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. "Accabo" was one; and to be sure that it was not an accidental
resemblance, I asked the speaker in Malay what "accabo" 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 consider