An occasional wedding also helps to break up
the unvarying monotony, and kindly furnishes a
topic for general conversation, so that for a time every
one does not feel obliged to complain of the abundance
of rain, if it is the rainy season, or of the lack
of rain if it is the dry monsoon. Whenever an official
goes back to Holland, or is transferred from one place
to another, which usually occurs once in three years,
even when he is not promoted, he sells most of his
furniture at auction. His friends always muster in
full force, and each one is expected to show his attachment
to his departing friend by purchasing a
number of articles, or something of little value, at ten
or a hundred times its price. Such an occasion also
gives a change to the talk among merchants.
An auction here, instead of being a kind of private
trade, as with us, is directly under the management
of the government. An authorized auctioneer
is regularly appointed at each place, and a scribe
carefully enters the name of the successful bidder,
the article he has purchased, and the price. Three
months of grace are allowed before such a bill becomes
due, but then the buyer must at once pay the
sum due or make some arrangement satisfactory to
the seller. When natives, whose assets are always
limited, have purchased a number of articles, the
scribe frequently takes upon himself the responsibility
of ordering them not to bid again.
CHAPTER VIL
BANDA.
Two months had now passed since I arrived
at Amboina, and I had not only collected all the
shells figured in Rumphius’s “ Rariteit Kamer,” which
I had come to seek, but more than twice as many
species besides. I was therefore ready to visit some
other locality, and turn my attention to a different
branch of natural histoiy. During all the time I
had been gathering and arranging my collection, Governor
Arriens had frequently honored me with a visit,
and, as I was finishing my work, he called again, this
time to give me a pleasant surprise. He had a fine
steam-yacht, of three or four hundred tons. It was
necessary that he should go to Banda, and he took it
for granted that I would accompany him. If I had
planned for myself, what could I have desired more;
but he added that, when his yacht, the Telegraph, returned,
there would be an item of business for her to
do on the north coast of Ceram, which I should also
visit, though alone, and that, when she returned to
Amboina a second time, we would go together to Ter-
nate, and, taking the Resident stationed there, proceed
to the north coast of Papua—a royal programme.