pended both without and within the house. On my
table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers, and pins, with insect and
bird labels, all of which were unsolved mysteries to the native mind.

Most of the people here had never seen a pin, and the better
informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant companions the
peculiarities and uses of that strange European production--a needle
with a head, but no eye! Even paper, which we throw away hourly as
rubbish, was to them a curiosity; and I often saw them picking up little
scraps which had been swept out of the house, and carefully putting
them away in their betel-pouch. Then when I took my morning coffee and
evening tea, how many were the strange things displayed to them! Teapot,
teacups, teaspoons, were all more or less curious in their eyes; tea,
sugar, biscuit, and butter, were articles of human consumption seen
by many of them for the first time. One asks if that whitish powder is
"gula passir" (sand-sugar), so called to distinguish it from the coarse
lump palm-sugar or molasses of native manufacture; and the biscuit is
considered a sort of European sago-cake, which the inhabitants of those
remote regions are obliged to use in the absence of the genuine article.
My pursuit, were of course utterly beyond their comprehension. They
continually asked me what white people did with the birds and insects I
tools so much care to preserve. If I only kept what was beautiful, they
might perhaps comprehend it; but to see ants and files and small ugly
insects put away so carefully was a great puzzle to them, and they were
convinced that there must be some medical or magical use for them
which I kept a profound secret. These people were in fact as completely
unacquainted with civilized life as the Indians of the Rocky Mountains,
or the savages of Central Africa--yet a steamship, that highest triumph
of human ingenuity, with its little floating epitome of European
civilization, touches monthly at Cajeli, twenty miles off; while at
Amboyna, only sixty miles distant, a European population and government
have been established for more than three hundred years.

Having seen a good many of the natives of Bouru from different villages,
and from distant parts of the island, I feel convinced that they consist
of two distinct races now partially amalgamated. The larger portion are
Malays of the Celebes type, often exactly similar to the Tomore
people of East Celebes, whom I found settled