The inhabitants of Coupang consist of Malays, Chinese,
and Dutch, besides the natives; so that there are many
strange and complicated mixtures among the population.
There is one resident English merchant, and whalers as
well as Australian ships often come here for stores and
water. The native Timorese preponderate, and a very
little examination serves to show that they have nothing
in common with Malays, but are much more closely allied
to the true Papuans of the Aru Islands and Hew Guinea.
They are tall, have pronounced features, large somewhat
aquiline noses, and frizzly hair, and are generally of a
dusky brown colour. The way in which the women talk
to each other and to the men, their loud voices and
laughter, and general character of self-assertion, would
enable an experienced observer to decide, even without
seeing them, that they were not Malays.
Mr. Arndt, a German and the Government doctor,
invited me to stay at his house while in Coupang, and I
gladly accepted his offer, as I only intended making a
short visit. We at first began speaking French, but he got
on so badly that we soon passed insensibly into Malay;
and we afterwards held long discussions: on literary,
scientific, and philosophical questions, in that semi-
barbarous. language, whose deficiencies we made up by the
free use of French or Latin words.
After a few walks in the neighbourhood of the town, I
found such a poverty of insects and birds that I determined
to go for a few days to the island of Semao at the
western extremity of Timor, where I heard that there was
forest country with birds not found at Coupang. With
some difficulty I obtained a large dug-out boat with out-
rieeers, to take me over, a distance OO ' of about twenty miles.
I found the country pretty well wooded, but covered with
shrubs and thorny bushes rather than forest trees, and
everywhere excessively parched and dried up by the long-
continued dry season. I stayed at the village of Oeassa,
remarkable for its soap springs. One of these is m the
middle of the village, bubbling out from a little cone of
mud to which the ground rises all round like a volcano in
miniature. The water has a soapy feel and produces a
strong lather when any greasy substance is washed in it.
It contains alkali and iodine, in such quantities as to
destroy all vegetation for some distance round. Close by
the village is one of the finest springs I have ever seen,
contained in several rocky basins communicating by
narrow channels. These have been neatly walled where
required and partly levelled, and form fine natural baths.
The water is well tasted and clear as crystal, and the
basins are surrounded by a grove of lofty many-stemmed
banyan-trees, which keep them always cool and shady,
and add greatly to the picturesque beauty of the scene.
The village consists of curious little houses very difu
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