Ali Was Charged To Buy All The Birds Of Paradise He Could Get, And To Shoot And Skin All Other Rare Or New Birds; And Lahagi Was To Collect Insects, Which I Hoped Might Be More Abundant Than At Dorey.

When I recommenced my daily walks in search of insects, I found a great change in the neighbourhood, and one very agreeable to me.

All the time I had been laid up the ship's crew and the Javanese soldiers who had been brought in a tender (a sailing ship which had arrived soon after the Etna), had been employed cutting down, sawing, and splitting large trees for firewood, to enable the steamer to get back to Amboyna if the coal-ship did not return; and they had also cleared a number of wide, straight paths through the forest in various directions, greatly to the astonishment of the natives, who could not make out what it all meant. I had now a variety of walks, and a good deal of dead wood on which to search for insects; but notwithstanding these advantages, they were not nearly so plentiful as I had found them at Sarawak, or Amboyna, or Batchian, confirming my opinion that Dorey was not a good locality. It is quite probable, however, that at a station a few miles in the interior, away from the recently elevated coralline rocks and the influence of the sea air, a much more abundant harvest might be obtained.

One afternoon I went on board the steamer to return the captain's visit, and was shown some very nice sketches (by one of the lieutenants), made on the south coast, and also at the Arfak mountain, to which they had made an excursion. From these and the captain's description, it appeared that the people of Arfak were similar to those of Dorey, and I could hear nothing of the straight-haired race which Lesson says inhabits the interior, but which no one has ever seen, and the account of which I suspect has originated in some mistake. The captain told me he had made a detailed survey of part of the south coast, and if the coal arrived should go away at once to Humboldt Pay, in longitude 141° east, which is the line up to which the Dutch claim New Guinea. On board the tender I found a brother naturalist, a German named Rosenberg, who was draughtsman to the surveying staff. He had brought two men with him to shoot and skin birds, and had been able to purchase a few rare skins from the natives. Among these was a pair of the superb Paradise Pie (Astrapia nigra) in tolerable preservation. They were brought from the island of Jobie, which may be its native country, as it certainly is of the rarer species of crown pigeon (Goura steursii), one of which was brought alive and sold on board. Jobie, however, is a very dangerous place, and sailors are often murdered there when on shore; sometimes the vessels themselves being attacked. Wandammen, on the mainland opposite Jobie, inhere there are said to be plenty of birds, is even worse, and at either of these places my life would not have been worth a week's purchase had I ventured to live alone and unprotected as at Dorey.

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