The houses of the Tugeri are built of grass and bamboo. The walls rise to a height of about ten feet and are covered with a span roof. I observed their villages only from a distance, however, and never accompanied the Dutch soldiers on any of their expeditions. Some of the villages are very large, consisting of two or three hundred houses. Near the townships immense cocoanut plantations invariably occur, and these seem to form the chief wealth of the Tugeri.
A strange part of the Tugeri’s paraphernalia was their extraordinary drums. The body of these, shaped like a dice-box, was hewn out of a solid log, hollowed, and curiously carved. Midway at the narrowest point was a clumsy handle, also hewn from the log. The drum heads are of lizard skin. The performer carries the instrument by the handle in the left hand, and beats with his right. The noise is prodigious.
The tribe domesticates the gaura. This bird has frequently been described by naturalists, but a short account of it may not be inopportune here, as I was fortunate in obtaining many good specimens of it. The gaura is half as large again as the guinea-fowl, and weighs from five to ten pounds. The beak is longer than that of the ordinary pigeon, but is not large in proportion to the bird. It has the ordinary characteristics of the pigeon beak. The head is small, the neck short, the body full and fleshy, and remarkably fine eating. The back is broad and rounded, the legs brightish red and characteristically those of the pigeon breed. The plumage of the head is a bluish silver grey with a fine crest of a lighter shade. The crest feathers are very open in their branching. When erected, the crest spreads out like a fan and makes a noble display. The breast feathers are a rich maroon, the wings and back a bluish slate colour. There are white patches on the wings, which are tipped with maroon. The tail feathers continue the shade of the back until within two inches of the extremity, when they are graduated into a lovely grey, almost matching that of the crest. For all its fine looks it is a silly bird, short and heavy of flight, and easily killed when once found. The sportsman locates the gaura by its booming sound.
My ten days’ stay at Merauke was a time of strange misfortune, and while there I had the unenviable opportunity of observing a very serious outbreak of a mysterious disease, which was said to be that deadly beri-beri, which has lately been occupying the minds of men of science. For some time there had been isolated cases among the Javanese convicts, but about the second week in April the Dutch authorities became greatly alarmed by the spread of the disease. Cases were reported daily, and all proved fatal. At last the deaths reached the terrible figure of 160 in ten days. The victims were all Javanese, the officials and natives went unscathed. The doctors of the Dutch Colony were very able men, but no relief could be given to the patient beyond administering anæsthetics. I question whether it was rightly styled beri-beri, for in South America, at Manaos on the Rio Negro, I have seen cases of the disease among the Portuguese rubber gatherers, but these bore no resemblance to the sickness at Merauke. The sufferers in South America were generally men who led isolated lives in the vast forests of the Amazons, gathering the sap of the hevea braziliensis, and living for long periods on bad food. Victims of this type of beri-beri generally live for nine months, and those of strong constitution and in whom the swelling had not risen above the knees recovered. If the patient lives the old life and continues the old diet in the forest, the disease gradually ascends until it gets above the knees, and then its course becomes very rapid until it reaches the heart.
I myself caught beri-beri on the Rio Branco, and first noted its presence by the discovery of a numb spot about the size of a halfpenny on each ankle. The Brazilian medical men assured me that nowhere in South America could I hope to get better, and I was ordered to quit the country at once. Before I reached Havre the numbness was greatly reduced, the affected patch being then the size of a farthing, and two months after I reached home, it vanished. In Columbia I have observed exactly the same form of the disease as on the Amazons.
In Merauke, however, sufferers from the so-called beri-beri had no seizure of paralysis in the lower extremities. It was always in the abdomen, and was accompanied by the most excruciating agony. Death usually came in four hours. There was no relief from pain; the intestines seemed to be knotted, the patients face was pale and agonised. He continually moaned, strained forward and doubled his body. He held his stomach with both hands, and occasionally lay down and rolled, and as the end approached, the intestines seemed to be forced upwards towards the thorax, and there was great swelling. The doctors tried poultices and fomentations in vain. They also administered castor oil without affording any alleviation of the suffering. Perfect consciousness remained until the very end, and the last thing the patient always asked for was fruit. Five minutes after making this request, he was dead.
One evening we spent with Mr. Schadee on his verandah, there was with us his Javanese clerk (not a convict), who was enjoying his cigarette and apparently in the best of health. The next morning he was dead. Our carpenter on board the Van Doorn was carried off with equal suddenness, and he, curiously enough, had never been on shore all the time of the epidemic. The victims were always buried within five hours. As to the communication of infection, it is doubtful whether the disease was due in each case to external causes, or whether once having broken out it spread from man to man. The bad rice,[[1]] on which the Javanese live, may have been the cause. At the same time it may be noted, that the convicts were working in the abominable blue mud of the river. Another article of diet supplied to the Javanese was dried fish, very ill cured, or rather not cured at all, and most offensive to European nostrils.
[1]. Since these lines were written an eminent medical man, a specialist on beri-beri, has publicly advanced this view.—E. A. P.
A LAKATOI (SAILING RAFT OF CANOES) AT ANCHOR AND A DWELLING-HOUSE BUILT OVER THE WATER.