We Have
Now A Skin Held Together Entirely By The Hardwood Pins Connecting
The Edges Of The Planks, Very Strong And Elastic, But Having
Nothing But The Adhesion Of These Pins To Prevent The Planks
Gaping.
In the smaller boats seats, in the larger ones cross-
beams, are now fixed.
They are sprung into slight notches cut to
receive them, and are further secured to the projecting pieces of
the plank below by a strong lashing of rattan. Ribs are now
formed of single pieces of tough wood chosen and trimmed so as
exactly to fit on to the projections from each plank, being
slightly notched to receive them, and securely bound to them by
rattans passed through a hole in each projecting piece close to
the surface of the plank. The ends are closed against the
vertical prow and stern posts, and further secured with pegs and
rattans, and then the boat is complete; and when fitted with
rudders, masts, and thatched covering, is ready to do battle
with, the waves. A careful consideration of the principle of this
mode of construction, and allowing for the strength and binding
qualities of rattan (which resembles in these respects wire
rather than cordage), makes me believe that a vessel carefully
built in this manner is actually stronger and safer than one
fastened in the ordinary way with nails.
During our stay here we were all very busy. Our captain was daily
superintending the completion of his two small praus. All day
long native boats were coming with fish, cocoa-nuts, parrots and
lories, earthen pans, sirip leaf, wooden bowls, and trays, &c.
&e., which every one of the fifty inhabitants of our prau seemed
to be buying on his own account, till all available and most
unavailable space of our vessel was occupied with these
miscellaneous articles: for every man on board a prau considers
himself at liberty to trade, and to carry with him whatever he
can afford to buy.
Money is unknown and valueless here - knives, cloth, and arrack
forming the only medium of exchange, with tobacco for small coin.
Every transaction is the subject of a special bargain, and the
cause of much talking. It is absolutely necessary to offer very
little, as the natives are never satisfied till you add a little
more. They are then far better pleased than if you had given them
twice the amount at first and refused to increase it.
I, too, was doing a little business, having persuaded some of the
natives to collect insects for me; and when they really found
that I gave them most fragrant tobacco for worthless black and
green beetles, I soon had scores of visitors, men, women, and
children, bringing bamboos full of creeping things, which, alas!
too frequently had eaten each other into fragments during the
tedium of a day's confinement. Of one grand new beetle,
glittering with ruby and emerald tints, I got a large quantity,
having first detected one of its wing-cases ornamenting the
outside of a native's tobacco pouch. It was quite a new species,
and had not been found elsewhere than on this little island. It
is one of the Buprestidae, and has been named Cyphogastra
calepyga.
Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by myself into
the forest, where I found delightful occupation in capturing the
large and handsome butterflies, which were tolerably abundant,
and most of them new to me; for I was now upon the confines of
the Moluccas and New Guinea, - a region the productions of which
were then among the most precious and rare in the cabinets of
Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with
splendid scarlet lories on the wing, as well as by the sight of
that most imperial butterfly, the "Priamus "of collectors, or a
closely allied species, but flying so high that I did not succeed
in capturing a specimen. One of them was brought me in a bamboo,
bored up with a lot of beetles, and of course torn to pieces. The
principal drawback of the place for a collector is the want of
good paths, and the dreadfully rugged character of the surface,
requiring the attention to be so continually directed to securing
a footing, as to make it very difficult to capture active winged
things, who pass out of reach while one is glancing to see that
the next step may not plunge one into a chasm or over a
precipice. Another inconvenience is that there are no running
streams, the rock being of so porous a nature that the surface-
water everywhere penetrates its fissures; at least such is the
character of the neighbourhood we visited, the only water being
small springs trickling out close to the sea-beach.
In the forests of Ke, arboreal Liliaceae and Pandanaceae abound,
and give a character to the vegetation in the more exposed rocky
places. Flowers were scarce, and there were not many orchids, but
I noticed the fine white butterfly-orchis, Phalaenopsis
grandiflora, or a species closely allied to it. The freshness and
vigour of the vegetation was very pleasing, and on such an arid
rocky surface was a sure indication of a perpetually humid
climate. Tall clean trunks, many of them buttressed, and immense
trees of the fig family, with aerial roots stretching out and
interlacing and matted together for fifty or a hundred feet above
the ground, were the characteristic features; and there was an
absence of thorny shrubs and prickly rattans, which would have
made these wilds very pleasant to roam in, had it not been for
the sharp honeycombed rocks already alluded to. In damp places a
fine undergrowth of broadleaved herbaceous plants was found,
about which swarmed little green lizards, with tails of the most
"heavenly blue," twisting in and out among the stalks and foliage
so actively that I often caught glimpses of their tails only,
when they startled me by their resemblance to small snakes.
Almost the only sounds in these primeval woods proceeded from two
birds, the red lories, who utter shrill screams like most of the
parrot tribe, and the large green nutmeg-pigeon, whose voice is
either a loud and deep boom, like two notes struck upon a very
large gong, or sometimes a harsh toad-like croak, altogether
peculiar and remarkable.
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