Most of them wear nothing but a waist-cloth, and a few of them may be seen all day long wandering about the half-deserted streets of Dobbo offering their little bit of merchandise for sale.
Living in a trader's house everything is brought to me as well as to the rest,--bundles of smoked tripang, or "beche de mer," looking like sausages which have been rolled in mud and then thrown up the chimney; dried sharks' fins, mother-of-pearl shells, as well as birds of Paradise, which, however, are so dirty and so badly preserved that I have as yet found no specimens worth purchasing.

When I hardly look at the articles, and make no offer for them, they seem incredulous, and, as if fearing they have misunderstood me, again offer them, and declare what they want in return--knives, or tobacco, or sago, or handkerchiefs.
I then have to endeavour to explain, through any interpreter who may be at hand, that neither tripang nor pearl oyster shells have any charms for me, and that I even decline to speculate in tortoiseshell, but that anything eatable I will buy--fish, or turtle, or vegetables of any sort.
Almost the only food, however, that we can obtain with any regularity, are fish and cockles of very good quality, and to supply our daily wants it is absolutely necessary to be always provided with four articles--tobacco, knives, sago-cakes, and Dutch copper doits--because when the particular thing asked for is not forthcoming, the fish pass on to the next house, and we may go that day without a dinner.

It is curious to see the baskets and buckets used here.

The cockles are brought in large volute shells, probably the Cymbium ducale, while gigantic helmet-shells, a species of Cassis, suspended by a rattan handle, form the vessels in which fresh water is daily carried past my door.

It is painful to a naturalist to see these splendid shells with their inner whorls ruthlessly broken away to fit them for their ignoble use.
My collections, however, got on but slowly, owing to the unexpectedly bad weather, violent winds with heavy showers having been so continuous as only to give me four good collecting days out of the first sixteen I spent here.