I Fully
Intended To Come Back; And Had I Known That Circumstances Would
Have Prevented My Doing So, Shoed Have
Felt some sorrow in
leaving a place where I had first seen so many rare and beautiful
living things, and
Bad so fully enjoyed the pleasure which fills
the heart of the naturalist when he is so fortunate as to
discover a district hitherto unexplored, and where every day
brings forth new and unexpected treasures. We loaded our boat in
the afternoon, and, starting before daybreak, by the help of a
fair wind reached Dobbo late the same evening.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE ARU ISLANDS. - SECOND RESIDENCE AT DOBBO.
(MAY AND JUNE 1857.)
DOBBO was full to overflowing, and I was obliged to occupy the
court-house where the Commissioners hold their sittings. They had
now left the island, and I found the situation agreeable, as it
was at the end of the village, with a view down the principal
street. It was a mere shed, but half of it had a roughly boarded
floor, and by putting up a partition and opening a window I made
it a very pleasant abode. In one of the boxes I had left in
charge of Herr Warzbergen, a colony of small ants had settled and
deposited millions of eggs. It was luckily a fine hot day, and by
carrying the box some distance from the house, and placing every
article in the sunshine for an hour or two, I got rid of them
without damage, as they were fortunately a harmless species.
Dobbo now presented an animated appearance. Five or six new
houses had been added to the street; the praus were all brought
round to the western side of the point, where they were hauled up
on the beach, and were being caulked and covered with a thick
white lime-plaster for the homeward voyage, making them the
brightest and cleanest looking things in the place. Most of the
small boats had returned from the "blakang-tana "(back country),
as the side of the islands towards New Guinea is called. Piles of
firewood were being heaped up behind the houses; sail-makers and
carpenters were busy at work; mother-of-pearl shell was being
tied up in bundles, and the black and ugly smoked tripang was
having a last exposure to the sun before loading. The spare
portion of the crews were employed cutting and squaring timber,
and boats from Ceram and Goram were constantly unloading their
cargoes of sago-cake for the traders' homeward voyage. The fowls,
ducks, and goats all looked fat and thriving on the refuse food
of a dense population, and the Chinamen's pigs were in a state of
obesity that foreboded early death. Parrots and Tories and
cockatoos, of a dozen different binds, were suspended on bamboo
perches at the doors of the houses, with metallic green or white
fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and eventide. Young
cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered
about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in
the hot sunshine, with sometimes a pretty little kangaroo, caught
in the Aru forests, but already tame and graceful as a petted
fawn.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 125 of 213
Words from 64837 to 65370
of 111511
