During our passage across, we had very irregular soundings, and at daylight on the 24th of March, saw the Arru Islands; all the islands of this group, which extends from North to South about 100 miles, and the eastern limits of which are but imperfectly known, are very low and swampy, but from being well-wooded, have the appearance of being much higher than they really are: many of the trees that we saw attained a height of ninety feet, before they began to branch out.
DOBBO HARBOUR.
We stood along the islands to the northward all day, with very light winds, and on the 25th were off the entrance of Dobbo harbour, situated between the two islands, Wamma and Wokan. As there were several square-rigged vessels in the harbour, we tacked and made signal for a pilot, and were soon afterwards boarded by the master of one of the vessels, who to our great delight hailed us in very good English. Under his pilotage we ran in and anchored off a low sandy point, on which the traders establish themselves during their stay, by building very neat bamboo houses thatched with the palm leaf. Several hundred people, including some Dutchmen from Macassar, and Chinamen, remain throughout the year. The house of Messrs. Klaper and Nitzk, cost above 300 pounds and contained goods to the amount of ten times that sum and upwards. The trade with these islands appears to be carried on in the following manner. Towards the end of the North-West monsoon, the trading vessels from Java and Macassar, having laid in their stock for barter, come over to Dobbo, generally touching at the Ki Islands to procure boats, which are there built in great numbers. On arriving they make the chief of the island (who carries a silver-headed stick, with the Dutch arms engraved upon it, as an emblem of his authority) a present, which he considers to be his due, consisting generally of arrack and tobacco. The large boats they have brought from the Ki Islands having been thatched over, and fitted with mat sails are then despatched through the various channels leading to the eastward, under the charge of a Chinaman, to trade for trepang, pearls, pearl oyster-shells, edible birds-nests, and birds of Paradise, in return for which they give chiefly knives, arrack, tobacco, coloured cottons, brass wire, ornaments for the arms, etc.
These boats return to their vessels as soon as they have procured a cargo, of which the pearls form the most valuable portion. The trepang obtained here is only considered as third-rate; that from the Tenimber group second, and from Australia first-rate.
BIRDS OF PARADISE.
The birds of Paradise, which are brought from the east side of the island, appeared to be plentiful; they are shot by the natives (from whom the traders purchase them for one rupee each) with blunt arrows, which stun them without injuring the plumage, and are then skinned and dried. The natives describe them as keeping together in flocks, headed by one, they call the Rajah bird, whose motions they follow.*
(*Footnote. This is also mentioned by Pennant in his work on the Malayan Archipelago, published in 1800.)
During the absence of the trading boats, the rest of the crews are employed making chinam of lime, from the coral which abounds on the beach, which fetches a good price at Banda, where fuel is expensive.
As soon as the South-East monsoon is fairly set in, the junks are hauled up on the western side of the sandy spit at high-water spring tides, a sort of dam is then built round them, with bamboos, and a kind of mat the Malays call kadgang, banked up with sand; from this the water is bailed out by hand, so as to form a dry dock in which they clean and coat the bottom with chinam which lasts till the next season.
The cargo, as it is brought in by the different trading boats, is carefully dried and stowed away in the different storehouses on the point.