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 doings
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 woodenhandled
knife is generally stuck between his waist-cloth
of bark and his bare skin. 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 about 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 in a small compass foi
convenient carriage, and then forms a light and elastic
cushion, so that on a journey it becomes clothing, house,
bedding, and furniture, all in one.
The only ornaments in an Aru house are trophies of the
chase—jaws of wild pigs, the heads and backbones of
cassowaries, and plumes made from the feathers of the
Bird of Paradise, cassowary, and domestic fowl. The
spears, shields, knife-handles, and other utensils are more
or less carved in fanciful designs, and the mats and leaf
boxes are painted or plaited in neat patterns of red, black,
and yellow colours. I must not forget these boxes, which
are most ingeniously made of the pith of a palm leaf
pegged together, lined inside with pandanus leaves, and
outside with the same, or with plaited grass. All the
joints and angles are covered with strips of split rattan
sewn neatly on. The lid is covered with the brown
leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which is impervious
VOL. II. s