第145章

I LEFT Amboyna for my first visit to Ceram at three o'clock in the morning of October 29th, after having been delayed several days by the boat's crew, who could not be got together. Captain Van der Beck, who gave me a passage in his boat, had been running after them all day, and at midnight we had to search for two of my men who had disappeared at the last moment. One we found at supper in his own house, and rather tipsy with his parting libations of arrack, but the other was gone across the bay, and we were obliged to leave without him. We stayed some hours at two villages near the east end of Amboyna, at one of which we had to discharge some wood for the missionaries' house, and on the third afternoon reached Captain Van der Beck's plantation, situated at Hatosua, in that part of Ceram opposite to the island of Amboyna.

This was a clearing in flat and rather swampy forest, about twenty acres in extent, and mostly planted with cacao and tobacco. Besides a small cottage occupied by the workmen, there was a large shed for tobacco drying, a corner of which was offered me; and thinking from the look of the place that I should find- good collecting ground here, I fitted up temporary tables, benches, and beds, and made all preparations for some weeks' stay. A few days, however, served to show that I should be disappointed. Beetles were tolerably abundant, and I obtained plenty of fine long-horned Anthribidae and pretty Longicorns, but they were mostly the same species as I had found during my first short visit to Amboyna. There were very few paths in the forest;which seemed poor in birds and butterflies, and day after day my men brought me nothing worth notice. I was therefore soon obliged to think about changing my locality, as I could evidently obtain no proper notion of the productions of the almost entirely unexplored island of Ceram by staying in this place.

I rather regretted leaving, because my host was one of the most remarkable men and most entertaining companions I had ever met with. He was a Fleeting by birth, and, like so many of his countrymen, had a wonderful talent for languages. When quite a youth he had accompanied a Government official who was sent to report on the trade and commerce of the Mediterranean, and had acquired the colloquial language of every place they stayed a few weeks at. He had afterwards made voyages to St. Petersburg, and to other parts of Europe, including a few weeks in London, and had then come out to the past, where he had been for some years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now spoke Dutch, French, Malay, and Javanese, all equally well; English with a very slight accent, but with perfect fluency, axed a most complete knowledge of idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German and Italian were also quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance with European languages included Modern Greek, Turkish, Russian, and colloquial Hebrew and Latin. As a test of his power, I may mention that he had made a voyage to the out-of-the-way island of Salibaboo, and had stayed there trading a few weeks. As I was collecting vocabularies, he told me he thought he could remember some words, and dictated considerable number. Some time after I met with a short list of words taken down in those islands, and in every case they agreed with those he had given me. He used to sing a Hebrew drinking-song, which he had learned from some Jews with whom he had once travelled, and astonished by joining in their conversation, and had a never-ending fund of tale and anecdote about the people he had met and the places he had visited.

In most of the villages of this part of Ceram are schools and native schoolmasters, and the inhabitants have been long converted to Christianity. In the larger villages there are European missionaries; but there is little or no external difference between the Christian and Alfuro villages, nor, as far as I have seen, in their inhabitants. The people seem more decidedly Papuan than those of Gilolo. They are darker in colour, and a number of them have the frizzly Papuan hair; their features also are harsh and prominent, and the women in particular are far less engaging than those of the Malay race. Captain Van der Beck was never tired of abusing the inhabitants of these Christian villages as thieves, liars, and drunkards, besides being incorrigibly lazy. In the city of Amboyna my friends Doctors Mohnike and Doleschall, as well as most of the European residents and traders, made exactly the same complaint, and would rather have Mahometans for servants, even if convicts, than any of the native Christians. One great cause of this is the fact, that with the Mahometans temperance is a part of their religion, and has become so much a habit that practically the rule is never transgressed. One fertile source of want, arid one great incentive to idleness and crime, is thus present with the one class, but absent in the other; but besides this the Christians look upon themselves as nearly the equals of the Europeans, who profess the same religion, and as far superior to the followers of Islam, and are therefore prone to despise work, and to endeavour to live by trade, or by cultivating their own land. It need hardly be said that with people in this low state of civilization religion is almost wholly ceremonial, and that neither are the doctrines of Christianity comprehended, nor its moral precepts obeyed. At the same time, as far as my own experience goes, I have found the better class of "Orang Sirani"as civil, obliging, and industrious as the Malays, and only inferior to them from their tendency to get intoxicated.