The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

XXXII.] ARU ISLANDS.—SECOND RESIDENCE AT DOBBO. 367till he had worked out the debt. He was a quick and active ladwhen he pleased, but was apt to be idle, and had such an incorrigiblepropensity for gambling, that it will very likely leadto his becoming a slave for life.The end of June was now approaching, the east monsoon hadset in steadily, and in another week or two Dobbo would bedeserted. Preparations for departure were everywhere visible,and every sunny day (rather rare now) the streets were ascrowded and as busy as beehives. Heaps of tripang werefinally dried and packed up in sacks ;mother-of-pearl shell, tiedup with rattans into convenient bundles, was all day long beingcarried to the beach to be loaded ; water-casks were filled, andcloths and mat-sails mended and strengthened for the run homebefore the strong east wind. Almost every day groups ofnatives arrived from the most distant parts of the islands, withcargoes of bananas and sugar-cane to exchange for tobacco, sagobread,and other luxuries, before the general departure. TheChinamen killed their fat pig and made their parting feast, andkindly sent me some pork, and a basin of birds'-nest stew, whichhad very little more taste than a dish of vermicelli. My boyAli returned from Wanumbai, where I had sent him alone for afortnight to buy Paradise Birds and prepare the skins ;hebrought me sixteen glorious specimens, and had he not beenvery ill with fever and ague might have obtained twice thenumber. He had lived with the people whose house I hadoccupied, and it is a i3roof of their goodness, if fairly treated,that although he took with him a quantity of silver dollars^ topay for the birds they caught, no attempt was made to rob him,which miglit have been done with the most perfect impunity.He was kindly treated when ill, and was brought back to mewith the balance of the dollars he had not spent.The Wanumbai people, like almost all the inhabitants of theAru Islands, are iDerfect savages, and I saw no signs of anyreligion. There are, howevex', three or four villages on thecoast where schoolmasters from Amboyna reside, and the peoi)leare nominally Christians, and are to some extent educated andcivilized. I could not get much real knowledge of the customsof the Aru people during the short time I was among them, butthey have evidently been considerably influenced by their longassociation with Mahometan traders. They often bury theirdead, although the national custom is to expose the body on araised stage till it decomposes. Though there is no limit to thenumber of wives a man may have, they seldom exceed one ortwo. A wife is regularly purchased from the parents, the pricebeing a large assortment of articles, always including gongs,crockery, and cloth. They told me that some of the tribes killthe old men and women when they can no longer work, but Isaw many very old and decrejjit people, who seemed pretty wellattended to. No doubt all who have much intercourse with theBugis and Ceramese traders gradually lose many of their native