First, I got a butterfly and showed how to handle it and pin it sideways into the box. The crucial matter was the seizing of it once it was in the net. It must be carefully taken between finger and thumb and the thorax pinched on the under side. If it be pinched from above—as every butterfly collector knows—the operator’s finger-marks would show on the wings and betray slovenly handling. Some of the boys became very neat-fingered after a time, but others would not learn at all, and were so shameless that they would bring in part of a wing carefully stuck on the pin—in fact, it was “anything to fill your box.” Occasionally the less scrupulous would appropriate the pins to their own use. Of course there was nothing for it but to pay off and send away such useless fellows.
DOBOI, OUR NATIVE COOK AT DINAWA.
Making due allowance, however, for the fact that they were savages, the general character of my collectors said a great deal for human nature. Doboi was a really good fellow, and had only one reprehensible escapade to his discredit. It was a case of the deceitfulness of wealth! He had worked extremely well and had amassed a small fortune, a blanket, many ramis, and a quantity of tobacco. With these possessions, he became a small king in his village. One day he vanished with all his goods. Now Doboi was under contract to remain with me while I was in the interior, and although he had received much, he had not really worked off his part of the bargain. Accordingly I had him pursued and brought back, and thereafter for the rest of his time he was a good boy. He was fourteen, but had attained to full manhood, and was a very capable fellow.
My best mountain boy, however, was Ow-bow. He was my right hand, my native first officer. I could send him anywhere, for he was quick and alert, but he always stipulated that he must go armed, and believing him to be justified, I invariably provided him with a weapon. He loved firearms passionately, and to see Ow-bow enter a village with his gun over his shoulder was to realise on a small scale what a Roman triumph must have been! He understood the weapon—his fellow-tribesmen did not. Therein lay Ow-bow’s power. He would fire a shot in the air and then lay down the law to his comrades. If there were any possibility of getting what you wanted, Ow-bow would get it. He would, indeed, have done well on an American newspaper. He understood how to make the most of what knowledge he had, and was fully conscious that it gave him superior power, which he was not slow to wield. When he went to a village to recruit carriers, he arrayed himself in his best, donned his finest beads and feathers, and painted his cheeks in scarlet stripes. Thus resplendent, with his gun over his shoulder, he entered the village, strutting consequentially, and immediately made his presence felt. He was a man who would not and could not be refused. He showed his wages and told the tribesmen that they, if they carried for Parki, would become rich in like manner.
More subtle still was his dealing when he had been sent to engage women for grass-cutting or similar employment. Ow-bow was a married man who had permission for his wife to stay in camp with him, and this lady proved his great advocate with her own sex. While Ow-bow waxed eloquent and persuasive with the men, Mrs. Ow-bow would display to the womenkind what wealth had also come to her, and as she reasoned, her sisters were persuaded, and took service with the white man. But Ow-bow’s flourishes with the gun were no mere vainglorious show. In two months’ time he had become a really good shot, and after a morning’s sport would often return to camp with five or six birds. He invariably accounted for his empty cartridges, while other boys would return with spent cases and never a feather to show for them. He grasped the method of aiming at once and never showed any amateurish disposition to squint along the barrel, but got his sights on the bird neatly and quickly and fired without hesitation. He seldom missed.
During the morning, while the boys were out at work, Harry and I would also be engaged with our nets; or, as our collections increased, we would be busy putting specimens together, tending them and seeing that they were not suffering from damp. Sometimes, taking a couple of the laziest boys with me, I descended to the Aculama and followed the stream up its course, collecting as we went. As the boys’ skill increased, it became possible to send them two by two so that several localities could be worked simultaneously. Work, still further afield, fell to Sam, who often went away with five or six carriers on collecting expeditions that lasted a week or a fortnight.
The best time of day for butterflies is from 8 A.M. till noon. The boys returned to camp at times varying according to their luck or their laziness, and in any case, we had all returned by three o’clock. Then Doboi or Weiyah cooked a meal which varied in excellence according to the state of the stores or our luck with the gun, and afterwards we took our siesta. The late afternoon or early evening found us at work again on the collections or putting the camp straight. Darkness descended quickly, and when there was no moon we went to the verandah and began collecting moths. On favourable nights we often continued at work till daybreak.
The boys did not care about night work and usually sat round the camp fire smoking, spinning yarns, or crooning their charmingly plaintive mountain melodies until about 1 A.M., when they curled up under the verandah and went to sleep. Occasionally one or two very hard-up young gentlemen, whose need of tobacco was urgent, would volunteer to assist in the moth-catching, but for the most part they preferred free evenings like the young working people of more advanced nations. Visitors from Dinawa dropped in until the camp became a thronged resort. Then unfortunately things began to disappear, and it was necessary to keep the natives at a greater distance and restrict liberty of entrance. “No admission except on business” became the rule for outsiders. On my own boys, I found it was best to impose no cast-iron regulations.
Nor were these all our occupations. Besides the lepidoptera, there were ornithological and botanical specimens to collect and preserve. Of the last, the more succulent required constant care and changing, and some took three weeks to dry. Photography proved a pleasant change, and on nights unfavourable for moths, we darkened the house with blankets and had a spell of developing. At such times one realised poignantly the limitations of a savage country, and the value of things that at home are too commonplace to be remarked. Our chief lack was a good flat shelf. Amateur photographers with luxurious equipment should figure to themselves the discomforts of a ridgy shelf of split bamboo on which no bottle will stand upright. Groping in the dim red light among one’s materials on that crazy ledge was as productive of maledictions as the royal and ancient game itself.