Contrary winds, squalls, and currents drifted us about the rest of the day at their pleasure. The night was equally squally and changeable, and kept us hard at work taking in and making sail, and rowing in the intervals. Sunrise on the 2d found us in the middle of the ten-mile channel between Kaióa and Makian. Squalls and showers succeeded each other during the morning. At noon there was a dead calm, after which a light westerly breeze enabled us to reach a village on Makian in the evening. Here I bought some pumelos (Citrus decumana), kanary-nuts, and coffee, and let my men have a night's sleep. The morning of the 3d was fine, and we rowed slowly along the coast of Makian. The captain of a small prau at anchor, seeing me on deck and guessing who I was, made signals for us to stop, and brought me a letter from Charles Allen, who informed me he had been at Ternate twenty days, and was anxiously waiting my arrival. This was good news, as I was equally anxious about him, and it cheered up my spirits. A light southerly wind now sprung up, and we thought we were going to have fine weather. It soon changed, however, to its old quarter, the west; dense clouds gathered over the sky, and in less than half an hour we had the severest squall we had experienced during our whole voyage. Luckily we got our great mainsail down in time, or the consequences might have been serious. It was a regular little hurricane, and my old Bugis steersman began shouting out to “Allah! il Allah!" to preserve us. We could only keep up our jib, which was almost blown to rags, but by careful handling it kept us before the wind, and the prau behaved very well. Our small boat (purchased at Gani) was towing astern, and soon got full of water, so that it broke away and we saw no more of it. In about an hour the fury of the wind abated a little, and in two more we were able to hoist our mainsail, reefed and half-mast high. Toward evening it cleared up and fell calm, and the sea, which had been rather high, soon went down. Not being much of a seaman myself, I had been considerably alarmed, and even the old steersman assured me he had never been in a worse squall all his life. He was now more than ever confirmed in his opinion of the unluckiness of the boat, and in the efficiency of the holy oil which all Bugis praus had poured through their bottoms. As it was, he imputed our safety and the quick termination of the squall entirely to his own prayers, saying with a laugh, "Yes, that's the way we always do on board our praus; when things are at the worst we stand up and shout out our prayers as loud as we can, and then Tuwan Allah helps us. After this it took us two days more to reach Ternate, having our usual calms, squalls, and head-winds to the very last; and once having to return back to our anchorage owing to violent gusts of wind just as we were close to the town. Looking at my whole voyage in this vessel from the time when I left Goram in May, it will appear that my experiences of travel in a native prau have not been enconrag. ing. My first crew ran away; two men were lost for a month on a desert island; we were ten times aground on coral reefs; we lost four anchors; the sails were devoured by rats; the small boat was lost astern; we were thirty-eight days on the voyage home, which should not have taken twelve; we were many times short of food and water; we had no compass-lamp, owing to there not being a drop of oil in Waigiou when we left; and to crown all, during the whole of our voyages from Goram by Ceram to Waigiou, and from Waigiou to Ternate, occupying in all seventy-eight days, or only twelve days short of three months (all in what was supposed to be the favorable season), we had not one single day of fair wind! We were always close braced up, always struggling against wind, tide, and leeway, and in a vessel that would scarcely sail nearer than eight points from the wind. Every seaman will admit that my first voyage in my own boat was a most unlucky one. Charles Allen had obtained a tolerable collection of birds and insects at Mysol, but far less than he would have done if I had not been so unfortunate as to miss visiting him. After waiting another week or two till he was nearly starved, he returned to Wahai, in Ceram, and heard, much to his surprise, that I had left a fortnight before. He was delayed there more than a month before he could get back to the north side of Mysol, which he found a much better locality, but it was not yet the season for the paradise birds; and before he had obtained more than a few of the common sort, the last prau was ready to leave for Ternate, and he was obliged to take the opportunity, as he expected I would be waiting there for him. This concludes the record of my wanderings. I next went to Timor, and afterward to Bouru, Java, and Sumatra, which places have already been described. Charles Allen made a voyage to New Guinea, a short account of which will be given in my next chapter on the birds of paradise. On his return he went to the Sula Islands, and made a very interesting collection, which served to determine the limits of the zoological group of Celebes, as already explained in my chapter on the natural history of that island. His next journey was to Flores and Solor, where he obtained some valuable materials, which I have used in my chapter on the natural history of the Timor group. He afterward went to Coti, on the east coast of Borneo, from which place I was very anxious to obtain collections, as it is a quite new locality as far as possible from Sarawak, and I had heard very good accounts of it. On his return thence to Sourabaya, in Java, he was to have gone to the entirely unknown Sumba or Sandal-wood Island. Most unfortunately, however, he was seized with a terrible fever on his arrival at Coti, and, after lying there some weeks, was taken to Singapore in a very bad condition, where he arrived after I had left for England. When he recovered he obtained employment in Singapore, and I lost his services as a collector. The three concluding chapters of my work will treat of the Birds of Paradise, the Natural History of the Papuan Islands, and the Races of Man in the Malay Archipelago. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE BIRDS OF PARADISE. As many of my journeys were made with the express object of obtaining specimens of the birds of paradise, and learning something of their habits and distribution; and being (as far as I am aware) the only Englishman who has seen these wonderful birds in their native forests, and obtained specimens of many of them, I propose to give here, in a connected form, the result of my observations and inquiries. When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas in search of cloves and nutmegs, which were then rare and precious spices, they were presented with the dried skins of birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even of those wealth-seeking rovers. The Malay traders gave them the name of "Manuk dewata," or God's birds; and the Portuguese, finding that they had no feet or wings, and not being able to learn any thing authentic about them, called them "Passaros de Sol," or Birds of the Sun; while the learned Dutchmen, who wrote in Latin, called them "Avis paradiseus," or Paradise Bird. John van Linschoten gives these names in 1598, and tells us that no one has seen these birds alive, for they live in the air, always turning toward the sun, and never lighting on the earth till they die; for they have neither feet nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by the birds carried to India, and sometimes to Holland, but being very costly they were then rarely seen in Europe. More than a hundred years later Mr. William Funnel, who accompanied Dampier, and wrote an account of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, and was told that they came to Banda to eat nutmegs, which intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when they were killed by ants. Down to 1760, when Linnæus named the largest species, Paradisea apoda (the footless paradise bird), no perfect specimen had been seen in Europe, and absolutely nothing was known about them. And even now, |