(JULY TO SEPTEMBER 1860.)
THE village of Muka, on the south coast of Waigiou, consists of a number
of poor huts, partly in the water and partly on shore, and scattered
irregularly over a space of about half a mile in a shallow bay. Around
it are a few cultivated patches, and a good deal of second-growth woody
vegetation; while behind, at the distance of about half a mile, rises
the virgin forest, through which are a few paths to some houses and
plantations a mile or two inland. The country round is rather flat,
and in places swampy, and there are one or two small streams which run
behind the village into the sea below it. Finding that no house could
be had suitable to my purpose, and hawing so often experienced the
advantages of living close to or just within the forest, I obtained the
assistance of half-a-dozen men; and having selected a spot near the path
and the stream, and close to a fine fig-tree, which stood just within
the forest, we cleared the ground and set to building a house. As I did
not expect to stay here so long as I had done at Dorey, I built a long,
low, narrow shed, about seven feet high on one side and four on the
other, which required but little wood, and was put up very rapidly. Our
sails, with a few old attaps from a deserted but in the village, formed
the walls, and a quantity of "cadjans," or palm-leaf mats, covered in
the roof. On the third day my house was finished, and all my things put
in and comfortably arranged to begin work, and I was quite pleased at
having got established so quickly and in such a nice situation.
It had been so far fine weather, but in the night it rained hard, and we
found our mat roof would not keep out water. It first began to drop,
and then to stream over everything. I had to get up in the middle of the
night to secure my insect-boxes, rice, and other perishable articles,
and to find a dry place to sleep in, for my bed was soaked. Fresh leaks
kept forming as the rain continued, and w e all passed a very miserable
and sleepless night. In the morning the sun shone brightly, and
everything was put out to dry. We tried to find out why the mats leaked,
and thought we had discovered that they had been laid on upside down.
Having shifted there all, and got everything dry and comfortable by the
evening, we again went to bed, and before midnight were again awaked by
torrent of rain and leaks streaming in upon us as bad as ever. There
was no more sleep for us that night, and the next day our roof was again
taken to pieces, and we came to the conclusion that the fault was a want
of slope enough in the roof for mats, although it would be sufficient
for the usual attap thatch. I therefore purchased a few new and some old
attaps, and in the parts these would not cover we put the mats double,
and then at last had the satisfaction of finding our roof tolerably
water-tight.
I was now able to begin working at the natural history of the island.
When I first arrived I was surprised at being told that there were no
Paradise Birds at Muka, although there were plenty at Bessir, a place
where the natives caught them and prepared the skins. I assured the
people I had heard the cry of these birds close to the village, but they
world not believe that I could know their cry. However, the very first
time I went into the forest I not only heard but saw them, and was
convinced there were plenty about; but they were very shy, and it was
some time before we got any. My hunter first shot a female, and I one
day got very close to a fine male. He was, as I expected, the rare red
species, Paradisea rubra, which alone inhabits this island, and is found
nowhere else. He was quite low down, running along a bough searching
for insects, almost like a woodpecker, and the long black riband-like
filaments in his tail hung down in the most graceful double curve
imaginable. I covered him with my gun, and was going to use the barrel
which had a very small charge of powder and number eight shot, so as
not to injure his plumage, but the gun missed fire, and he was off in an
instant among the thickest jungle. Another day we saw no less than eight
fine males at different times, and fired four times at them; but though
other birds at the same distance almost always dropped, these all got
away, and I began to think we were not to get this magnificent species.
At length the fruit ripened on the fig-tree close by my house, and many
birds came to feed on it; and one morning, as I was taking my coffee, a
male Paradise Bird was seen to settle on its top. I seized my gun, ran
under the tree, and, gazing up, could see it flying across from branch
to branch, seizing a fruit here and another there, and then, before I
could get a sufficient aim to shoot at such a height (for it was one of
the loftiest trees of the tropics), it was away into the forest. They
now visited the tree every morning; but they stayed so short a time,
their motions were so rapid, and it was so difficult to see them, owing
to the lower trees, which impeded the view, that it was only after
several days' watching, and one or two misses, that I brought down my
bird--a male in the most magnificent plumage.
This bird differs very much from the two large species which I had
already obtained, and, although it wants the grace imparted by their
long golden trains, is in many respects more remarkable and more
beautiful. The head, back, and shoulders are clothed with a richer
yellow, the deep metallic green colour of the throat extends further
over the head, and the feathers are elongated on the forehead into two
little erectile crests. The side plumes are shorter, but are of a
rich red colour, terminating in delicate white points, and the middle
tail-feathers are represented by two long rigid glossy ribands, which
are black, thin, and semi-cylindrical, and droop gracefully in a
spiral curve. Several other interesting birds were obtained, and about
half-a-dozen quite new ones; but none of any remarkable beauty, except
the lovely little dove, Ptilonopus pulchellus, which with several
other pigeons I shot on the same fig-tree close to my house. It is of
a beautiful green colour above, with a forehead of the richest crimson,
while beneath it is ashy white and rich yellow, banded with violet red.
On the evening of our arrival at Muka I observed what appeared like a
display of Aurora Borealis, though I could hardly believe that this was
possible at a point a little south of the equator. The night was clear
and calm, and the northern sky presented a diffused light, with a
constant succession of faint vertical flashings or flickerings, exactly
similar to an ordinary aurora in England. The next day was fine, but
after that the weather was unprecedentedly bad, considering that it
ought to have been the dry monsoon. For near a month we had wet weather;
the sun either not appearing at all, or only for an hour or two about
noon. Morning and evening, as well as nearly all night, it rained or
drizzled, and boisterous winds, with dark clouds, formed the daily
programme. With the exception that it was never cold, it was just such
weather as a very bad English November or February.
The people of Waigiou are not truly indigenes of the island, which
possesses no "Alfuros," or aboriginal inhabitants. They appear to be
a mixed race, partly from Gilolo, partly from New Guinea. Malays and
Alfuros from the former island have probably settled here, and many of
them have taken Papuan wives from Salwatty or Dorey, while the influx of
people from those places, and of slaves, has led to the formation of a
tribe exhibiting almost all the transitions from a nearly pure Malayan
to an entirely Papuan type. The language spoken by them is entirely
Papuan, being that which is used on all the coasts of Mysol, Salwatty,
the north-west of New Guinea, and the islands in the great Geelvink
Bay,--a fact which indicates the way in which the coast settlements have
been formed. The fact that so many of the islands between New Guinea and
the Moluccas--such as Waigiou, Guebe, Poppa, Obi, Batchian, as well as
the south and east peninsulas of Gilolo--possess no aboriginal tribes,
but are inhabited by people who are evidently mongrels and wanderers, is
a remarkable corroborative proof of the distinctness of the Malayan and
Papuan races, and the separation of the geographical areas they inhabit.
If these two great races were direct modifications, the one of
the other, we should expect to find in the intervening region some
homogeneous indigenous race presenting intermediate characters. For
example, between the whitest inhabitants of Europe and the black Klings
of South India, there are in the intervening districts homogeneous races
which form a gradual transition from one to the other; while in America,
although there is a perfect transition from the Anglo-Saxon to the
negro, and from the Spaniard to the Indian, there is no homogeneous
race forming a natural transition from one to the other. In the Malay
Archipelago we have an excellent example of two absolutely distinct
races, which appear to have approached each other, and intermingled in
an unoccupied territory at a very recent epoch in the history of man;
and I feel satisfied that no unprejudiced person could study them on
the spot without being convinced that this is the true solution of the
problem, rather than the almost universally accepted view that they are
but modifications of one and the same race.
The people of Muka live in that abject state of poverty that is almost
always found where the sago-tree is abundant. Very few of them take the
trouble to plant any vegetables or fruit, but live almost entirely on
sago and fish, selling a little tripang or tortoiseshell to buy the
scanty clothing they require. Almost all of them, however, possess one
or more Papuan slaves, on whose labour they live in almost absolute
idleness, just going out on little fishing or trading excursions, as an
excitement in their monotonous existence. They are under the rule of the
Sultan of Tidore, and every year have to pay a small tribute of Paradise
birds, tortoiseshell, or sago. To obtain these, they go in the fine
season on a trading voyage to the mainland of New Guinea, and getting a
few goods on credit from some Ceram or Bugis trader, make hard bargains
with the natives, and gain enough to pay their tribute, and leave a
little profit for themselves.
Such a country is not a very pleasant one to live in, for as there are
no superfluities, there is nothing to sell; and had it not been for a
trader from Ceram who was residing there during my stay, who had a small
vegetable garden, and whose men occasionally got a few spare fish, I
should often have had nothing to eat. Fowls, fruit, and vegetables are
luxuries very rarely to be purchased at Muka; and even cocoa-nuts, so
indispensable for eastern cookery, are not to be obtained; for though
there are some hundreds of trees in the village, all the fruit is eaten
green, to supply the place of the vegetables the people are too lazy
to cultivate. Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, or plantains, we had very short
commons, and the boisterous weather being unpropitious for fishing, we
had to live on what few eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional
cuscus, or eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, inhabiting
the island.
I had only shot two male Paradiseas on my tree when they ceased visiting
it, either owing to the fruit becoming scarce, or that they were wise
enough to know there was danger. We continued to hear and see them in
the forest, but after a month had not succeeded in shooting any more;
and as my chief object in visiting Waigiou was to get these birds, I
determined to go to Bessir, where there are a number of Papuans who
catch and preserve them. I hired a small outrigger boat for this
journey, and left one of my men to guard my house and goods. We had
to wait several days for fine weather, and at length started early
one morning, and arrived late at night, after a rough and disagreeable
passage. The village of Bessir was built in the water at the point of
a small island. The chief food of the people was evidently shell-fish,
since great heaps of the shells had accumulated in the shallow water
between the houses and the land, forming a regular "kitchen-midden" for
the exploration of some future archeologist. We spent the night in the
chief's house, and the next morning went over to the mainland to look
out for a place where I could reside. This part of Waigiou is really
another island to the south of the narrow channel we had passed through
in coming to Muka. It appears to consist almost entirely of raised
coral, whereas the northern island contains hard crystalline rocks. The
shores were a range of low limestone cliffs, worn out by the water, so
that the upper part generally overhung. At distant intervals were little
coves and openings, where small streams came down from the interior; and
in one of these we landed, pulling our boat up on a patch of white sandy
beach. Immediately above was a large newly-made plantation of yams and
plantains, and a small hot, which the chief said we might have the use
of, if it would do for me. It was quite a dwarf's house, just eight feet
square, raised on posts so that the floor was four and a half feet above
the ground, and the highest part of the ridge only five feet above the
flour. As I am six feet and an inch in my stockings, I looked at this
with some dismay; but finding that the other houses were much further
from water, were dreadfully dirty, and were crowded with people, I at
once accepted the little one, and determined to make the best of it.
At first I thought of taking out the floor, which would leave it high
enough to walk in and out without stooping; but then there would not be
room enough, so I left it just as it was, had it thoroughly cleaned out,
and brought up my baggage. The upper story I used for sleeping in, and
for a store-room. In the lower part (which was quite open all round) I
fixed up a small table, arranged my boxes, put up hanging-shelves, laid
a mat on the ground with my wicker-chair upon it, hung up another mat on
the windward side, and then found that, by bending double and carefully
creeping in, I could sit on my chair with my head just clear of the
ceiling. Here I lived pretty comfortably for six weeks, taking all my
meals and doing all my work at my little table, to and from which I had
to creep in a semi-horizontal position a dozen times a day; and, after
a few severe knocks on the head by suddenly rising from my chair, learnt
to accommodate myself to circumstances. We put up a little sloping
cooking-but outside, and a bench on which my lads could skin their
birds. At night I went up to my little loft, they spread their mats on
the floor below, and we none of us grumbled at our lodgings.
My first business was to send for the men who were accustomed to catch
the Birds of Paradise. Several came, and I showed them my hatchets,
beads, knives, and handkerchiefs; and explained to them, as well as I
could by signs, the price I would give for fresh-killed specimens. It is
the universal custom to pay for everything in advance; but only one man
ventured on this occasion to take goods to the value of two birds. The
rest were suspicious, and wanted to see the result of the first bargain
with the strange white man, the only one who had ever come to their
island. After three days, my man brought me the first bird--a very fine
specimen, and alive, but tied up in a small bag, and consequently its
tail and wing feathers very much crushed and injured. I tried to explain
to him, and to the others that came with him, that I wanted them as
perfect as possible, and that they should either kill them, or keep
them on a perch with a string to their leg. As they were now apparently
satisfied that all was fair, and that I had no ulterior designs upon
them, six others took away goods; some for one bird, some for more, and
one for as many as six. They said they had to go a long way for them,
and that they would come back as soon as they caught any. At intervals
of a few days or a week, some of them would return, bringing me one or
more birds; but though they did not bring any more in bags, there was
not much improvement in their condition. As they caught them a long way
off in the forest, they would scarcely ever come with one, but would
tie it by the leg to a stick, and put it in their house till they caught
another. The poor creature would make violent efforts to escape, would
get among the ashes, or hang suspended by the leg till the limb was
swollen and half-putrefied, and sometimes die of starvation and worry.
One had its beautiful head all defiled by pitch from a dammar torch;
another had been so long dead that its stomach was turning green.
Luckily, however, the skin and plumage of these birds is so firm and
strong, that they bear washing and cleaning better than almost any other
sort; and I was generally able to clean them so well that they did not
perceptibly differ from those I had shot myself.
Some few were brought me the same day they were caught, and I had an
opportunity of examining them in all their beauty and vivacity. As soon
as I found they were generally brought alive, I set one of my men to
make a large bamboo cage with troughs for food and water, hoping to be
able to keep some of them. I got the natives to bring me branches of
a fruit they were very fond of, and I was pleased to find they ate it
greedily, and would also take any number of live grasshoppers I gave
them, stripping off the legs and wings, and then swallowing them. They
drank plenty of water, and were in constant motion, jumping about the
cage from perch to perch, clinging on the top and sides, and rarely
resting a moment the first day till nightfall. The second day they were
always less active, although they would eat as freely as before; and on
the morning of the third day they were almost always found dead at the
bottom of the cage, without any apparent cause. Some of them ate boiled
rice as well as fruit and insects; but after trying many in succession,
not one out of ten lived more than three days. The second or third
day they would be dull, and in several cases they were seized with
convulsions, and fell off the perch, dying a few hours afterwards.
I tried immature as well as full-plumaged birds, but with no better
success, and at length gave it up as a hopeless task, and confined my
attention to preserving specimens in as good a condition as possible.
The Red Birds of Paradise are not shot with blunt arrows, as in the Aru
Islands and some parts of New Guinea, but are snared in a very ingenious
manner. A large climbing Arum bears a red reticulated fruit, of which
the birds are very fond. The hunters fasten this fruit on a stout forked
stick, and provide themselves with a fine but strong cord. They then
seep out some tree in the forest on which these birds are accustomed to
perch, and climbing up it fasten the stick to a branch and arrange the
cord in a noose so ingeniously, that when the bird comes to eat the
fruit its legs are caught, and by pulling the end of the cord, which
hangs down to the ground, it comes free from the branch and brings down
the bird. Sometimes, when food is abundant elsewhere, the hunter sits
from morning till night under his tree with the cord in his hand, and
even for two or three whole days in succession, without even getting a
bite; while, on the other hand, if very lucky, he may get two or three
birds in a day. There are only eight or ten men at Bessir who practise
this art, which is unknown anywhere else in the island. I determined,
therefore, to stay as long as possible, as my only chance of getting a
good series of specimens; and although I was nearly starved, everything
eatable by civilized man being scarce or altogether absent, I finally
succeeded.
The vegetables and fruit in the plantations around us did not suffice
for the wants of the inhabitants, and were almost always dug up or
gathered before they were ripe. It was very rarely we could purchase
a little fish; fowls there were none; and we were reduced to live upon
tough pigeons and cockatoos, with our rice and sago, and sometimes we
could not get these. Having been already eight months on this voyage, my
stock of all condiments, spices and butter, was exhausted, and I found
it impossible to eat sufficient of my tasteless and unpalatable food
to support health. I got very thin and weak, and had a curious disease
known (I have since heard) as brow-ague. Directly after breakfast every
morning an intense pain set in on a small spot on the right temple. It
was a severe burning ache, as bad as the worst toothache, and lasted
about two hours, generally going off at noon. When this finally ceased,
I had an attack of fever, which left me so weak and so unable to eat our
regular food, that I feel sure my life was saved by a couple of tins of
soup which I had long reserved for some such extremity. I used often to
go out searching after vegetables, and found a great treasure in a lot
of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the size of
gooseberries. I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants and of ferns,
by way of greens, and occasionally got a few green papaws. The natives,
when hard up for food, live upon a fleshy seaweed, which they boil till
it is tender. I tried this also, but found it too salt and bitter to be
endured.
Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for me to
return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end of the east
monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from me had brought the
birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had been so unfortunate
as not to get one, and he very honestly brought back the axe he had
received in advance; another, who had agreed for six, brought me the
fifth two days before I was to start, and went off immediately to the
forest again to get the other. He did not return, however, and we loaded
our boat, and were just on the point of starting, when he came running
down after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with
great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were remarkable and
quite unexpected instances of honesty among savages, where it would have
been very easy for them to have been dishonest without fear of detection
or punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged, bristling with
jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with curious little chasms
and ravines. The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which in
the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the extreme, and
often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants and curious blue-foliaged
Lycopodiaceae. It was in such places as these that I obtained many of
my most beautiful small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila
pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many others. On the
skirts of the plantations I found the handsome blue Deudorix despoena,
and in the shady woods the lovely Lycaena wallacei. Here, too, I
obtained the beautiful Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the upper
side; while below it is intense crimson and glossy black; and a superb
specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely fresh and perfect, and
which still remains one of the glories of my cabinet.
My collection of birds, though not very rich in number of species, was
yet very interesting. I got another specimen of the rare New Guinea
kite (Henicopernis longicauda), a large new goatsucker (Podargus
superciliaris), and a most curious ground-pigeon of an entirely new
genus, and remarkable for its long and powerful bill. It has been named
Henicophaps albifrons. I was also much pleased to obtain a fine series
of a large fruit-pigeon with a protuberance on the bill (Carpophaga
tumida), and to ascertain that this was not, as had been hitherto
supposed, a sexual character, but was found equally in male and female
birds. I collected only seventy-three species of birds in Waigiou, but
twelve of them were entirely new, and many others very rare; and as I
brought away with me twenty-four fine specimens of the Paradisea rubra,
I did not regret my visit to the island, although it had by no means
answered my expectations.