The Chief Luxury Of The Aru People, Besides Betel And Tobacco, Is
Arrack (Java Rum), Which The Traders Bring In Great Quantities
And Sell Very Cheap.
A day's fishing or rattan cutting will
purchase at least a half-gallon bottle; and when the tripang or
Birds' nests collected during a season are sold, they get whole
boxes, each containing fifteen such bottles, which the inmates of
a house will sit round day and night till they have finished.
They themselves tell me that at such bouts they often tear to
pieces the house they are in, break and destroy everything they
can lay their hands on, and make such an infernal riot as is
alarming to behold.
The houses and furniture are on a par with the food. A rude shed,
supported on rough and slender sticks rather than posts, no
walls, but the floor raised to within a foot of the eaves, is the
style of architecture they usually adopt. Inside there are
partition walls of thatch, forming little boxes or sleeping
places, to accommodate the two or three separate families that
usually live together. A few mats, baskets, and cooking vessels,
with plates and basins purchased from the Macassar traders,
constitute their whole furniture; spears and bows are their
weapons; a sarong or mat forms the clothing of the women, a
waistcloth of the men. For hours or even for days they sit idle
in their houses, the women bringing in the vegetables or sago
which form their food. Sometimes they hunt or fish a little, or
work at their houses or canoes, but they seem to enjoy pure
idleness, and work as little as they can. They have little to
vary the monotony of life, little that can be called pleasure,
except idleness and conversation. And they certainly do talk!
Every evening there is a little Babel around me: but as I
understand not a word of it, I go on with my book or work
undisturbed. Now and then they scream and shout, or laugh
frantically for variety; and this goes on alternately with
vociferous talking of men, women, and children, till long after I
am in my mosquito curtain and sound asleep.
At this place I obtained some light on the complicated mixture of
races in Aru, which would utterly confound an ethnologist. Many
of the, natives, though equally dark with the others, have little
of the Papuan physiognomy, but have more delicate features of the
European type, with more glossy, curling hair: These at first
quite puzzled me, for they have no more resemblance to Malay than
to Papuan, and the darkness of skin and hair would forbid the
idea of Dutch intermixture. Listening to their conversation,
however, I detected some words that were familiar to me. "Accabó"
was one; and to be sure that it was not an accidental
resemblance, I asked the speaker in Malay what "accabó" meant,
and was told it meant "done or finished," a true Portuguese word,
with its meaning retained.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 107 of 213
Words from 55368 to 55869
of 111511
