We now steamed back to Amboina, and while the yacht was taking in coal and preparing to go to Ceram, I crossed over Laitimur with the governor. Our procession was headed by a native carrying a large Dutch flag, and after him came a “head man,” supported on the right by a man beating a tifa, and on the left by another beating a gong. Then came the governor, borne in a large chair by a dozen coolies, and I, in a similar chair, carried by the same number. From the city we at once ascended a series of hills, sparsely covered with shrubbery, and composed of a soft red sandstone, which is rapidly disintegrating, and is evidently of very recent origin. It is found on the highest elevation we crossed, which is from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet above the sea. Near this point we descended into a small ravine, where the soft sandstone had been washed away, and the underlying rocks were exposed to view. Here we found feldspathic porphyry and serpentine. Thence we crossed other hills of sandstone and came down to the sea-shore at the village of Rutong. We were hoping to find a small hill of granite that Dr. Schneider had discovered, but we were not able to identify the places he describes. Dr. Bleeker, who crossed over to Ema in 1856, remarks that the first hills he ascended were composed of coral rock, and that he came on to it again when he descended toward the sea-shore. We did not notice it at this time, but, on my first excursion to the cocoa plantation on Hitu, I found a long coral reef, fully five hundred feet above the sea. It was a perfect repetition of the reef I visited in the bay of the Portuguese village of Dilli, at the northern end of Timur. A small place had been cleared on its crest, and there I found several pairs of the huge valves of the Tridacna gigas, which appeared from their relative position to have been once partially surrounded by the soft coral rock, which, having been washed away, allowed the valves to fall apart. They were much decayed, but had not lost more than half their weight. They had evidently never been brought there by men; because the natives rarely or never use them for food. There is no need that they should take the trouble to gather such enormous bivalves when they have a plenty of sago-palms, and all that it is necessary for them to do to obtain an abundance of food is to cut down these trees and dig out the pith. If, in former times, they did collect the Tridacna for food, they never would have carried these great shells, each of which originally weighed a hundred pounds or more, a mile back among the hills, but would have taken out the animal and left them on the shore. Governor Arriens, who had carefully studied these recent reefs, stated to me that he had found them as high up as eight hundred feet above the sea, but at that elevation they seem to disappear.
When returning we stopped for some time on the hills back of the city to enjoy a magnificent view of the bay and the high hills rising on the opposite side. Just then the broad strati, floating in the west, parted, and rays of bright sunlight, darting through their fissures, lighted up the dark water beneath us. There were not many vessels and praus at anchor off the city at that time, but I was informed that in about a month later many would arrive, for the dry season, with its clear sky and light winds, had set in about the 15th of September, when we arrived from Banda.
About two hundred vessels and praus of all kinds come to Amboina in a year. The praus are owned and commanded by the natives themselves, but most of the vessels are commanded by mestizoes and owned by Arabs and Chinese, who carry on the larger part of the trade in the eastern part of the archipelago. Since a line of steamers has been established, these Arabs and Chinese avail themselves of that means of importing their goods from Batavia and Surabaya, where they are received directly from Europe. The total value of the imports is from a half to three-quarters of a million of guilders. The chief article is cotton fabrics, and the next rice, which is shipped here all the way from Java and Sumatra for the sustenance of the troops. Very little rice is raised on any of these islands, because there are no low, level lands suitable for its cultivation. In the Bandas the whole attention of the population is so devoted to cultivating the nutmeg that they are entirely dependent on other islands for a supply of food. The most important exports from this island are cloves, cocoa, kayu-puti oil, nutmegs, various kinds of woods, and mace. Formerly the inhabitants of Ceram-laut, Goram, and the Arru Islands were accustomed to bring their tripang, tortoise-shell, paradise birds, and massoi-bark to this port to sell to the Bugis, but for the last forty or fifty years the Bugis have gone from Macassar directly to those islands and traded with the people at their own villages. In 1854, Amboina, Banda, Ternate, and Kayéli, were made free ports, but this has not materially increased the trade at any of those places.
The period when the trade at Amboina was most flourishing was when it was last held by the English, from 1814 to 1816. The port was then free, but, when it once more passed into the hands of the Dutch, duties were again demanded, which forced the trade into other channels, where it still remains, notwithstanding there are now no duties. The proper remedy has been applied, but applied too late. This is also the history of the trade at Batavia, where the heavy duties have induced the traders of the eastern part of the archipelago to sail directly to the free port of Singapore.
I had been at Amboina a long time before I could ascertain where the grave of Rumphius is located, and even then I found it only by chance—so rarely is this great man spoken of at the present time. From the common, back of the fort, a beautifully-shaded street leads up to the east; and the stranger, while walking in this quiet retreat, has his attention drawn to a small, square pillar in a garden. A thick group of coffee-trees almost embrace it in their drooping branches, as if trying to protect it from wind and rain and the consuming hand of Time. Under that plain monument rest the mortal remains of the great naturalist.
The inscription, which explains itself, and shows how nearly this sacred spot came to be entirely neglected and forgotten forever, reads as follows:
MEMORIÆ SAORUM GEORGII EVERARDI RUMPHII,
de re botanica et historica naturali optime merita
TUMULUM
dira temporis calamitate et sacrilegia manufere
DIRUTUM,
Manibas placatis restitui jussit
et
pietatem reverentiamque publicam testificans
HOC MONUMENTUM
IPSE CONSECRAVIT
Godaras Alexander Grardus Phillipus
Liber Baro A. Capellen
Totius Indiæ Belgicæque
PREFECTUS REGIUS.
Amboinæ Mensis Aprilis,
Anno Domini M.DCCC.XXIV.
George Everard Rumpf, whose name has been latinized into Rumphius, as an acknowledgment of the great service he has rendered to the scientific world, was a German, a native of a small town in Hesse-Cassel. He was born about the year 1626, and, having studied medicine, at the age of twenty-eight went to Batavia, entered the mercantile service of the Dutch East India Company, and thence proceeded to Amboina, where he passed the remainder of his life. At the age of forty-two, while contemplating a voyage back to his native land, he suddenly became blind, and therefore never left his adopted island home; yet he continued to prosecute his favorite studies in natural history till his death, which occurred in 1693, when he had attained the ripe age of sixty-seven.
His great work on the shells of Amboina, which was not published till 1705, twelve years after his death, was for a long time the acknowledged standard to which all conchological writers referred. His most extensive work, however, was the “Hortus Amboinense,” which was only rescued from the Dutch archives and published at the late date of forty-eight years after his death. It contains the names and careful descriptions of the plants of this region, their flowering seasons, their habitats, their uses, and the modes of caring for those that are cultivated. When we consider that, in his time, neither botany nor zoology had become a science, and consider, moreover, the amount and the accuracy of the information he gives us, we agree with his contemporaries in giving him the high but well-merited title of “the Indian Pliny.”