Bad, However, As They
Are Here, They Were Worse In A Dyak's House In Borneo Where I Was
Once Staying, For There They Gnawed Off The Tops Of My Waterproof
Boots, Ate A Large Piece Out Of An Old Leather Game-Bag, Besides
Devouring A Portion Of My Mosquito Curtain!
April 28th.
- Last evening we had a grand consultation, which had
evidently been arranged and discussed beforehand. A number of the
natives gathered round me, and said they wanted to talk. Two of
the best Malay scholars helped each other, the rest putting in
hints and ideas in their own language. They told me a long
rambling story; but, partly owing to their imperfect knowledge of
Malay, partly through my ignorance of local terms, and partly
through the incoherence of their narrative, I could not make it
out very clearly. It was, however, a tradition, and I was glad to
find they had anything of the kind. A long time ago, they said,
some strangers came to Aru, and came here to Wanumbai, and the
chief of the Wanumbai people did not like them, and wanted them
to go away, but they would not go, and so it came to fighting,
and many Aru men were killed, and some, along with the chief,
were taken prisoners, and carried away by the strangers. Some of
the speakers, however, said that he was not carried away, but
went away in his own boat to escape from the foreigners, and went
to the sea and never came back again. But they all believe that
the chief and the people that went with him still live in some
foreign country; and if they could but find out where, they would
send for them to come back again. Now having some vague idea that
white men must know every country beyond the sea, they wanted to
know if I had met their people in my country or in the sea. They
thought they must be there, for they could not imagine where else
they could be. They had sought for them everywhere, they said - on
the land and in the sea, in the forest and on the mountains, in
the air and in the sky, and could not find them; therefore, they
must be in my country, and they begged me to tell them, for I
must surely know, as I came from across the great sea. I tried to
explain to them that their friends could not have reached my
country in small boats; and that there were plenty of islands
like Aru all about the sea, which they would be sure to find.
Besides, as it was so long ago, the chief and all the people must
be dead. But they quite laughed at this idea, and said they were
sure they were alive, for they had proof of it. And then they
told me that a good many years ago, when the speakers were boys,
some Wokan men who were out fishing met these lost people in the
sea, and spoke to them; and the chief gave the Wokan men a
hundred fathoms of cloth to bring to the men of Wanumbai, to show
that they were alive and would soon come back to them, but the
Wokan men were thieves, and kept the cloth, and they only heard
of it afterwards; and when they spoke about it, the Wokan men
denied it, and pretended they had not received the cloth; - so
they were quite sure their friends were at that time alive and
somewhere in the sea.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 122 of 213
Words from 63182 to 63777
of 111511
