Almost Every Day Groups Of Natives Arrived From The Most Distant Parts Of The Islands, With Cargoes Of Bananas And Sugar- Cane To Exchange For Tobacco, Sago, Bread, And Other Luxuries, Before The General Departure.

The Chinamen killed their fat pig and made their parting feast, and kindly sent me some pork, and a basin of birds' nest stew, which had very little more taste than a dish of vermicelli.

My boy Ali returned from Wanumbai, where I had sent him alone for a fortnight to buy Paradise birds and prepare the skins; he brought me sixteen glorious specimens, and had he not been very ill with fever and ague might have obtained twice the number. He had lived with the people whose house I had occupied, and it is a proof of their goodness, if fairly treated, that although he took with him a quantity of silver dollars to pay for the birds they caught, no attempt was made to rob him, which might have been done with the most perfect impunity. He was kindly treated when ill, and was brought back to me with the balance of the dollars he had not spent.

The Wanumbai people, like almost all the inhabitants of the Aru Islands, are perfect savages, and I saw no signs of any religion. There are, however, three or four villages on the coast where schoolmasters from Amboyna reside, and the people are nominally Christians, and are to some extent educated and civilized. I could not get much real knowledge of the customs of the Aru people during the short time I was among them, but they have evidently been considerably influenced by their long association with Mahometan traders. They often bury their dead, although the national custom is to expose the body an a raised stage till it decomposes. Though there is no limit to the number of wives a man may have, they seldom exceed one or two. A wife is regularly purchased from the parents, the price being a large assortment of articles, always including gongs, crockery, and cloth. They told me that some of the tribes kill the old men and women when they can no longer work, but I saw many very old and decrepid people, who seemed pretty well attended to. No doubt all who have much intercourse with the Bugis and Ceramese traders gradually lose many of their native customs, especially as these people often settle in their villages and marry native women.

The trade carried on at Dobbo is very considerable. This year there were fifteen large praus from Macassar, and perhaps a hundred small boats from Ceram, Goram, and Ke. The Macassar cargoes are worth about £1,000. each, and the other boats take away perhaps about £3,000, worth, so that the whole exports may be estimated at £18,000. per annum. The largest and most bulky items are pearl-shell and tripang, or "beche-de-mer," with smaller quantities of tortoise-shell, edible birds' nests, pearls, ornamental woods, timber, and Birds of Paradise.

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