n. They wear
necklaces, earrings, and finger rings, and delight in a band of plaited
grass tight round the arm just below the shoulder, to which they attach
a bunch of hair or bright coloured feathers by way of ornament. The
teeth of small animals, either alone, or alternately with black or white
beads, form their necklaces, and sometimes bracelets also. For
these latter, however, they prefer brass wire, or the black, horny,
wing-spines of the cassowary, which they consider a charm. Anklets of
brass or shell, and tight plaited garters below the knee, complete their
ordinary decorations.

Some natives of Kobror from further south, and who are reckoned the
worst and least civilized of the Aru tribes, came one day to visit us.
They have a rather more than usually savage appearance, owing to the
greater amount of ornaments they use--the most conspicuous being a
large horseshoe-shaped comb which they wear over the forehead, the ends
resting on the temples. The back of the comb is fastened into a piece of
wood, which is plated with tin in front, and above is attached a plume
of feathers from a cock's tail. In other respects they scarcely differed
from the people I was living with. They brought me a couple of birds,
some shells and insects; showing that the report of the white man and
his doing had reached their country. There was probably hardly a man in
Aru who had not by this time heard of me.

Besides the domestic utensils already mentioned, the moveable property
of a native is very scanty. He has a good supply of spears and bows
and arrows for hunting, a parang, or chopping-knife, and an axe-for the
stone age has passed away here, owing to the commercial enterprise of
the Bugis and other Malay races. Attached to a belt, or hung across
his shoulder, he carries a little skin pouch and an ornamented
bamboo, containing betel-nut, tobacco, and lime, and a small German
wooden-handled knife is generally stuck between his waist-cloth of bark
and his bare shin. Each man also possesses a "cadjan," or sleeping-mat,
made of the broad leaves of a pandanus neatly sewn together in three
layers. This mat is abort four feet square, and when folded has one end
sewn up, so that it forms a kind of sack open at one side. In the closed
corner the head or feet can be placed, or by carrying it on the head
in a shower it forms both coat and umbrella. It doubles up ix a small
compass for convenient carriage, and then forms a light and elastic
cu