my boys had already obtained two or three kinds I had not seen
before; and in the evening a native brought me a rare and beautiful
species of ground-thrush (Pitta novaeguinaeae) hitherto only known from
New Guinea.

As I improved my acquaintance with them I became much interested in
these people, who are a fair sample of the true savage inhabitants of
the Aru Islands, tolerably free from foreign admixture. The house I
lived in contained four or five families, and there were generally
from six to a dozen visitors besides. They kept up a continual row
from morning till night--talking, laughing, shouting, without
intermission--not very pleasant, but interesting as a study of national
character. My boy Ali said to me, "Banyak quot bitchara Orang Aru" (The
Aru people are very strong talkers), never having been accustomed to
such eloquence either in his own or any other country he had hitherto
visited. Of an evening the men, having got over their first shyness,
began to talk to me a little, asking about my country, &c., and in
return I questioned them about any traditions they had of their own
origin. I had, however, very little success, for I could not possibly
make them understand the simple question of where the Aru people first
came from. I put it in every possible way to them, but it was a subject
quite beyond their speculations; they had evidently never thought of
anything of the kind, and were unable to conceive a thing so remote and
so unnecessary to be thought about, as their own origin. Finding this
hopeless, I asked if they knew when the trade with Aru first began, when
the Bugis and Chinese and Macassar men first came in their praus to buy
tripang and tortoise-shell, and birds' nests, and Paradise birds?

This they comprehended, but replied that there had always been the same
trade as long as they or their fathers recollected, but that this was
the first time a real white man had come among them, and, said they,
"You see how the people come every day from all the villages round to
look at you." This was very flattering, and accounted for the great
concourse of visitors which I had at first imagined was accidental. A
few years before I had been one of the gazers at the Zoolus, and the
Aztecs in London. Now the tables were turned upon me, for I was to these
people a new and strange variety of man, and had the honour of affording
to them, in my own person, an attractive exhibition, gratis.

All the men and boys of