THE ARAFURA SEA
In the larger places there is a concert at the club once or twice a week—at Bandoeng in Java I heard a remarkably good string quartette—and in almost every place there is a ladies’ night at the club once a week, when the children come to dance to the music of a piano or gramophone, as the case may be. It is a pretty sight and one to make one ponder on the possible harmony of nations—“Harmonie” is commonly a name for the clubs in the Netherlands Indies—to see small Dutch children dancing with little half-castes and, as I have more than once seen, with little Celestials and Japanese.
We left Amboina on New Year’s Day in a deluge of rain, and all that day we were in sight of the forest-covered heights of Ceram to the North. On January 2nd we passed Banda at dawn, and at sunset we got a view of the most South-west point of New Guinea, Cape Van de Bosch. On the morning of January 3rd we dropped anchor in the harbour of Dobo in the Aru Islands. For several miles before we arrived there we had noticed a marked difference in the appearance of the sea. Since we left Batavia we had been sailing over a deep sea of great oceanic depths, sometimes of two or three thousand fathoms, which was always clear and blue or black as deep seas are. Approaching the Aru Islands we came into the shoal waters of the Arafura Sea, which is yellowish and opaque and never exceeds one hundred fathoms in depth. We were, in fact, sailing over that scarcely submerged land, which joins the Aru Islands and New Guinea with the Continent of Australia.
Dobo has doubtless changed a good deal in appearance since Mr. Wallace visited it in 1857, the majority of the houses are now built of corrugated iron in place of the palm leaves of fifty years ago; but it cannot have increased greatly in size, for it is built on a small spit of coral sand beyond which are mangrove swamps where building is impossible. The reason of its existence has also changed since the time when it was the great market of all the neighbouring islands, for now it exists solely as the centre of a pearl-fishing industry controlled by an Australian Company, the Celebes Trading Company. Messrs. Clarke & Ross Smith, the heads of this business, rendered us assistance in very many ways, and the sincerest thanks of the expedition are due to them. The primary object of pearl-fishing is of course the collection of pearl-shell which is used for knife handles, buttons, and a hundred other things. Shell of a good quality is worth more than £200 a ton. The pearls, which are occasionally found, are merely accidentals and profitable extras of the trade. Some idea of the extent of this business may be learnt from the fact that more than one hundred boats employing about five thousand men are occupied in the various fleets.
We left Dobo, the last place of civilisation that many of us were to see for a year and more, on January 3rd; and here, as we are almost within sight as it were of our destination, it may be opportune to state briefly the geographical position of New Guinea, and to give a short account of its exploration.
DOBO. ARU ISLANDS.