As I Improved My Acquaintance With Them I Became Much Interested
In These People, Who Are A Fair Sample Of The True Savage
Inhabitants Of The Aru Islands, Tolerably Free From Foreign
Admixture.
The house I lived in contained four or five families,
and there were generally from six to a dozen visitors besides.
They kept up a continual row from morning till night - talking,
laughing, shouting, without intermission - not very pleasant, but
interesting as a study of national character.
My boy Ali said to
me, "Banyak quot bitchara Orang Aru "(The Aru people are very
strong talkers), never having been accustomed to such eloquence
either in his own or any other country he had hitherto visited.
Of an evening the men, having got over their first shyness, began
to talk to me a little, asking about my country, &c., and in
return I questioned them about any traditions they had of their
own origin. I had, however, very little success, for I could not
possibly make them understand the simple question of where the
Aru people first came from. I put it in every possible way to
them, but it was a subject quite beyond their speculations; they
had evidently never thought of anything of the kind, and were
unable to conceive a thing so remote and so unnecessary to be
thought about, as their own origin. Finding this hopeless, I
asked if they knew when the trade with Aru first began, when the
Bugis and Chinese and Macassar men first came in their praus to
buy tripang and tortoise-shell, and birds' nests, arid Paradise
birds?
This they comprehended, but replied that there had always been
the same trade as long as they or their fathers recollected, but
that this was the first time a real white man had come among
them, and, said they, "You see how the people come every day from
all the villages round to look at you." This was very flattering,
and accounted for the great concourse of visitors which I had at
first imagined was accidental. A few years before I had been one
of the gazers at the Zoolus, and the Aztecs in London. Now the
tables were turned upon me, for I was to these people a new and
strange variety of man, and had the honour of affording to them,
in my own person, an attractive exhibition, gratis.
All the men and boys of Aru are expert archers, never stirring
without their bows and arrows. They shoot all sorts of birds, as
well as pigs and kangaroos occasionally, and thus have a
tolerably good supply of meat to eat with their vegetables. The
result of this better living is superior healthiness, well-made
bodies, and generally clear skins. They brought me numbers of
small birds in exchange for beads or tobacco, but mauled them
terribly, notwithstanding my repeated instructions. When they got
a bird alive they would often tie a string to its leg, and keep
it a day or two, till its plumage was so draggled and dirtied as
to be almost worthless.
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