evidently been introduced during a long-continued commercial
intercourse, seem to have no affinity whatever with
the Malay languages.
Jan. &(h.—The small boats being finished, we sailed
for Aru at 4 p.m., and as we left the shores of Kh had a
fine view of its rugged and mountainous character; ranges
of hills, three or four thousand feet high, stretching southwards
as far as the eye could reach, everywhere covered
with a lofty, dense, and unbroken forest. We had very
light winds, and it therefore took us thirty hours to make
the passage of sixty miles to the low, or flat, but equally
forest-covered Aru Islands, where we anchored in the
harbour of Dobbo at nine in the evening of the next day.
My first voyage in a prau being thus satisfactorily
terminated, I must, before taking leave of it for some
months, bear testimony to the merits of the queer old-
world vessel. Setting aside all ideas of danger, which is
probably, after all, not more than in any other craft, I
must declare that I have never, either before or since,
made a twenty days’ voyage so pleasantly, or perhaps,
more correctly speaking, with so little discomfort. This I
attribute chiefly to having my small cabin on deck, and
entirely to myself, to having my own servants to wait
upon me, and to the absence of all those marine-store
smells of paint, pitch, tallow, and new cordage, which are
to me insupportable. Something is also to be put down
to freedom from all restraint of dress, hours of meals, &c.,
and to the civility and obliging disposition of the captain.
I had agreed to have my meals with him, but whenever I
wished it I had them in my own berth, and at what
hours I felt inclined. The crew were all civil and good-
tempered, and with very little discipline everything went
on smoothly, and the vessel was kept very clean and in
pretty good order, so that on the whole I was much
delighted with the trip, and was inclined to rate the
luxuries of the semi-barbarous prau as surpassing those of
the most magnificent screw-steamer, that highest result
of our civilization.