To This Diet May Be Attributed The Prevalence Of Skin
Diseases, And Ulcers On The Legs And Joints.
The scurfy skin
disease so common among savages has a close connexion with the
poorness and irregularity of their living.
The Malays, who are
never without their daily rice, are generally free from it; the
hill-Dyaks of Borneo, who grow rice and live well, are clean
skinned while the less industrious and less cleanly tribes, who
live for a portion of the year on fruits and vegetables only, are
very subject to this malady. It seems clear that in this, as in
other respects, man is not able to make a beast of himself with
impunity, feeding like the cattle on the herbs and fruits of the
earth, and taking no thought of the morrow. To maintain his
health and beauty he must labour to prepare some farinaceous
product capable of being stored and accumulated, so as to give
him a regular supply of wholesome food. When this is obtained, he
may add vegetables, fruits, and meat with advantage.
The chief luxury of the Aru people, besides betel and tobacco, is
arrack (Java rum), which the traders bring in great quantities
and sell very cheap. A day's fishing or rattan cutting will
purchase at least a half-gallon bottle; and when the tripang or
birds' nests collected during a season are sold, they get whole
boxes, each containing fifteen such bottles, which the inmates of
a house will sit round day and night till they have finished.
They themselves tell me that at such bouts they often tear to
pieces the house they are in, break and destroy everything they
can lay their hands on, and make such an infernal riot as is
alarming to behold.
The houses and furniture are on a par with the food. A rude shed,
supported on rough and slender sticks rather than posts, no
walls, but the floor raised to within a foot of the eaves, is the
style of architecture they usually adopt. Inside there are
partition walls of thatch, forming little boxes or sleeping
places, to accommodate the two or three separate families that
usually live together. A few mats, baskets, and cooking vessels,
with plates and basins purchased from the Macassar traders,
constitute their whole furniture; spears and bows are their
weapons; a sarong or mat forms the clothing of the women, a
waistcloth of the men. For hours or even for days they sit idle
in their houses, the women bringing in the vegetables or sago
which form their food. Sometimes they hunt or fish a little, or
work at their houses or canoes, but they seem to enjoy pure
idleness, and work as little as they can. They have little to
vary the monotony of life, little that can be called pleasure,
except idleness and conversation. And they certainly do talk!
Every evening there is a little Babel around me: but as I
understand not a word of it, I go on with my book or work
undisturbed. Now and then they scream and shout, or laugh
frantically for variety; and this goes on alternately with
vociferous talking of men, women, and children, till long after I
am in my mosquito curtain and sound asleep.
At this place I obtained some light on the complicated mixture of
races in Aru, which would utterly confound an ethnologist. Many
of the, natives, though equally dark with the others, have little
of the Papuan physiognomy, but have more delicate features of the
European type, with more glossy, curling hair: These at first
quite puzzled me, for they have no more resemblance to Malay than
to Papuan, and the darkness of skin and hair would forbid the
idea of Dutch intermixture. Listening to their conversation,
however, I detected some words that were familiar to me. "Accabó"
was one; and to be sure that it was not an accidental
resemblance, I asked the speaker in Malay what "accabó" meant,
and was told it meant "done or finished," a true Portuguese word,
with its meaning retained. Again, I heard the word "jafui" often
repeated, and could see, without inquiry, that its meaning was
"he's gone," as in Portuguese. "Porco," too, seems a common name,
though the people have no idea of its European meaning. This
cleared up the difficulty. I at once understood that some early
Portuguese traders had penetrated to these islands, and mixed
with the natives, influencing their language, and leaving in
their descendants for many generations the visible
characteristics of their race. If to this we add the occasional
mixture of Malay, Dutch, and Chinese with the indigenous Papuans,
we have no reason to wonder at the curious varieties of form and
feature occasionally to be met with in Aru. In this very house
there was a Macassar man, with an Aru wife and a family of mixed
children. In Dobbo I saw a Javanese and an Amboyna man, each with
an Aru wife and family; and as this kind of mixture has been
going on for at least three hundred years, and probably much
longer, it has produced a decided effect on the physical
characteristics of a considerable portion of the population of
the islands, more especially in Dobbo and the parts nearest to
it.
March 28th. - The "Orang-kaya" being very ill with fever had
begged to go home, and had arranged with one of the men of the
house to go on with me as his substitute. Now that I wanted to
move, the bugbear of the pirates was brought up, and it was
pronounced unsafe to go further than the next small river. This
world not suit me, as I had determined to traverse the channel
called Watelai to the "blakang-tana;" but my guide was firm in
his dread of pirates, of which I knew there was now no danger, as
several vessels had gone in search of them, as well as a Dutch
gunboat which had arrived since I left Dobbo.
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