In Three Hours' Rowing And Sailing We Reached Our
Destination, Sedingole, Where There Is A House Belonging To The
Sultan Of Tidore, Who Sometimes Goes There Hunting.
It was a
dirty ruinous shed, with no furniture but a few bamboo bedsteads.
On taking a walk into the country, I saw at once that it was no
place for me.
For many miles extends a plain covered with coarse
high grass, thickly dotted here and there with trees, the forest
country only commencing at the hills a good way in the interior.
Such a place would produce few birds and no insects, and we
therefore arranged to stay only two days, and then go on to
Dodinga, at the narrow central isthmus of Gilolo, whence my
friends would return to Ternate. We amused ourselves shooting
parrots, lories, and pigeons, and trying to shoot deer, of which
we saw plenty, but could not get one; and our crew went out
fishing with a net, so we did not want for provisions. When the
time came for us to continue our journey, a fresh difficulty
presented itself, for our gentlemen slaves refused in a body to
go with us; saying very determinedly that they would return to
Ternate. So their masters were obliged to submit, and I was left
behind to get to Dodinga as I could. Luckily I succeeded in
hiring a small boat, which took me there the same night, with my
two men and my baggage.
Two or three years after this, and about the same length of time
before I left the East, the Dutch emancipated all their slaves,
paying their owners a small compensation. No ill results
followed. Owing to the amicable relations which had always
existed between them and their masters, due no doubt in part to
the Government having long accorded them legal rights and
protection against cruelty and ill-usage, many continued in the
same service, and after a little temporary difficulty in some
cases, almost all returned to work either for their old or for
new, masters. The Government took the very proper step of placing
every emancipated slave under the surveillance of the police-
magistrate. They were obliged to show that they were working for
a living, and had some honestly-acquired means of existence. All
who could not do so were placed upon public works at low wages,
and thus were kept from the temptation to peculation or other
crimes, which the excitement of newly-acquired freedom, and
disinclination to labour, might have led them into.
CHAPTER XXII.
GILOLO.
(MARCH AND SEPTEMBER 1858.)
I MADE but few and comparatively short visits to this large and
little known island, but obtained a considerable knowledge of its
natural history by sending first my boy Ali, and then my
assistant, Charles Allen, who stayed two or three months each in
the northern peninsula, and brought me back large collections of
birds and insects. In this chapter I propose to give a sketch of
the parts which I myself visited.
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