Anklets Of Brass Or Shell, And Tight
Plaited Garters Below The Knee, Complete Their Ordinary
Decorations.
Some natives of Kobror from further south, and who are reckoned
the worst and least civilized of the Aru tribes, came one day to
visit us.
They have a rather more than usually savage appearance,
owing to the greater amount of ornaments they use - the most
conspicuous being a large horseshoe-shaped comb which they wear
over the forehead, the ends resting on the temples. The back of
the comb is fastened into a piece of wood, which is plated with
tin in front, and above is attached a plume of feathers from a
cock's tail. In other respects they scarcely differed from the
people I was living with. They brought me a couple of birds, some
shells and insects; showing that the report of the white man and
his doing had reached their country. There was probably hardly a
man in Aru who had not by this time heard of me.
Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable
property of a native is very scanty. He has a good supply of
spears and bows and arrows for hunting, a parang, or chopping-
knife, and an axe-for the stone age has passed away here, owing
to the commercial enterprise of the Bugis and other Malay races.
Attached to a belt, or hung across his shoulder, he carrion a
little skin pouch and an ornamented bamboo, containing betel-nut,
tobacco, and lime, and a small German wooden-handled knife is
generally stuck between his waist-cloth of bark and his bare
shin.
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