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

;XXXIII.] ARU ISLANDS.—PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 369The rainy seasons agree, tlierefore, with those of the westernislands, although the weatlier is very different. The Moluccasea is of a very deep blue colour, quite distinct from the clearlight blue of the Atlantic. In cloudy and dull weather it looksabsolutely black, and when crested with foam has a stern andangry aspect. The wind continued fair and strong during ourwhole voyage, and we reached Macassar in perfect safety on theevening of the 11th of July, having made the passage from Aru(more than a thousand miles) in nine and a half days.My expedition to the Aru Islands had been eminently successful.Although I had been for months confined to the house byillness, and had lost much time by the want of the means oflocomotion, and by missing the right season at the right place,I brought away with me more than nine thousand specimens ofnatural objects, of about sixteen hundred distinct species. Ihad made the acquaintance of a strange and little-known raceof men ; I had become familiar with the traders of the far EastI liad revelled in the delights of exploring a new fauna and flora,one of the most remarkable and most beautiful and least-knownin the world ; and I had succeeded in the main object for whichI Iiad undertaken the journey—namely, to obtain fine specimensof the magnificent Birds of Paradise, and to be enabled to observethem in their native forests. By this success I was stimulatedto continue my researches in the Moluccas and New Guinea fornearly five years longer, and it is still tlie portion of my travelsto which I look back with the most complete satisfaction.CHAPTER XXXIII.THE ARU ISLANDS.—PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ASPECTS OFNATURE.In this chapter I propose to give a general sketcli of thephysical geography of the Aru Islands, and of their isolation tothe surrounding countries ; and shall thus be able to incorporatethe information obtained from traders, and from the works ofother natui'alists, with my own observations in these exceedinglyinteresting and little-known regions.The Aru group may be said to consist of one very large centralisland with a number of small ones scattered round it. Thegreat island is called by the natives and traders " Tana-busar "(great or mainland), to distinguish it as a whole from Dobbo, orany of the detached islands. It is of an irregular oblong form,about eighty miles from north to south, and forty or fifty fromeast to west, in whicli direction it is traversed by three narrowchannels, dividing it into four portions. These channels arealways called rivers by the traders, which puzzled me much tillI passed through one of them, and saw how exceedingly ap-B B