caught them and prepared the skins. I assured the people I had heard the cry of these birds close to the village, but they world not believe that I could know their cry. However, the very first time I went into the forest I not only heard but saw them, and was convinced there were plenty about; but they were very shy, and it was some time before we got any. My hunter first shot a female, and I one day got very close to a fine male. He was, as I expected, the rare red species, Paradisea rubra, which alone inhabits this island, and is found nowhere else. He was quite low down, running along a bough searching for insects, almost like a woodpecker, and the long black riband-like filaments in his tail hung down in the most graceful double curve imaginable. I covered him with my gun, and was going to use the barrel which had a very small charge of powder and number eight shot, so as not to injure his plumage, but the gun missed fire, and he was off in an instant among the thickest jungle. Another day we saw no less than eight fine males at different times, and fired four times at them; but though other birds at the same distance almost always dropped, these all got away, and I began to think we were not to get this magnificent species. At length the fruit ripened on the fig-tree close by my house, and many birds came to feed on it; and one morning, as I was taking my coffee, a male Paradise Bird was seen to settle on its top. I seized my gun, ran under the tree, and, gazing up, could see it flying across from branch to branch, seizing a fruit here and another there, and then, before I could get a sufficient aim to shoot at such a height (for it was one of the loftiest trees of the tropics), it was away into the forest. They now visited the tree every morning; but they stayed so short a time, their motions were so rapid, and it was so difficult to see them, owing to the lower trees, which impeded the view, that it was only after several days' watching, and one or two misses, that I brought down my bird--a male in the most magnificent plumage.
This bird differs very much from the two large species which I had already obtained, and, although it wants the grace imparted by their long golden trains, is in many respects more remarkable and more beautiful. The head, back, and shoulders are clothed with a richer yellow, the deep metallic green colour of the throat extends further over the head, and the feathers are elongated on the forehead into two little erectile crests. The side plumes are shorter, but are of a rich red colour, terminating in delicate white points, and the middle tail- feathers are represented by two long rigid glossy ribands, which are black, thin, and semi-cylindrical, and droop gracefully in a spiral curve. Several other interesting birds were obtained, and about half-a-dozen quite new ones; but none of any remarkable beauty, except the lovely little dove, Ptilonopus pulchellus, which with several other pigeons I shot on the same fig-tree close to my house. It is of a beautiful green colour above, with a forehead of the richest crimson, while beneath it is ashy white and rich yellow, banded with violet red.
THE RED BIRD OF PARADISE (Paradisea rubra.)
On the evening of our arrival at Muka I observed what appeared like a display of Aurora Borealis, though I could hardly believe that this was possible at a point a little south of the equator. The night was clear and calm, and the northern sky presented a diffused light, with a constant succession of faint vertical flashings or flickerings, exactly similar to an ordinary aurora in England. The next day was fine, but after that the weather was unprecedentedly bad, considering that it ought to have been the dry monsoon. For near a month we had wet weather; the sun either not appearing at all, or only for an hour or two about noon. Morning and evening, as well as nearly all night, it rained or drizzled, and boisterous winds, with dark clouds, formed the daily programme. With the exception that it was never cold, it was just such weather as a very bad English November or February.
The people of Waigiou are not truly indigenes of the island, which possesses no "Alfuros," or aboriginal inhabitants. [footnote: Dr. Guillemard met with some people who, he was told, were true indigenes. But it would be difficult to determine the point without a tolerably complete knowledge of all the surrounding islands and their languages.] They appear to be a mixed race, partly from Gilolo, partly from New Guinea. Malays and Alfuros from the former island have probably settled here, and many of them have taken Papuan wives from Salwatty or Dorey, while the influx of people from those places, and of slaves, has led to the formation of a tribe exhibiting almost all the transitions from a nearly pure Malayan to an entirely Papuan type. The language spoken by them is entirely Papuan, being that which is used on all the coasts of Mysol, Salwatty, the north-west of New Guinea, and the islands in the great Geelvink Bay,--a fact which indicates the way in which the coast settlements have been formed. The fact that so many of the islands between New Guinea and the Moluccas--such as Waigiou, Guebe, Poppa, Obi, Batchian, as well as the south and east peninsulas of Gilolo--possess no aboriginal tribes, but are inhabited by people who are evidently mongrels and wanderers, is a remarkable corroborative proof of the distinctness of the Malayan and Papuan races, and the separation of the geographical areas they inhabit. If these two great races were direct modifications, the one of the other, we should expect to find in the intervening region some homogeneous indigenous race presenting intermediate characters. For example, between the whitest inhabitants of Europe and the black Klings of South India, there are in the intervening districts homogeneous races which form a gradual transition from one to the other; while in America, although there is a perfect transition from the Anglo- Saxon to the negro, and from the Spaniard to the Indian, there is no homogeneous race forming a natural transition from one to the other. In the Malay Archipelago we have an excellent example of two absolutely distinct races, which appear to have approached each other, and intermingled in an unoccupied territory at a very recent epoch in the history of man; and I feel satisfied that no unprejudiced person could study them on the spot without being convinced that this is the true solution of the problem, rather than the almost universally accepted view that they are but modifications of one and the same race.
The people of Muka live in that abject state of poverty that is almost always found where the sago-tree is abundant. Very few of them take the trouble to plant any vegetables or fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and fish, selling a little tripang or tortoiseshell to buy the scanty clothing they require. Almost all of them, however, possess one or more Papuan slaves, on whose labour they live in almost absolute idleness, just going out on little fishing or trading excursions, as an excitement in their monotonous existence. They are under the rule of the Sultan of Tidore, and every year have to pay a small tribute of Paradise birds, tortoiseshell, or sago. To obtain these, they go in the fine season on a trading voyage to the mainland of New Guinea, and getting a few goods on credit from some Ceram or Bugis trader, make hard bargains with the natives, and gain enough to pay their tribute, and leave a little profit for themselves.
Such a country is not a very pleasant one to live in, for as there are no superfluities, there is nothing to sell; and had it not been for a trader from Ceram who was residing there during my stay, who had a small vegetable garden, and whose men occasionally got a few spare fish, I should often have had nothing to eat. Fowls, fruit, and vegetables are luxuries very rarely to be purchased at Muka; and even cocoa-nuts, so indispensable for eastern cookery, are not to be obtained; for though there are some hundreds of trees in the village, all the fruit is eaten green, to supply the place of the vegetables the people are too lazy to cultivate. Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, or plantains, we had very short commons, and the boisterous weather being unpropitious for fishing, we had to live on what few eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional cuscus, or eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, inhabiting the island.
I had only shot two male Paradiseas on my tree when they ceased visiting it, either owing to the fruit becoming scarce, or that they were wise enough to know there was danger. We continued to hear and see them in the forest, but after a month had not succeeded in shooting any more; and as my chief object in visiting Waigiou was to get these birds, I determined to go to Bessir, where there are a number of Papuans who catch and preserve them. I hired a small outrigger boat for this journey, and left one of my men to guard my house and goods. We had to wait several days for fine weather, and at length started early one morning, and arrived late at night, after a rough and disagreeable passage. The village of Bessir was built in the water at the point of a small island. The chief food of the people was evidently shell-fish, since great heaps of the shells had accumulated in the shallow water between the houses and the land, forming a regular "kitchen-midden "for the exploration of some future archeologist. We spent the night in the chief's house, and the next morning went over to the mainland to look out for a place where I could reside. This part of Waigiou is really another island to the south of the narrow channel we had passed through in coming to Muka. It appears to consist almost entirely of raised coral, whereas the northern island contains hard crystalline rocks. The shores were a range of low limestone cliffs, worn out by the water, so that the upper part generally overhung. At distant intervals were little coves and openings, where small streams came down from the interior; and in one of these we landed, pulling our boat up on a patch of white sandy beach. Immediately above was a large newly-made plantation of yams and plantains, and a small hot, which the chief said we might have the use of, if it would do for me. It was quite a dwarf's house, just eight feet square, raised on posts so that the floor was four and a half feet above the ground, and the highest part of the ridge only five feet above the flour. As I am six feet and an inch in my stockings, I looked at this with some dismay; but finding that the other houses were much further from water, were dreadfully dirty, and were crowded with people, I at once accepted the little one, and determined to make the best of it. At first I thought of taking out the floor, which would leave it high enough to walk in and out without stooping; but then there would not be room enough, so I left it just as it was, had it thoroughly cleaned out, and brought up my baggage.
MY HOUSE AT BESSIR, IN WAIGIOU
The upper story I used for sleeping in, and for a store-room. In the lower part (which was quite open all round) I fixed up a small table, arranged my boxes, put up hanging-shelves, laid a mat on the ground with my wicker-chair upon it, hung up another mat on the windward side, and then found that, by bending double and carefully creeping in, I could sit on my chair with my head just clear of the ceiling. Here I lived pretty comfortably for six weeks, taking all my meals and doing all my work at my little table, to and from which I had to creep in a semi-horizontal position a dozen times a day; and, after a few severe knocks on the head by suddenly rising from my chair, learnt to accommodate myself to circumstances. We put up a little sloping cooking-but outside, and a bench on which my lads could skin their birds. At night I went up to my little loft, they spread their mats on the, floor below, and we none of us grumbled at our lodgings.
My first business was to send for the men who were accustomed to catch the Birds of Paradise. Several came, and I showed them my hatchets, beads, knives, and handkerchiefs; and explained to them, as well as I could by signs, the price I would give for fresh-killed specimens. It is the universal custom to pay for everything in advance; but only one man ventured on this occasion to take goods to the value of two birds. The rest were suspicious, and wanted to see the result of the first bargain with the strange white man, the only one who had ever come to their island. After three days, my man brought me the first bird- -a very fine specimen, and alive, but tied up in a small bag, and consequently its tail and wing feathers very much crushed and injured. I tried to explain to him, and to the others that came with him, that I wanted them as perfect as possible, and that they should either kill them, or keep them on a perch with a string to their leg. As they were now apparently satisfied that all was fair, and that I had no ulterior designs upon them, six others took away goods; some for one bird, some for more, and one for as many as six. They said they had to go a long way for them, and that they would come back as soon as they caught any. At intervals of a few days or a week, some of them would return, bringing me one or more birds; but though they did not bring any more in bags, there was not much improvement in their condition. As they caught them a long way off in the forest, they would scarcely ever come with one, but would tie it by the leg to a stick, and put it in their house till they caught another. The poor creature would make violent efforts to escape, would get among the ashes, or hang suspended by the leg till the limb was swollen and half-putrefied, and sometimes die of starvation and worry. One had its beautiful head all defiled by pitch from a dammar torch; another had been so long dead that its stomach was turning green. Luckily, however, the skin and plumage of these birds is so firm and strong, that they bear washing and cleaning better than almost any other sort; and I was generally able to clean them so well that they did not perceptibly differ from those I had shot myself.
Some few were brought me the same day they were caught, and I had an opportunity of examining them in all their beauty and vivacity. As soon as I found they were generally brought alive, I set one of my men to make a large bamboo cage with troughs for food and water, hoping to be able to keep some of them. I got the natives to bring me branches of a fruit they were very fond of, and I was pleased to find they ate it greedily, and would also take any number of live grasshoppers I gave them, stripping off the legs and wings, and then swallowing them. They drank plenty of water, and were in constant motion, jumping about the cage from perch to perch, clinging on the top and sides, and rarely resting a moment the first day till nightfall. The second day they were always less active, although they would eat as freely as before; and on the morning of the third day they were almost always found dead at the bottom of the cage, without any apparent cause. Some of them ate boiled rice as well as fruit and insects; but after trying many in succession, not one out of ten lived more than three days. The second or third day they would be dull, and in several cases they were seized with convulsions, and fell off the perch, dying a few hours afterwards. I tried immature as well as full-plumaged birds, but with no better success, and at length gave it up as a hopeless task, and confined my attention to preserving specimens in as good a condition as possible.
The Red Birds of Paradise are not shot with blunt arrows, as in the Aru Islands and some parts of New Guinea, but are snared in a very ingenious manner. A large climbing Arum bears a red reticulated fruit, of which the birds are very fond. The hunters fasten this fruit on a stout forked stick, and provide themselves with a fine but strong cord. They then seep out some tree in the forest on which these birds are accustomed to perch, and climbing up it fasten the stick to a branch and arrange the cord in a noose so ingeniously, that when the bird comes to eat the fruit its legs are caught, and by pulling the end of the cord, which hangs down to the ground, it comes free from the branch and brings down the bird. Sometimes, when food is abundant elsewhere, the hunter sits from morning till night under his tree with the cord in his hand, and even for two or three whole days in succession, without even getting a bite; while, on the other hand, if very lucky, he may get two or three birds in a day. There are only eight or ten men at Bessir who practise this art, which is unknown anywhere else in the island. I determined, therefore, to stay as long as possible, as my only chance of getting a good series of specimens; and although I was nearly starved, everything eatable by civilized man being scarce or altogether absent, I finally succeeded.
The vegetables and fruit in the plantations around us did not suffice for the wants of the inhabitants, and were almost always dug up or gathered before they were ripe. It was very rarely we could purchase a little fish; fowls there were none; and we were reduced to live upon tough pigeons and cockatoos, with our rice and sago, and sometimes we could not get these. Having been already eight months on this voyage, my stock of all condiments, spices and butter, was exhausted, and I found it impossible to eat sufficient of my tasteless and unpalatable food to support health. I got very thin and weak, and had a curious disease known (I have since heard) as brow-ague. Directly after breakfast every morning an intense pain set in on a small spot on the right temple. It was a severe burning ache, as bad as the worst toothache, and lasted about two hours, generally going off at noon. When this finally ceased, I had an attack of fever, which left me so weak and so unable to eat our regular food, that I feel sure my life was saved by a couple of tins of soup which I had long reserved for some such extremity. I used often to go out searching after vegetables, and found a great treasure in a lot of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the size of gooseberries. I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants and of ferns, by way of greens, and occasionally got a few green papaws. The natives, when hard up for food, live upon a fleshy seaweed, which they boil till it is tender. I tried this also, but found it too salt and bitter to be endured.
Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for me to return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end of the east monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from me had brought the birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had been so unfortunate as not to get one, and he very honestly brought back the axe he had received in advance; another, who had agreed for six, brought me the fifth two days before I was to start, and went off immediately to the forest again to get the other. He did not return, however, and we loaded our boat, and were just on the point of starting, when he came running down after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were remarkable and quite unexpected instances of honesty among savages, where it would have been very easy for them to have been dishonest without fear of detection or punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged, bristling with jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with curious little chasms and ravines. The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which in the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the extreme, and often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiaceae. It was in such places as these that I obtained many of my most beautiful small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many others. On the skirts of the plantations I found the handsome blue Deudorix despoena, and in the shady woods the lovely Lycaena wallacei. Here, too, I obtained the beautiful Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the upper side; while below it is intense crimson and glossy black; and a superb specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely fresh and perfect, and which still remains one of the glories of my cabinet.
My collection of birds, though not very rich in number of species, was yet very interesting. I got another specimen of the rare New Guinea kite (Henicopernis longicauda), a large new goatsucker (Podargus superciliaris), and a most curious ground- pigeon of an entirely new genus, and remarkable for its long and powerful bill. It has been named Henicophaps albifrons. I was also much pleased to obtain a fine series of a large fruit-pigeon with a protuberance on the bill (Carpophaga tumida), and to ascertain that this was not, as had been hitherto supposed, a sexual character, but was found equally in male and female birds. I collected only seventy-three species of birds in Waigiou, but twelve of them were entirely new, and many others very rare; and as I brought away with me twenty-four fine specimens of the Paradisea rubra, I did not regret my visit to the island, although it had by no means answered my expectations.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE BIRDS OF PARADISE
AS many of my journeys were made with the express object of obtaining specimens of the Birds of Paradise, and learning something of their habits and distribution; and being (as far as I am aware) the only Englishman who has seen these wonderful birds in their native forests, and obtained specimens of many of them, I propose to give here, in a connected form, the result of my observations and inquiries.
When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas in search of cloves and nutmegs, which were then rare and precious spices, they were presented with the dried shins of birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even of those wealth-seeking rovers. The Malay traders gave them the name of "Manuk dewata," or God's birds; and the Portuguese, finding that they had no feet or wings, and not being able to learn anything authentic about then, called them "Passaros de Col," or Birds of the Sun; while the learned Dutchmen, who wrote in Latin, called them "Avis paradiseus," or Paradise Bird. John van Linschoten gives these names in 1598, and tells us that no one has seen these birds alive, for they live in the air, always turning towards the sun, and never lighting on the earth till they die; for they have neither feet nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by the birds carried to India, and sometimes to Holland, but being very costly they were then rarely seen in Europe. More than a hundred years later Mr. William Funnel, who accompanied Dampier, and wrote an account of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, and was told that they came to Banda to eat nutmegs, which intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when they were killed by ants. Down to 1760, when Linnaeus named the largest species, Paradisea apoda (the footless Paradise Bird), no perfect specimen had been seen in Europe, and absolutely nothing was known about them. And even now, a hundred years later, most books state that they migrate annually to Ternate, Banda, and Amboyna; whereas the fact is, that they are as completely unknown in those islands in a wild state as they are in England. Linnaeus was also acquainted with a small species, which he named Paradisea regia (the King Bird of Paradise), and since then nine or ten others have been named, all of which were first described from skins preserved by the savages of New Guinea, and generally more or less imperfect. These are now all known in the Malay Archipelago as "Burong coati," or dead birds, indicating that the Malay traders never saw them alive.
The Paradiseidae are a group of moderate-sized birds, allied in their structure and habits to crows, starlings, and to the Australian honeysuckers; but they are characterised by extraordinary developments of plumage, which are unequalled in any other family of birds. In several species large tufts of delicate bright-coloured feathers spring from each side of the body beneath the wings, forming trains, or fans, or shields; and the middle feathers of the tail are often elongated into wires, twisted into fantastic shapes, or adorned with the most brilliant metallic tints. In another set of species these accessory plumes spring from the head, the back, or the shoulders; while the intensity of colour and of metallic lustre displayed by their plumage, is not to be equalled by any other birds, except, perhaps, the humming-birds, and is not surpassed even by these. They have been usually classified under two distinct families, Paradiseidae and Epimachidae, the latter characterised by long and slender beaks, and supposed to be allied to the Hoopoes; but the two groups are so closely allied in every essential point of structure and habits, that I shall consider them as forming subdivisions of one family. I will now give a short description of each of the known species, and then add some general remarks on their natural history.
The Great Bird of Paradise (Paradisea apoda of Linnaeus) is the largest species known, being generally seventeen or eighteen inches from the beak to the tip of the tail. The body, wings, and tail are of a rich coffee-brown, which deepens on the breast to a blackish-violet or purple-brown. The whole top of the head and neck is of an exceedingly delicate straw-yellow, the feathers being short and close set, so as to resemble plush or velvet; the lower part of the throat up to the eye clothed with scaly feathers of an emerald, green colour, and with a rich metallic gloss, and velvety plumes of a still deeper green extend in a band across the forehead and chin as far as the eye, which is bright yellow. The beak is pale lead blue; and the feet, which are rather large and very strong and well formed, are of a pale ashy-pink. The two middle feathers of the tail have no webs, except a very small one at the base and at the extreme tip, forming wire-like cirrhi, which spread out in an elegant double curve, and vary from twenty-four to thirty-four inches long. From each side of the body, beneath the wings, springs a dense tuft of long and delicate plumes, sometimes two feet in length, of the most intense golden-orange colour and very glossy, but changing towards the tips into a pale brown. This tuft of plumage cam be elevated and spread out at pleasure, so as almost to conceal the body of the bird.
David Attenborough is repeatedly upstaged by an excited Greater Bird of Paradise
These splendid ornaments are entirely confined to the male sex, while the female is really a very plain and ordinary-looking bird of a uniform coffee-brown colour which never changes, neither does she possess the long tail wires, nor a single yellow or green feather about the dead. The young males of the first year exactly resemble the females, so that they can only be distinguished by dissection. The first change is the acquisition of the yellow and green colour on the head and throat, and at the same time the two middle tail feathers grow a few inches longer than the rest, but remain webbed on both sides. At a later period these feathers arc replaced by the long bare shafts of the full length, as in the adult bird; but there is still no sign of the magnificent orange side-plumes, which later still complete the attire of the perfect male. To effect these changes there must be at least three successive moultings; and as the birds were found by me in all the stages about the same time, it is probable that they moult only once a year, and that the full plumage is not acquired till the bird is four years old. It was long thought that the fine train of feathers was assumed for a short time only at the breeding season, but my own experience, as well as the observation of birds of an allied species which I brought home with me, and which lived two years in this country, show that the complete plumage is retained during the whole year, except during a short period of moulting as with most other birds.
The Great Bird of Paradise is very active and vigorous and seems to be in constant motion all day long. It is very abundant, small flocks of females and young male being constantly met with; and though the full-plumaged birds are less plentiful, their loud cries, which are heard daily, show that they also are very numerous. Their note is, "Wawk-wawk-wawk-Wok-wok-wok," and is so loud and shrill as to be heard a great distance, and to form the most prominent and characteristic animal sound in the Aru Islands. The mode of nidification is unknown; but the natives told me that the nest was formed of leaves placed on an ant's nest, or on some projecting limb of a very lofty tree, and they believe that it contains only one young bird. The egg is quite unknown, and the natives declared they had never seen it; and a very high reward offered for one by a Dutch official did not meet with success. They moult about January or February, and in May, when they are in full plumage, the males assemble early in the morning to exhibit themselves in the singular manner already described at p. 252. This habit enables the natives to obtain specimens with comparative ease. As soon as they find that the birds have fled upon a tree on which to assemble, they build a little shelter of palm leaves in a convenient place among the branches, and the hunter ensconces himself in it before daylight, armed with his bow and a number of arrows terminating in a round knob. A boy waits at the foot of the tree, and when the birds come at sunrise, and a sufficient number have assembled, and have begun to dance, the hunter shoots with his blunt arrow so strongly as to stun the bird, which drops down, and is secured and killed by the boy without its plumage being injured by a drop of blood. The rest take no notice, and fall one after another till some of them take the alarm. (See Frontispiece.)
The native mode of preserving them is to cut off the wings and feet, and then skin the body up to the beak, taking out the skull. A stout stick is then run up through the specimen coming out at the mouth. Round this some leaves are stuffed, and the whole is wrapped up in a palm spathe and dried in the smoky hut. By this plan the head, which is really large, is shrunk up almost to nothing, the body is much reduced and shortened, and the greatest prominence is given to the flowing plumage. Some of these native skins are very clean, and often have wings and feet left on; others are dreadfully stained with smoke, and all hive a most erroneous idea of the proportions of the living bird.
The Paradisea apoda, as far as we have any certain knowledge, is confined to the mainland of the Aru Islands, never being found in the smaller islands which surround the central mass. It is certainly not found in any of the parts of New Guinea visited by the Malay and Bugis traders, nor in any of the other islands where Birds of Paradise are obtained. But this is by no means conclusive evidence, for it is only in certain localities that the natives prepare skins, and in other places the same birds may be abundant without ever becoming known. It is therefore quite possible that this species may inhabit the great southern mass of New Guinea, from which Aru has been separated; while its near ally, which I shall next describe, is confined to the north- western peninsula.
The Lesser Bird of Paradise (Paradisea papuana of Bechstein), "Le petit Emeraude" of French authors, is a much smaller bird than the preceding, although very similar to it. It differs in its lighter brown colour, not becoming darker or purpled on the breast; in the extension of the yellow colour all over the upper part of the back and on the wing coverts; in the lighter yellow of the side plumes, which have only a tinge of orange, and at the tips are nearly pure white; and in the comparative shortness of the tail cirrhi. The female differs remarkably front the same sex in Paradisea apoda, by being entirely white on the under surface of the body, and is thus a much handsomer bird. The young males are similarly coloured, and as they grow older they change to brown, and go through the same stages in acquiring the perfect plumage as has already been described in the allied species. It is this bird which is most commonly used in ladies' head-dresses in this country, and also forms an important article of commerce in the East.
The Paradisea papuana has a comparatively wide range, being the common species on the mainland of New Guinea, as well as on the islands of Mysol, Salwatty, Jobie, Biak and Sook. On the south coast of New Guinea, the Dutch naturalist, Muller, found it at the Oetanata river in longitude 136° E. I obtained it myself at Dorey; and the captain of the Dutch steamer Etna informed me that he had seen the feathers among the natives of Humboldt Bay, in 141° E. longitude. It is very probable, therefore, that it ranges over the whole of the mainland of New Guinea.
The true Paradise Birds are omnivorous, feeding on fruits and insects--of the former preferring the small figs; of the latter, grasshoppers, locusts, and phasmas, as well as cockroaches and caterpillars. When I returned home, in 1862, I was so fortunate as to find two adult males of this species in Singapore; and as they seemed healthy, and fed voraciously on rice, bananas, and cockroaches, I determined on giving the very high price asked for them--£100.--and to bring them to England by the overland route under my own care. On my way home I stayed a week at Bombay, to break the journey, and to lay in a fresh stock of bananas for my birds. I had great difficulty, however, in supplying them with insect food, for in the Peninsular and Oriental steamers cockroaches were scarce, and it was only by setting traps in the store-rooms, and by hunting an hour every night in the forecastle, that I could secure a few dozen of these creatures,-- scarcely enough for a single meal. At Malta, where I stayed a fortnight, I got plenty of cockroaches from a bake-house, and when I left, took with me several biscuit-tins' full, as provision for the voyage home. We came through the Mediterranean in March, with a very cold wind; and the only place on board the mail-steamer where their large cage could be accommodated was exposed to a strong current of air down a hatchway which stood open day and night, yet the birds never seemed to feel the cold. During the night journey from Marseilles to Paris it was a sharp frost; yet they arrived in London in perfect health, and lived in the Zoological Gardens for one, and two years, often displaying their beautiful plumes to the admiration of the spectators. It is evident, therefore, that the Paradise Birds are very hardy, and require air and exercise rather than heat; and I feel sure that if a good sized conservators` could be devoted to them, or if they could be turned loose in the tropical department of the Crystal Palace or the Great Palm House at Kew, they would live in this country for many years.
The Red Bird of Paradise (Paradisea rubra of Viellot), though allied to the two birds already described, is much more distinct from them than they are from each other. It is about the same size as Paradisea papuana (13 to 14 inches long), but differs from it in many particulars. The side plumes, instead of being yellow, are rich crimson, and only extend about three or four inches beyond the end of the tail; they are somewhat rigid, and the ends are curved downwards and inwards, and are tipped with white. The two middle tail feathers, instead of being simply elongated and deprived of their webs, are transformed into stiff black ribands, a quarter of an inch wide, but curved like a split quill, and resembling thin half cylinders of horn or whalebone. When a dead bird is laid on its back, it is seen that these ribands take a curve or set, which brings them round so as to meet in a double circle on the neck of the bird; but when they hang downwards, during life, they assume a spiral twist, and form an exceedingly graceful double curve. They are about twenty-two inches long, and always attract attention as the most conspicuous and extraordinary feature of the species. The rich metallic green colour of the throat extends over the front half of the head to behind the eyes, and on the forehead forms a little double crest of scaly feathers, which adds much to the vivacity of the bird's aspect. The bill is gamboge yellow, and the iris blackish olive. (Figure at p. 353.)
The female of this species is of a tolerably uniform coffee-brown colour, but has a blackish head, and the nape neck, and shoulders yellow, indicating the position of the brighter colours of the male. The changes of plumage follow the same order of succession as in the other species, the bright colours of the head and neck being first developed, then the lengthened filaments of the tail, and last of all, the red side plumes. I obtained a series of specimens, illustrating the manner in which the extraordinary black tail ribands are developed, which is very remarkable. They first appear as two ordinary feathers, rather shorter than the rest of the tail; the second stage would no doubt be that shown in a specimen of Paradisea apoda, in which the feathers are moderately lengthened, and with the web narrowed in the middle; the third stage is shown by a specimen which has part of the midrib bare, and terminated by a spatulate web; in another the bare midrib is a little dilated and semi-cylindrical, and the terminal web very small; in a fifth, the perfect black horny riband is formed, but it bears at its extremity a brown spatulate web, while in another a portion of the black riband itself bears, for a portion of its length, a narrow brown web. It is only after these changes are fully completed that the red side plumes begin to appear.
The successive stages of development of the colours and plumage of the Birds of Paradise are very interesting, from the striking manner in which they accord with the theory of their having been produced by the simple action of variation, and the cumulative power of selection by the females, of those male birds which were more than usually ornamental. [footnote: I have since arrived at the conclusion that female selection is not the cause of the development of the ornamental plumes in the males. See my Darwinism, Chap. X.] Variations of _colour_ are of all others the most frequent and the most striking, and are most easily modified and accumulated by man's selection of them. We should expect, therefore, that the sexual differences of _colour_ would be those most early accumulated and fixed, and would therefore appear soonest in the young birds; and this is exactly what occurs in the Paradise Birds. Of all variations in the _form_ of birds' feathers, none are so frequent as those in the head and tail. These occur more, or less in every family of birds, and are easily produced in many domesticated varieties, while unusual developments of the feathers of the body are rare in the whole class of birds, and have seldom or never occurred in domesticated species. In accordance with these facts, we find the scale-formed plumes of the throat, the crests of the head, and the long cirrhi of the tail, all fully developed before the plumes which spring from the side of the body begin to mane their appearance. If, on the other hand, the male Paradise Birds have not acquired their distinctive plumage by successive variations, but have been as they are mow from the moment they first appeared upon the earth, this succession becomes at the least unintelligible to us, for we can see no reason why the changes should not take place simultaneously, or in a reverse order to that in which they actually occur.
What is known of the habits of this bird, and the way in which it is captured by the natives, have already been described at page 362.
The Red Bird of Paradise offers a remarkable case of restricted range, being entirely confined to the small island of Waigiou, off the north-west extremity of New Guinea, where it replaces the allied species found in the other islands. [footnote: This species is said by Dr. Guillemard to be found also in the island of Batanta. (Cruise of the Marchesa, Vol II, p.225).]
The three birds just described form a well-marked group, agreeing in every point of general structure, in their comparatively large size, the brown colour of their bodies, wings, and tail, and in the peculiar character of the ornamental plumage which distinguishes the male bird. The group ranges nearly over the whole area inhabited by the family of the Paradiseidae, but each of the species has its own limited region, and is never found in the same district with either of its close allies. To these three birds properly belongs the generic title Paradisea, or true Paradise Bird. [footnote: Three very distinct new species of Paradisea have since been discovered in Southeastern New Guinea, and two other less distinct local forms.]
The next species is the Paradisea regia of Linnaeus, or Ding Bird of Paradise, which differs so much from the three preceding species as to deserve a distinct generic name, and it has accordingly been called Cicinnurus regius. By the Malays it is called "Burong rajah," or King Bird, and by the natives of the Aru Islands "Goby-goby."
This lovely little bird is only about six and a half inches long, partly owing to the very short tail, which does not surpass the somewhat square wings. The head, throat, and entire upper surface are of the richest glossy crimson red, shading to orange-crimson on the forehead, where the feathers extend beyond the nostrils more than half-way down the beak. The plumage is excessively brilliant, shining in certain lights with a metallic or glassy lustre. The breast and belly are pure silky white, between which colour and the red of the throat there is a broad band of rich metallic green, and there is a small spot of the same colour close above each eye. From each side of the body beneath the wing, springs a tuft of broad delicate feathers about an inch and a half long, of an ashy colour, but tipped with a broad band of emerald green, bordered within by a narrow line of buff: These plumes are concealed beneath the wing, but when the bird pleases, can be raised and spread out so as to form an elegant semicircular fan on each shoulder. But another ornament still more extraordinary, and if possible more beautiful, adorns this little bird. The two middle tail feathers are modified into very slender wirelike shafts, nearly six inches long, each of which bears at the extremity, on the inner side only, a web of an emerald green colour, which is coiled up into a perfect spiral disc, and produces a most singular and charming effect. The bill is orange yellow, and the feet and legs of a fine cobalt blue. (See upper figure on the plate at the commencement of this chapter.)
The female of this little gem is such a plainly coloured bird, that it can at first sight hardly be believed to belong to the same species. The upper surface is of a dull earthy brown, a slight tinge of orange red appearing only on the margins of the quills. Beneath, it is of a paler yellowish brown, scaled and banded with narrow dusky markings. The young males are exactly like the female, and they no doubt undergo a series of changes as singular as those of Paradisea rubra; but, unfortunately, I was unable to obtain illustrative specimens.
This exquisite little creature frequents the smaller trees in the thickest parts of the forest, feeding on various fruits; often of a very large size for so small a bird. It is very active both on its wings and feet, and makes a whirring sound while flying, something like the South American manakins. It often flutters its wings and displays the beautiful fan which adorns its breast, while the star-bearing tail wires diverge in an elegant double curve. It is tolerably plentiful in the Aru Islands, which led to it, being brought to Europe at an early period along with Paradisea apoda. It also occurs in the island of Mysol and in every part of New Guinea which has been visited by naturalists.
THE MAGNIFICENT BIRD OF PARADISE (Diphyllodes speciosa.)
We now come to the remarkable little bird called the “Magnificent,” first figured by Buffon, and named Paradisea speciosa by Boddaert, which, with one allied species, has been formed into a separate genus by Prince Buonaparte, under the name of Diphyllodes, from the curious double mantle which clothes the back.
The head is covered with short brown velvety feathers, which advance on the back so as to cover the nostrils. From the nape springs a dense mass of feathers of a straw-yellow colour, and about one and a half inches long, forming a mantle over the upper part of the back. Beneath this, and forming a band about one-third of an inch beyond it, is a second mantle of rich, glossy, reddish-brown feathers. The rest of the back is orange-brown, the tail-coverts and tail dark bronzy, the wings light orange-buff: The whole under surface is covered with an abundance of plumage springing from the margins of the breast, and of a rich deep green colour, with changeable hues of purple. Down the middle of the breast is a broad band of scaly plumes of the same colour, while the chin and throat are of a rich metallic bronze. From the middle of the tail spring two narrow feathers of a rich steel blue, and about ten inches long. These are webbed on the inner side only, and curve outward, so as to form a double circle.
From what we know of the habits of allied species, we may be sure that the greatly developed plumage of this bird is erected and displayed in some remarkable manner. The mass of feathers on the under surface are probably expanded into a hemisphere, while the beautiful yellow mantle is no doubt elevated so as to give the bird a very different appearance from that which it presents in the dried and flattened skins of the natives, through which alone it is at present known. The feet appear to be dark blue.
This rare and elegant little bird is found only on the mainland of New Guinea, and in the island of Mysol.
A still more rare and beautiful species than the last is the Diphyllodes wilsoni, described by Mr. Cassin from a native skin in the rich museum of Philadelphia. The same bird was afterwards named "Diphyllodes respublica" by Prince Buonaparte, and still later, "Schlegelia calva," by Dr. Bernstein, who was so fortunate as to obtain fresh specimens in Waigiou.
In this species the upper mantle is sulphur yellow, the lower one and the wings pure red, the breast plumes dark green, and the lengthened middle tail feathers much shorter than in the allied species. The most curious difference is, however, that the top of the head is bald, the bare skin being of a rich cobalt blue, crossed by several lines of black velvety feathers.
It is about the same size as Diphyllodes speciosa, and is no doubt entirely confined to the island of Waigiou. The female, as figured and described by Dr. Bernstein, is very like that of Cicinnurus regius, being similarly banded beneath; and we may therefore conclude that its near ally, the "Magnificent," is at least equally plain in this sex, of which specimens have not yet been obtained.
The Superb Bird of Paradise was first figured by Buffon, and was named by Boddaert, Paradisea atra, from the black ground colour of its plumage. It forms the genus Lophorina of Viellot, and is one of the rarest and most brilliant of the whole group, being only known front mutilated native skins. This bird is a little larger than the Magnificent. The ground colour of the plumage is intense black, but with beautiful bronze reflections on the neck, and the whole head scaled with feathers of brilliant metallic green and blue. Over its breast it bears a shield formed of narrow and rather stiff feathers, much elongated towards the sides, of a pure bluish-green colour, and with a satiny gloss. But a still more extraordinary ornament is that which springs from the back of the neck,--a shield of a similar form to that on the breast, but much larger, and of a velvety black colour, glossed with bronze and purple. The outermost feathers of this shield are half an inch longer than the wing, and when it is elevated it must, in conjunction with the breast shield, completely change the form and whole appearance of the bird. The bill is black, and the feet appear to be yellow.
THE SUPERB BIRD OF PARADISE (Lophorina atra.)
This wonderful little bird inhabits the interior of the northern peninsula of New Guinea only. Neither I nor Mr. Allen could hear anything of it in any of the islands or on any part of the coast. It is true that it was obtained from the coast-natives by Lesson; but when at Sorong in 1861, Mr. Allen learnt that it is only found three days' journey in the interior. Owing to these "Black Birds of Paradise," as they are called, not being so much valued as articles of merchandise, they now seem to be rarely preserved by the natives, and it thus happened that during several years spent on the coasts of New Guinea and in the Moluccas I was never able to obtain a skin. We are therefore quite ignorant of the habits of this bird, and also of its female, though the latter is no doubt as plain and inconspicuous as in all the other species of this family.
THE SIX-SHAFTED BIRD OF PARADISE (Parotia sexpennis.)
The Golden, or Six-shafted, Paradise Bird, is another rare species, first figured by Buffon, and never yet obtained in perfect condition. It was named by Boddaert, Paradisea sexpennis, and forms the genus Parotia of Viellot. This wonderful bird is about the size of the female Paradisea rubra. The plumage appear, at first sight black, but it glows in certain light with bronze and deep purple. The throat and breast are scaled with broad flat feathers of an intense golden hue, changing to green and blue tints in certain lights. On the back of the head is a broad recurved band of feathers, whose brilliancy is indescribable, resembling the sheen of emerald and topaz rather than any organic substance. Over the forehead is a large patch of pure white feathers, which shine like satin; and from the sides of the head spring the six wonderful feathers from which the bird receives its name. These are slender wires, six inches long, with a small oval web at the extremity. In addition to these ornaments, there is also an immense tuft of soft feathers on each side of the breast, which when elevated must entirely hide the wings, and give the bird au appearance of being double its real bulk. The bill is black, short, and rather compressed, with the feathers advancing over the nostrils, as in Cicinnurus regius. This singular and brilliant bird inhabits the same region as the Superb Bird of Paradise, and nothing whatever is known about it but what we can derive from an examination of the skins preserved by the natives of New Guinea.
The Standard Wing, named Semioptera wallacei by Mr. G. R. Gray, is an entirely new form of Bird of Paradise, discovered by myself in the island of Batchian, and especially distinguished by a pair of long narrow feathers of a white colour, which spring from among the short plumes which clothe the bend of the wing, and are capable of being erected at pleasure. The general colour of this bird is a delicate olive-brown, deepening to a loud of bronzy olive in the middle of the back, and changing to a delicate ashy violet with a metallic gloss, on the crown of the head. The feathers, which cover the nostrils and extend half-way down the beak, are loose and curved upwards. Beneath, it is much more beautiful. The scale-like feathers of the breast are margined with rich metallic blue-green, which colour entirely covers the throat and sides of the neck, as well as the long pointed plumes which spring from the sides of the breast, and extend nearly as far as the end of the wings. The most curious feature of the bird, however, and one altogether unique in the whole class, is found in the pair of long narrow delicate feathers which spring from each wing close to the bend. On lifting the wing-coverts they are seen to arise from two tubular horny sheaths, which diverge from near the point of junction of the carpal bones. As already described at p. 41, they are erectile, and when the bird is excited are spread out at right angles to the wing and slightly divergent. They are from six to six and a half inches long, the upper one slightly exceeding the lower. The total length of the bird is eleven inches. The bill is horny olive, the iris deep olive, and the feet bright orange.
The female bird is remarkably plain, being entirely of a dull pale earthy brown, with only a slight tinge of ashy violet on the head to relieve its general monotony; and the young males exactly resemble her. (See figures at p. 41.)
This bird, frequents the lower trees of the forests, and, like most Paradise Birds, is in constant motion--flying from branch to branch, clinging to the twigs and even to the smooth and vertical trunks almost as easily as a woodpecker. It continually utters a harsh, creaking note, somewhat intermediate between that of Paradisea apoda, and the more musical cry of Cicinnurus regius. The males at short intervals open and flutter their wings, erect the long shoulder feathers, and spread out the elegant green breast shields.
The Standard Wing is found in Gilolo as well as in Batchian, and all the specimens from the former island have the green breast shield rather longer, the crown of the head darker violet, and the lower parts of the body rather more strongly scaled with green. This is the only Paradise Bird yet found in the Moluccan district, all the others being confined to the Papuan Islands and North Australia.
We now come to the Epimachidae, or Long-billed Birds of Paradise, which, as before stated, ought not to be separated from the Paradiseidae by the intervention of any other birds. One of the most remarkable of these is the Twelve-wired Paradise Bird, Paradises alba of Blumenbach, but now placed in the genus Seleucides of Lesson.
This bird is about twelve inches long, of which the compressed and curved beak occupies two inches. The colour of the breast and upper surface appears at first sight nearly black, but a close examination shows that no part of it is devoid of colour; and by holding it in various lights, the most rich and glowing tints become visible. The head, covered with short velvety feathers, which advance on the chic much further than on the upper part of the beak, is of a purplish bronze colour; the whole of the back and shoulders is rich bronzy green, while the closed wings and tail are of the most brilliant violet purple, all the plumage having a delicate silky gloss. The mass of feathers which cover the breast is really almost black, with faint glosses of green and purple, but their outer edges are margined with glittering bands of emerald green. The whole lower part of the body is rich buffy yellow, including the tuft of plumes which spring from the sides, and extend an inch and a half beyond the tail. When skins are exposed to the light the yellow fades into dull white, from which circumstance it derived its specific name. About six of the innermost of these plumes on each side have the midrib elongated into slender black wires, which bend at right angles, and curve somewhat backwards to a length of about ten inches, forming one of those extraordinary and fantastic ornaments with which this group of birds abounds. The bill is jet black, and the feet bright yellow. (See lower figure on the plate at the beginning of this chapter).
The female, although not quite so plain a bird as in some other species, presents none of the gay colours or ornamental plumage of the male. The top of the head and back of the neck are black, the rest of the upper parts rich reddish brown; while the under surface is entirely yellowish ashy, somewhat blackish on the breast, and crossed throughout with narrow blackish wavy bands.
The Seleucides alba is found in the island of Salwatty, and in the north-western parts of New Guinea, where it frequents flowering trees, especially sago-palms and pandani, sucking the flowers, round and beneath which its unusually large and powerful feet enable it to cling. Its motions are very rapid. It seldom rests more than a few moments on one tree, after which it flies straight off, and with great swiftness, to another. It has a loud shrill cry, to be heard a long way, consisting of "Cah, cah," repeated five or six times in a descending scale, and at the last note it generally flies away. The males are quite solitary in their habits, although, perhaps, they assemble at pertain times like the true Paradise Birds. All the specimens shot and opened by my assistant Mr. Allen, who obtained this fine bird during his last voyage to New Guinea, had nothing in their stomachs but a brown sweet liquid, probably the nectar of the flowers on which they had been feeding. They certainly, however, eat both fruit and insects, for a specimen which I saw alive on board a Dutch steamer ate cockroaches and papaya fruit voraciously. This bird had the curious habit of resting at noon with the bill pointing vertically upwards. It died on the passage to Batavia, and I secured the body and formed a skeleton, which shows indisputably that it is really a Bird of Paradise. The tongue is very long and extensible, but flat and little fibrous at the end, exactly like the true Paradiseas.
In the island of Salwatty, the natives search in the forests till they find the sleeping place of this bird, which they know by seeing its dung upon the ground. It is generally in a low bushy tree. At night they climb up the trap, and either shoot the birds with blunt arrows, or even catch them alive with a cloth. In New Guinea they are caught by placing snares on the trees frequented by them, in the same way as the Red Paradise birds are caught in Waigiou, and which has already been described at page 362.
The great Epimaque, or Long-tailed Paradise Bird (Epimachus magnus), is another of these wonderful creatures, only known by the imperfect skins prepared by the natives. In its dark velvety plumage, glowed with bronze and purple, it resembles the Seleucides alba, but it bears a magnificent tail more than two feet long, glossed on the upper surface with the most intense opalescent blue. Its chief ornament, however, consists in the group of broad plumes which spring from the sides of the breast, and which are dilated at the extremity, and banded with the most vivid metallic blue and green. The bill is long and curved, and the feet black, and similar to those of the allied forms. The total length of this fine bird is between three and four feet.
This splendid bird inhabits the mountains of New Guinea, in the same district with the Superb and the Six-shafted Paradise Birds, and I was informed is sometimes found in the ranges near the coast. I was several times assured by different natives that this bird makes its nest in a hole under ground, or under rocks, always choosing a place with two apertures, so that it may enter at one and go out at the other. This is very unlike what we should suppose to be the habits of the bird, but it is not easy to conceive how the story originated if it is not true; and all travellers know that native accounts of the habits of animals, however strange they may seem, almost invariably turn out to be correct.
The Scale-breasted Paradise Bird (Epimachus magnificus of Cuvier) is now generally placed with the Australian Rifle birds in the genus Ptiloris. Though very beautiful, these birds are less strikingly decorated with accessory plumage than the other species we have been describing, their chief ornament being a more or less developed breastplate of stiff metallic green feathers, and a small tuft of somewhat hairy plumes on the sides of the breast. The back and wings of this species are of an intense velvety black, faintly glossed in certain lights with rich purple. The two broad middle tail feathers are opalescent green-blue with a velvety surface, and the top of the head is covered with feathers resembling scales of burnished steel. A large triangular space covering the chin, throat, and breast, is densely scaled with feathers, having a steel-blue or green lustre, and a silky feel. This is edged below with a narrow band of black, followed by shiny bronzy green, below which the body is covered with hairy feathers of a rich claret colour, deepening to black at the tail. The tufts of side plumes somewhat resemble those of the true Birds of Paradise, but are scanty, about as long as the tail, and of a black colour. The sides of the head are rich violet, and velvety feathers extend on each side of the beak over the nostrils.
I obtained at Dorey a young male of this bird, in a state of plumage which is no doubt that of the adult female, as is the case in all the allied species. The upper surface, wings, and tail are rich reddish brown, while the under surface is of a pale ashy colour, closely barred throughout with narrow wavy black bands. There is also a pale banded stripe over the eye, and a long dusky stripe from the gape down each side of the neck. This bird is fourteen inches long, whereas the native skins of the adult male are only about ten inches, owing to the way in which the tail is pushed in, so as to give as much prominence as possible to the ornamental plumage of the breast.
At Cape York, in North Australia, there is a closely allied species, Ptiloris alberti, the female of which is very similar to the young male bird here described. The beautiful Rifle Birds of Australia, which much resemble those Paradise Birds, are named Ptiloris paradiseus and Ptiloris victories, The Scale-breasted Paradise Bird seems to be confined to the mainland of New Guinea, and is less rare than several of the other species.
There are three other New Guinea birds which are by some authors classed with the Birds of Paradise, and which, being almost equally remarkable for splendid plumage, deserve to be noticed here. The first is the Paradise pie (Astrapia nigra of Lesson), a bird of the size of Paradises rubra, but with a very long tail, glossed above with intense violet. The back is bronzy black, the lower parts green, the throat and neck bordered with loose broad feathers of an intense coppery hue, while on the top of the head and neck they are glittering emerald green, All the plumage round the head is lengthened and erectile, and when spread out by the living bird must lave an effect hardly surpassed by any of the true Paradise birds. The bill is black and the feet yellow. The Astrapia seems to me to be somewhat intermediate between the Paradiseidae and Epimachidae.
There is an allied species, having a bare carunculated head, which has been called Paradigalla carunculata. It is believed to inhabit, with the preceding, the mountainous, interior of New Guinea, but is exceedingly rare, the only known specimen being in the Philadelphia Museum.
The Paradise Oriole is another beautiful bird, which is now sometimes classed with the Birds of Paradise. It has been named Paradises aurea and Oriolus aureus by the old naturalists, and is now generally placed in the same genus as the Regent Bird of Australia (Sericulus chrysocephalus). But the form of the bill and the character of the plumage seem to me to be so different that it will have to form a distinct genus. This bird is almost entirely yellow, with the exception of the throat, the tail, and part of the wings and back, which are black; but it is chiefly characterised by a quantity of long feathers of an intense glossy orange colour, which cover its neck down to the middle of the back, almost like the hackles of a game-cock.
This beautiful bird inhabits the mainland of New Guinea, and is also found in Salwatty, but is so rare that I was only able to obtain one imperfect native skin, and nothing whatever is known of its habits.
These, and other additions bring the number of the Birds of Paradise to fifty species, of which about forty are known to inhabit the great island of New Guinea. But if we consider those islands which are now united to New Guinea by a shallow sea to really form a part of it, we shall find that twenty-three of the Paradise Birds belong to that country, while three inhabit the northern and eastern parts of Australia, and one the Moluccas. All the more extraordinary and magnificent species are, however, entirely confined to the Papuan region.
Although I devoted so much time to a search after these wonderful birds, I only succeeded myself in obtaining five species during a residence of many months in the Aru Islands, New Guinea, and Waigiou. Mr. Allen's voyage to Mysol did not procure a single additional species, but we both heard of a place called Sorong, on the mainland of New Guinea, near Salwatty, where we were told that all the kinds we desired could be obtained. We therefore determined that he should visit this place, and endeavour to penetrate into the interior among the natives, who actually shoot and skin the Birds of Paradise. He went in the small prau I had fitted up at Goram, and through the kind assistance of the Dutch Resident at Ternate, a lieutenant and two soldiers were sent by the Sultan of Tidore to accompany and protect him, and to assist him in getting men and in visiting the interior.
Notwithstanding these precautions, Mr. Allen met with difficulties in this voyage which we had neither of us encountered before. To understand these, it is necessary to consider that the Birds of Paradise are an article of commerce, and are the monopoly of the chiefs of the coast villages, who obtain them at a low rate from the mountaineers, and sell them to the Bugis traders. A portion is also paid every year as tribute to the Sultan of Tidore. The natives are therefore very jealous of a stranger, especially a European, interfering in their trade, and above all of going into the interior to deal with the mountaineers themselves. They of course think he will raise the prices in the interior, and lessen the supply on the coast, greatly to their disadvantage; they also think their tribute will be raised if a European takes back a quantity of the rare sorts; and they have besides a vague and very natural dread of some ulterior object in a white man's coming at so much trouble and expense to their country only to get Birds of Paradise, of which they know he can buy plenty (of the common yellow ones which alone they value) at Ternate, Macassar, or Singapore.
It thus happened that when Mr. Allen arrived at Sorong, and explained his intention of going to seek Birds of Paradise in the interior, innumerable objections were raised. He was told it was three or four days' journey over swamps and mountains; that the mountaineers were savages and cannibals, who would certainly kill him; and, lastly, that not a man in the village could be found who dare go with him. After some days spent in these discussions, as he still persisted in making the attempt, and showed them his authority from the Sultan of Tidore to go where be pleased and receive every assistance, they at length provided him with a boat to go the first part of the journey up a river; at the same time, however, they sent private orders to the interior villages to refuse to sell any provisions, so as to compel him to return. On arriving at the village where they were to leave the river and strike inland, the coast people returned, leaving Mr. Allen to get on as he could. Here he called on the Tidore lieutenant to assist him, and procure men as guides and to carry his baggage to the villages of the mountaineers. This, however, was not so easily done. A quarrel took place, and the natives, refusing to obey the imperious orders of the lieutenant, got out their knives and spears to attack him and his soldiers; and Mr. Allen himself was obliged to interfere to protect those who had come to guard him. The respect due to a white man and the timely distribution of a few presents prevailed; and, on showing the knives, hatchets, and beads he was willing to give to those who accompanied him, peace was restored, and the next day, travelling over a frightfully rugged country, they reached the villages of the mountaineers. Here Mr. Allen remained a month without any interpreter through whom he could understand a word or communicate a want. However, by signs and presents and a pretty liberal barter, he got on very well, some of them accompanying him every day in the forest to shoot, and receiving a small present when he was successful.
In the grand matter of the Paradise Birds, however, little was done. Only one additional species was found, the Seleucides alba, of which be had already obtained a specimen in Salwatty; but he learnt that the other kinds' of which be showed them drawings, were found two or three days' journey farther in the interior. When I sent my men from Dorey to Amberbaki, they heard exactly the same story--that the rarer sorts were only found several days' journey in the interior, among rugged mountains, and that the skins were prepared by savage tribes who had never even been seen by any of the coast people.
It seems as if Nature had taken precautions that these her choicest treasures should not be made too common, and thus be undervalued. This northern coast of New Guinea is exposed to the full swell of the Pacific Ocean, and is rugged and harbourless. The country is all rocky and mountainous, covered everywhere with dense forests, offering in its swamps and precipices and serrated ridges an almost impassable barrier to the unknown interior; and the people are dangerous savages, in the very lowest stage of barbarism. In such a country, and among such a people, are found these wonderful productions of Nature, the Birds of Paradise, whose exquisite beauty of form and colour and strange developments of plumage are calculated to excite the wonder and admiration of the most civilized and the most intellectual of mankind, and to furnish inexhaustible materials for study to the naturalist, and for speculation to the philosopher.
Thus ended my search after these beautiful birds. Five voyages to different parts of the district they inhabit, each occupying in its preparation and execution the larger part of a year, produced me only five species out of the fourteen known to exist in the New Guinea district. The kinds obtained are those that inhabit the coasts of New Guinea and its islands, the remainder seeming to be strictly confined to the central mountain-ranges of the northern peninsula; and our researches at Dorey and Amberbaki, near one end of this peninsula, and at Salwatty and Sorong, near the other, enable me to decide with some certainty on the native country of these rare and lovely birds, good specimens of which have never yet been seen in Europe.
It must be considered as somewhat extraordinary that, during five years' residence and travel in Celebes, the Moluccas, and New Guinea, I should never have been able to purchase skins of half the species which Lesson, forty years ago, obtained during a few weeks in the same countries. I believe that all, except the common species of commerce, are now much more difficult to obtain than they were even twenty years ago; and I impute it principally to their having been sought after by the Dutch officials through the Sultan of Tidore. The chiefs of the annual expeditions to collect tribute have had orders to get all the rare sorts of Paradise Birds; and as they pay little or nothing for them (it being sufficient to say they are for the Sultan), the head men of the coast villages would for the future refuse to purchase them from the mountaineers, and confine themselves instead to the commoner species, which are less sought after by amateurs, but are a more profitable merchandise. The same causes frequently lead the inhabitants of uncivilized countries to conceal minerals or other natural products with which they may become acquainted, from the fear of being obliged to pay increased tribute, or of bringing upon themselves a new and oppressive labour.
CHAPTER XL. THE RACES OF MAN IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO
I PROPOSE to conclude this account of my Eastern travels, with a short statement of my views as to the races of man which inhabit the various parts of the Archipelago, their chief physical and mental characteristics, their affinities with each other and with surrounding tribes, their migrations, and their probable origin.
Two very strongly contrasted races inhabit the Archipelago—the Malays, occupying almost exclusively the larger western half of it, and the Papuans, whose headquarters are New Guinea and several of the adjacent islands. Besides these in locality, are found tribes who are also intermediate in their chief characteristics, and it is sometimes a nice point to determine whether they belong to one or the other race, or have been formed by a mixture of the two.
The Malay is undoubtedly the most important of these two races, as it is the one which is the most civilized, which has come most into contact with Europeans, and which alone has any place in history. What may be called the true Malay races, as distinguished from others who have merely a Malay element in their language, present a considerable uniformity of physical and mental characteristics, while there are very great differences of civilization and of language. They consist of four great, and a few minor semi-civilized tribes, and a number of others who may be termed savages. The Malays proper inhabit the Malay peninsula, and almost all the coast regions of Borneo and Sumatra. They all speak the Malay language, or dialects of it; they write in the Arabic character, and are Mahometans in religion. The Javanese inhabit Java, part of Sumatra, Madura, Bali, and part of Lombock. They speak the Javanese and Kawi languages, which they write in a native character. They are now Mahometans in Java, but Brahmins in Bali and Lombock. The Bugis are the inhabitants of the greater part of Celebes, and there seems to be an allied people in Sumbawa. They speak the Bugis and Macassar languages, with dialects, and have two different native characters in which they write these. They are all Mahometans. The fourth great race is that of the Tagala in the Philippine islands, about whom, as I did not visit those islands, I shall say little. Many of them are now Christians, and speak Spanish as well as their native tongue, the Tagala. The Moluccan-Malays, who inhabit chiefly Ternate, Tidore, Batchian, and Amboyna, may be held to form a fifth division of semi-civilized Malays. Their small tribes of Moluccas.
The Savage Malays are the Dyaks of Borneo; the Battaks and other wild tribes of Sumatra; the Jakuns of the Malay Peninsula; the aborigines of Northern Celebes, of the Sula island, and of part of Bouru.
The contour of the head of all these races is high, broad, and well-developed, with more or less of an arch across the forehead; the nose is rather small, not prominent, but straight and well-shaped, the apex a little rounded, the nostrils broad and slightly exposed; the cheek-bones are rather prominent, the mouth large, the lips broad and well-cut, but not protruding, the chin round and well-formed.
In this description there seems little to object to on the score of beauty; and yet on the whole the Malays are certainly not handsome. In youth, however, they are often very good-looking, and many of the boys and girls up to twelve or fifteen years of age are very pleasing, and some have countenances which are in their way almost perfect. I am inclined to think they lose much of their good looks by bad habits and irregular living. At a very early age, they chew betel and tobacco almost incessantly; suffer much want and exposure in their fishing and other excursions; their lives are often passed in alternate starvation and feasting, idleness and excessive labour;—and this naturally produces premature old age and harshness of features.
In character the Malay is impassive. He exhibits a reserve, diffidence, and even bashfulness, which is in some degree attractive, and leads the observer to think that the ferocious and bloodthirsty character imputed to the race must be grossly exaggerated. He is not demonstrative. His feelings of surprise, admiration, or fear, are never openly manifested, and are probably not strongly felt. He is slow and deliberate in speech, and circuitous in introducing the subject he has come expressly to discuss. These are the main features of his moral nature, and exhibit themselves in every action of his life.
Children and women are timid, and scream and run at the unexpected sight of a European. In the company of men they are silent, and are generally quiet and obedient. When alone the Malay is taciturn; he neither talks nor sings to himself. When several are paddling in a canoe, they occasionally chant a monotonous and plaintive song. He is cautious of giving offence to his equals. He does not quarrel easily about money matters; dislikes asking too frequently even for payment of his just debts, and will often give them up altogether rather than quarrel with his debtor. Practical joking is utterly repugnant to his disposition; for he is particularly sensitive to breaches of etiquette, or any interference with the personal liberty of himself or another. As an example, I may mention that I have often found it very difficult to get one Malay servant to waken another. He will call as loud as he can, but will hardly touch, much less shake his comrade. I have frequently had to waken a hard sleeper myself when on a land or sea journey.
The higher classes of Malays are exceedingly polite, and have all the quiet ease and dignity of the best bred Europeans. Yet this is compatible with a reckless cruelty and contempt of human life, which is the dark side of their character. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that different persons give totally opposite accounts of them—one praising them for their soberness, civility, and good-nature; another abusing them for their deceit, treachery, and cruelty. The old traveller Nicol Conti, writing in 1430, says: “The inhabitants of Java and Sumatra exceed every other people in cruelty. They regard killing a man as a mere jest; nor is any punishment allotted for such a deed. If any one purchase a new sword, and wish to try it, he will thrust it into the breast of the first person he meets. The passers-by examine the wound, and praise the skill of the person who inflicted it, if the thrust is in the weapon direct.” Yet Drake says of the south of Java: “The people (as the kings) are a very loving, true, and just-dealing people; and Mr. Crawford says that the Javanese, whom he knew thoroughly, are ‘a people of great ingenuity, very subtle in all their dealings; very malicious, great deceivers, seldom speaking the truth; prepared to do all manner of wickedness, and ready to sacrifice their lives.
The intellect of the Malay race seems rather deficient. They are incapable of anything beyond the simplest combinations of ideas, and have little taste or energy for the acquirement of knowledge. Their civilization, such as it is, does not seem to be indigenous, as it is entirely confined to those nations who have been converted to the Mahometan or Brahminical religions.
I will now give an equally brief sketch of the other great race of the Malay Archipelago, the Papuan.
The typical Papuan race is in many respects the very opposite of the Malay, and it has hitherto been very imperfectly described. The colour of the body is a deep sooty-brown or black, sometimes approaching, but never quite equalling, the jet-black of some negro races. It varies in tint, however, more than that of the Malay, and is sometimes a dusky-brown. The hair is very peculiar, being harsh, dry, and frizzly, growing in little tufts or curls, which in youth are very short and compact, but afterwards grow out to a, considerable length, forming the compact frizzled mop which is the Papuans' pride and glory. The face is adorned with a beard of the same frizzly nature as the hair of the head. The arms, legs, and breast are also more or less clothed with hair of a similar nature.
I have lived with communities of Malays in Borneo and the Archipelago, who are less civilized than the Papuan.
The colour of the body is a deep sooty-brown or black, sometimes approaching, but never quite equalling, the jet black of some negro races. It varies in tint, however, more than that of the Malay, and is sometimes a dusky-brown. The hair is very peculiar, being harsh, dry, and frizzly, growing in little tufts or curls, which in youth are very short and compact, but afterwards grow out to a considerable length, forming the compact frizzled mop which is the most striking characteristic of the race. The face is adorned with hair of a similar nature to that on the head. The arms, legs, and breast are also more or less clothed with hair of a similar nature.
In stature the Papuan decidedly surpasses the Malay, and is perhaps equal, or even superior, to the average of Europeans. The legs are long and thin, and the hands and feet larger than in the Malays. The face is somewhat elongated, the forehead flatfish, the brows very prominent; the nose is large, rather arched and high, the base thick, the nostrils broad, with the aperture hidden, owing to the tip of the nose being elongated; the mouth is large, the lips thick and protuberant. The face has thus an altogether more European aspect than in the Malay, owing to the large nose; and the peculiar form of this organ, with the more prominent brows and the character of the hair on the head, face, and body, enable us at a glance to distinguish the two races. I have observed that most of these characteristic features are distinctly visible in children of ten or twelve years old as in adults, and the peculiar form of the nose is always shown in the figures which they carve for ornaments to their houses, or as charms to wear round their necks.
The moral characteristics of the Papuan appear to me to separate him as distinctly from the Malay as do his form and features. He is impulsive and demonstrative in speech and action. His emotions and passions express themselves in shouts and laughter, in yells and frantic leapings. Women and children take their share in every discussion, and seem little alarmed at the sight of strangers and Europeans.
Of the intellect of this race it is very difficult to judge, but I am inclined to rate it somewhat higher than that of the Malays, notwithstanding the fact that the Papuans have never yet made any advance towards civilization. It must be remembered, however, that for centuries the Malays have been influenced by Hindoo, Chinese, and Arabic immigration, whereas the Papuan race has only been subjected to the very partial and local development of Malay traders. The Papuan has much more vital energy, which would certainly greatly assist his intellectual development. Papuan slaves show no inferiority of intellect, compared with Malays, but rather the contrary; and in the Moluccas they are often promoted to places of considerable trust. The Papuan has a greater feeling for art than the Malay. He decorates his canoe, his house, and almost every domestic utensil with elaborate carving, a habit which is rarely found among the Malay race.
In the affections and moral sentiments, on the other hand, the Papuans seem very deficient. In the treatment of their children they are often violent and cruel; whereas the Malays are almost invariably kind and gentle, hardly ever interfering at all with their children’s pursuits and amusements, and giving them perfect liberty at whatever age they wish to claim it. But these very peaceful relations between parents and children are, in a great measure, due to the listless and apathetic character of the race, which never leads the younger members into serious opposition to the elders; while the harsher discipline of the Papuans may be chiefly due to that greater vigour and energy of mind which always, sooner or later, leads to the rebellion of the weaker against their rulers, the people against their master, or the child against its parent.
It appears, therefore, that, whether we consider their physical conformation, their moral characteristics, or their intellectual capacities, the Malay and Papuan races offer remarkable differences and striking contrasts. The Malay is of short stature, brown-skinned, straight-haired, beardless, and smooth-bodied. The Papuan is taller, is black-skinned, frizzly-haired, bearded, and hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose, and flat eyebrows; the latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose, and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is bashful, cold, undemonstrative, and quiet; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy. The former is grave and seldom laughs; the latter is joyous and laughter-loving,--the one conceals his emotions, the other displays them.
Having thus described in some detail, the great physical, intellectual, and moral differences between the Malays and Papuans, we have to consider the inhabitants of the numerous islands which do not agree very closely with either of these races. The islands of Obi, Batchian, and the three southern peninsulas of Gilolo, possess no true indigenous population; but the northern peninsula is inhabited by a native race, the so-called Alfuros of Sa hoe and Galela. These people are quite distinct from the Malays, and almost equally so from the Papuans. They are tall and well-made, with Papuan features, and curly hair; they are bearded and hairy-limbed, but quite as light in colour as the Malays. They are an industrious and enterprising race, cultivating rice and vegetables, and indefatigable in their search after game, fish, tripang, pearls, and tortoiseshell.
In the great island of Ceram there is also an indigenous race very similar to that of the North Gilolo, Bouru seems to contain two distinct races;—a shorter, round-faced people, with a Malay physiognomy, who may probably have come from Celebes by way of the Sula islands; and a taller bearded race, resembling that of Ceram.
Far south of the Moluccas lies the island of Timor, inhabited by tribes much nearer to the true Papuan than those of the Moluccas.
The Timorese of the interior are dusky brown or blackish, with bushy frizzled hair, and the long Papuan nose. They are of medium height, and rather slender figures. The universal dress is a long cloth twisted round the waist, the fringed ends of which hang below the knee. The people are said to be great thieves, and the tribes are always at war with each other, but they are not very courageous or bloodthirsty. The custom of “tabu,” called here “pomalí,” is very general, a fruit tree, houses, crop, and property of all kinds being protected from depredation by this ceremony, the reverence for which is very great. A palm branch stuck across an open door, showing that the house is tabooed, is a more effectual guard against robbery than any amount of locks and bars. The houses in Timor are different from those of most of the other islands; they seem all roof, the thatch overhanging the low walls and reaching the ground, except where it is cut away for an entrance. In some parts of the west end of Timor, and on the little island of Semau, the houses more resemble those of the Hottentots, being egg-shaped, very small, and with a door only about three feet high. These are built on the ground, while those of the eastern districts are raised a few feet on posts. In their excitable disposition, loud voices, and fearless demeanour, the Timorese closely resemble the people of New Guinea.
In the islands west of Timor, as far as Flores and Sandalwood Island, a very similar race is found, which also extends eastward to Timor-laut, where the true Papuan race begins to appear. The small islands of Savu and Roti, however, to the west of Timor, are very remarkable in possessing a different and, in some respects, peculiar race. These people are very handsome, with good features, resembling in many characteristics the race produced by the mixture of the Hindoo or Arab with the Malay. They are certainly distinct from the Timorese or Papuan races, and must be classed in the western rather than the eastern ethnological division of the Archipelago.
The whole of the great island of New Guinea, the Ké and Aru Islands, with Mysol, Salwatty, and Waigiou, are inhabited almost exclusively by the typical Papuans. I found no trace of any other tribes inhabiting the interior of New Guinea, but the coast people are in some places mixed with the browner races of the Moluccas. The same Papuan race seems to extend over the islands east of New Guinea as far as the Fijis. (Footnote: In the south-east peninsula of New Guinea are found some undoubtedly Polynesian tribes, called Motu. These have probably settled here at an early period, and have mixed more or less with the native Papuans.)
There remain to be noticed the black woolly-haired races of the Philippines and the Malay peninsula, the former called “Negritos” and the latter “Semangs.” I have never seen these people myself, but from the numerous accurate descriptions of them that have been published, I have had no difficulty in satisfying myself that they have little affinity or resemblance to the Papuans, with which they have been hitherto associated. In most important characters they differ more from the Papuan than they do from the Malay. They are dwarfs in stature, only averaging four feet six inches to four feet eight inches high, or eight inches less than the Malays; whereas the Papuans are decidedly taller than the Malays. The nose is invariably represented as small, flattened, or turned up at the apex, whereas the most universal character of the Papuan race is to have the nose prominent and large, with the apex produced downwards, as it is invariably represented in their own rude idols. The hair of these dwarfish races agrees with that of the Papuans, but so it does with that of the negroes of Africa. The Negritos and the Semangs agree very closely in physical characteristics with each other and with the Andaman Islanders, while they differ in a marked manner from every Papuan race.
A careful study of these varied races, comparing them with those of Eastern Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, has led me to adopt a comparatively simple view as to their origin and affinities.
If we draw a line (see Physical Map, Vol. 1. p. 14), commencing on the east of the Philippine Islands, thence along the western coast of Gilolo, through the island of Bouru, and entering the west end of Mores, then bending back by Sandalwood Island to take in Rotti, we shall divide the Archipelago into two portions, the races of which have strongly marked distinctive peculiarities. This line separates the Malay and all the Asiatic races, from the Papuans and all that inhabit the Pacific; and though along the line of junction intermingation and commixture have taken place, yet the races on each side are well defined and strongly contrasted, as is the corresponding zoological division of the Archipelago, into an Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan region.
I must briefly explain the reasons that have led me to consider that this division of the Oceanic races to be a true natural one. The Malayan race, as a whole, undoubtedly very closely resembles the East Asian population from Siam to Mandchouria. I was much struck with this, when in the island of Bali I saw Chinese traders who had settled in the country, and who could then be doubly be distinguished from Malays; and, on the other hand, I have seen natives of Java, who, as far as physiognomy is concerned, would pass very well for great islanders which, possessing the same species of large Mammalia as do the Asiatic continent, were no doubt connected with the main land during the recent geological period. The Negritos and other black races must be considered to have an earlier origin, and to form a link between the African negro and the Papuan. The Papuan itself must be considered to be, in all probability, an Asiatic rather than a Polynesian origin.
Now, turning to the eastern part of the Archipelago, I find, by comparing my own observations with those of the most trustworthy travellers and naturalists, that a race identical in all its chief features with the Papuan, is found in all the islands as far east as the Fijis; beyond which the brown Polynesian race, or some intermediate type, is spread everywhere. The characteristics of these later often agree exactly with the conditions of the brown indigenes of Gilolo, etc.
It is to be especially remarked that the Negritos and the black Papuans very closely resemble each other. Their features are almost identical, so that whether a New Zealander or Otaheitan with efforts can recognise accurately to represent a Papuan or Timorese, the darker colour and more frizzly hair of the latter being the only differences. They are both tall races. They agree in their love of art and the style of their decorations. They are energetic, demonstrative, joyous, and laughter-loving, and in all these particulars they differ widely from the Malay.
I believe, therefore, that the numerous intermediate forms that occur among the countless islands of the Pacific, are not merely the result of a mixture of these races, but are, to some extent, truly intermediate or transitional; and that the brown and the black, the Papuan, the natives of Gilolo and Ceram, the Fijian, the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands and those of New Zealand, are all varying forms of one great Oceanic or Polynesian race.
It is, however, quite possible, and perhaps probable, that the brown Polynesians were originally the produce of a mixture of Malays, or some lighter coloured Mongol race with the dark Papuans; but if so, the intermingling took place at such a remote epoch, and has been so assisted by the continued influence of physical conditions and natural selection, leading to the preservation of a special type suited to those conditions, that it has become a fixed and stable race with no signs of mongrelism, and showing such a decided preponderance of the Papuan character, that it can best be classified as a modification of the Papuan type. The occurrence of a decided Malay element in the Polynesian languages, has evidently nothing to do with any such ancient physical connexion. It is altogether a recent phenomenon, originating in the roaming habits of the chiefly Malay tribes of the west. It must be viewed in the fixed and mutual words of those Malay and Javanese languages which are held to be Polynesian. It is else disguised by peculiarities of pronunciation to be as easily recognisable—not mere Malay roots only to be detected by the elaborate researches of the philologist, but words that would certainly have been the case had their introduction been as remote as the origin of a very distinct race—as a race different from the Malay in mental and moral, as it is in physical characters.
As bearing upon this point is the curious but close harmony which exists, between the line of separation of the human races of the Archipelago and that of the animal productions of the same country, which I have already so fully explained and illustrated. The dividing lines do not, it is true, exactly agree; but I think it is a remarkable fact, and something more than a mere coincidence, that they should traverse the same district and approach each other so closely as they do. If, however, I am right in my supposition that the region where the dividing line of the Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan regions of zoology can now be drawn, was formerly occupied by a much wider sea than at present, and if man existed on the earth at that period, we shall see good reason why the races inhabiting the Asiatic and Pacific areas should now meet and partially intermingle in the vicinity of that dividing line.
It has been repeatedly maintained by Professor Huxley, that the Papuans are more closely allied to the negroes of Africa than to any other race. The resemblance both in physical and mental characteristics has often struck myself, but the difficulties in the way of accepting it as probable or possible, have hitherto prevented me from giving full weight to those resemblances. Geographical, zoological, and ethnological considerations render it almost certain, that if the two races ever had a common origin, it could only have been at a period far more remote than any which has yet been assigned to the antiquity of the human race. And even if their identity could be proved, it would in no way affect my argument for the close affinity between the Papuan and Polynesian races, and the radical distinctions of both from the Malay.
Polynesia is pre-eminently a region of subsidence, and its great widespread groups of coral-reefs mark out tile position of former continents and islands. The rich and extensive deposits of alluvium in the great islands of Australia and New Guinea, also indicate an extensive continent where such special landforms were developed. The races of men now inhabiting these countries are, therefore, most probably the descendants of the races which inhabited such continents and islands. This is the most simple and natural supposition to make. And if we accept it, then as we find that the Papuans inhabit the western part of the world and those of Polynesia, it by no means follows that they are immigrants from the Malayan archipelago, but are most ancient existences, the whole geography of the earth, the surface would follow so far as the relation of land and sea is concerned, and that the races which now inhabit these regions, are the same, and are now preserved for the instruction of mankind from other continents not then yet risen above the ocean, and when they were formed at a much later epoch than the Papuan and Polynesian races. It is undoubtedly true that there are proofs of considerable movements among these people. Emigration took place from the sandwich group to New Zealand; but there is no proof of such movements ever having extended back into the country of Polynesia, since there is no people to be found elsewhere sufficiently resembling them in physical and mental characteristics.
As regards the future of these interesting human races, the future is no less so. The true Polynesians, inhabiting the further isles of the Pacific, even when not exterminated, must soon lose their nationality. The ferocious Malay race well adapted to survival in the actual struggle of life, has already become everywhere active and triumphant. But the conquering and ambitious Malay has seldom well adapted to vigorous social or national development. The future of the country must rest in the hands of Europeans. If the tide of colonization should continue to flow as it has hitherto flowed, we may confidently predict that the brown and black races will disappear before the white people, who will not absorb them, but supplant them. The dark races will pass away, as surely as do the wild animals under the dominion of civilized man.
And the most luxuriant islands will be cultivated by the higher races of men, and their marvellous productions appropriated to supply the wants of the largest and most luxurious inhabitants the world has ever known. I have endeavoured to convey my impressions of their scenery, their vegetation, their animal productions, and the human inhabitants, in some detail. I have at some length on the various interesting problems they have suggested in connection with the origin of races. Before I make my reader farewell, I wish to make a few observations on a subject of yet higher interest and deeper importance, which the contemplation of subjects like this has suggested, and out of which I believe that the civilized conditions can be built up from the savage state.
We most of us believe that we live, the higher races have progressed and are progressing. If, as then, there must be some state of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, but which is to be a program; but what is that state of individually perfect and socially perfect condition towards which mankind must ever have, and still is trending? Our Lives all form a program, that is, a state of individual Freedom and self government, rendered possible by the best of social development, and just because of the internal moral, mental and physical powers of our nature, a state in which we shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowledge what is right and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right, that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary, to such a state every man would have a sufficiently well-balanced understanding, to understand the moral Law in all its details, and would require no other inducement than the free expansion of his nature to act up to that Law.
Now, it is very remarkable that among people in a very low stage of civilization, we find some approach to such a perfect social state. I have lived with communities of savages in South America under the Line, who have no laws or rulers but the public opinion of the village. Firstly represented, such are nearly always these are the ones who are failing, and by an action of law these rights nearly never takes place. In such a community all men voluntarily help each other in return for the rights of the weak, those suffering of destitution or affliction and ignorance, and wealth and poverty master and servant, which are the product of our civilization cease to exist. In that wide-spread division of labour which is the result of our civilization and which increases wealth, products and conflicting interests, there is not that fierce competition and struggle for existence, as in the world, which the dense population of civilized countries makes inevitable. Our relation to one another are such that wrong doing and police cases are impossible, justly, by the influence of public opinion, but indirectly by the moral nature of each and his neighbour’s alike, which seems to be, at some degree, inherent in every one of us.
Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage state in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in morals. It is true that among these savages who have no wants that cannot be readily supplied and among whom public opinion has great influence, the rights of others are fully respected. It is true also, that we have nearly eradicated the offenses of these rights, and include them within all the brotherhood of states. But it is not too much to say that the mass of our population have not at all advanced beyond the simple code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it. A deficient morality is the great fault of modern civilization, and the greatest hindrance to all progress.
During the last century, and especially in the last thirty years, our intellectual and material environment has been too quickly achieved for us to reap the full benefit of it. Our mastery over the forces of nature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth, but there have been brought with them an overgrowth of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of a saturated world. and facing us many questions, that it may well be questioned, whether the moral influence of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether that evil has over-balanced the good, if compared with our wondrous progress in physical science and its practical applications, our system of government, of administrating justice, of technical education, and our whole social and moral organization, remains in a state of transition. Our sons: Page 3 and 4. A continuation of reference to chief one gives the outlining of our knowledge, that is of our nature with the care of all that is moral, and one commencement of all wealth. It is that which necessarily accompanies these which may help to realize the possibility. The key to perfect social state is intellectual, mental and physical power, developed to the highest possible degree. They increase in such gigantic dimensions, that it is beyond the power of individuals.
We should now clearly recognize that the fact is that wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilization, and do not themselves alone advance us towards the perfect social state. Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, our great and continually increasing army of paupers, our very great and absolutely greater than has ever existed before, our crime and masters in life—they all show us how we have advanced, but what is it that we have been hard, by our contact with the paupers, the convicts, and those whom poverty and crime has placed at very great distances from us, they are not only more hard-hearted, but, with respect to the masses, we are worse off than the savage in the moral side of us.
This is not a result of laws, or to be satisfied with that, until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilization—resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of all our natures, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organization—we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savages.
This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilised man. I now bid my readers - Farewell!
NOTE
THOSE who believe that our social condition approaches perfection, will think the above word harsh and exaggerated, but it seems to me the only word that can be truly applied to us. We are the richest country in the world, and yet one-twentieth of our population are parish paupers, and one-thirtieth known criminals. Add to these, the criminals who escape detection; and the poor who live mainly on private charity, (which, according to Dr. Hawkesley, spends seven millions sterling annually in London alone,) and we may be sure that more than ONE-TENTH of our population are actually Paupers and Criminals. Both these classes we keep idle or at unproductive labour, and each criminal costs us annually in our prisons more than the wages of an honest labourer. We allow over a hundred thousand persons known to have no means of subsistence but by crime, to remain at large and prey upon the community, and many thousand children to grow up before our eyes in ignorance and vice, to supply trained criminals for the next generation. This, in a country which boasts of its rapid increase in wealth, of its enormous commerce and gigantic manufactures, of its mechanical skill and scientific knowledge, of its high civilization and its pure Christianity,—I can but term a state of social barbarism. We also boast of our love of justice, and that the law protects rich and. poor alike, yet we retain money fines as a punishment, and make the very first steps to obtain justice a matter of expense-in both cases a barbarous injustice, or denial of justice to the poor. Again, our laws render it possible, that, by mere neglect of a legal form, and contrary to his own wish and intention, a man's property may all go to a stranger, and his own children be left destitute. Such cases have happened through the operation of the laws of inheritance of landed property; and that such unnatural injustice is possible among us, shows that we are in a state of social barbarism. Ono more example to justify my use of the term, and I have done. We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, with no legal rights of existence on the soil, to the vast majority who do not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or a hunting-ground, and expel every human being who has hitherto lived upon it. In a thickly-populated country like England, where every acre has its owner and its occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that, as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.
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