They Reminded Me Of A Party Of Demure And Well-Behaved
Children Suddenly Broken In Upon By A Lot Of Wild Romping,
Riotous Boys, Whose Conduct Seems Most Extraordinary And Very
Naughty.
These moral features are more striking and more
conclusive of absolute diversity than oven the physical contrast
presented by the two races, though that is sufficiently
remarkable.
The sooty blackness of the skin, the mop-like head of
frizzly hair, and, most important of all, the marked form of
countenance of quite a different type from that of the Malay, are
what we cannot believe to result from mere climatal or other
modifying influences on one and the same race. The Malay face is
of the Mongolian type, broad and somewhat flat. The brows are
depressed, the mouth wide, but not projecting, and the nose small
and well formed but for the great dilatation of the nostrils. The
face is smooth, and rarely develops the trace of a beard; the
hair black, coarse, and perfectly straight. The Papuan, on the
other hand, has a face which we may say is compressed and
projecting. The brows are protuberant and overhanging, the mouth
large and prominent, while the nose is very large, the apex
elongated downwards, the ridge thick, and the nostrils large. It
is an obtrusive and remarkable feature in the countenance, the
very reverse of what obtains in the Malay face. The twisted beard
and frizzly hair complete this remarkable contrast. Hero then I
had reached a new world, inhabited by a strange people. Between
the Malayan tribes, among whom I had for some years been living,
and the Papuan races, whose country I had now entered, we may
fairly say that there is as much difference, both moral and
physical, as between the red Indians of South America and the
negroes of Guinea on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
Jan. 1st, 1857.-This has been a day of thorough enjoyment. I have
wandered in the forests of an island rarely seen by Europeans.
Before daybreak we left our anchorage, and in an hour reached the
village of Har, where we were to stay three or four days. The
range of hills here receded so as to form a small bay, and they
were broken up into peaks and hummocks with intervening flats and
hollows. A broad beach of the whitest sand lined the inner part
of the bay, backed by a mass of cocoa-nut palms, among which the
huts were concealed, and surmounted by a dense and varied growth
of timber. Canoes and boats of various sizes were drawn up on the
beach and one or two idlers, with a few children and a dog, gazed
at our prau as we came to an anchor.
When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us was a
large and well-constructed shed, under which a long boat was
being built, while others in various stages of completion were
placed at intervals along the beach. Our captain, who wanted two
of moderate size for the trade among the islands at Aru,
immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short tine had
arranged the nuns number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs,
handkerchiefs, axes, white plates, tobacco, and arrack, which he
was to give for a hair which could be got ready in four days. We
then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four
huts, situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rocky
piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas, and
other fruit trees. The houses were very rude, black, and half
rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bamboo or
planks, and high thatched roofs. They had small doors and no
windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the smoke
out and a little light in. The floors were of strips of bamboo,
thin, slippery, and elastic, and so weak that my feet were in
danger of plunging through at every step. Native boxes of
pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed,
mats of the same, jars and cooking pots of native pottery, and a
few European plates and basins, were the whole furniture, and the
interior was throughout dark and smoke-blackened, and dismal in
the extreme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some
explorations, and we were followed by a train of boys eager to
see what we were going to do. The most trodden path from the
beach led us into a shady hollow, where the trees were of immense
height and the undergrowth scanty. From the summits of these
trees came at intervals a deep booming sound, which at first
puzzled us, but which we soon found to proceed from some large
pigeons. My boys shot at them, and after one or two misses,
brought one down. It was a magnificent bird twenty inches long,
of a bluish white colour, with the back wings and tail intense
metallic green, with golden, blue, and violet reflexions, the
feet coral red, and the eyes golden yellow. It is a rare species,
which I have named Carpophaga concinna, and is found only in a
few small islands, where, however, it abounds. It is the same
species which in the island of Banda is called the nutmeg-pigeon,
from its habit of devouring the fruits, the seed or nutmeg being
thrown up entire and uninjured. Though these pigeons have a
narrow beak, yet their jaws and throat are so extensible that
they can swallow fruits of very large size. I had before shot a
species much smaller than this one, which had a number of hard
globular palm-fruits in its crop, each more than an inch in
diameter.
A little further the path divided into two, one leading along the
beach, and across mangrove and sago swamps the other rising to
cultivated grounds. We therefore returned, and taking a fresh
departure from the village, endeavoured to ascend the hills and
penetrate into the interior.
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