After going some miles we found the channel nearly blocked up with coral, so that our boat grated along the bottom, crunching what may truly be called the living rock.

Sometimes all hands had to get out and wade, to lighten the vessel and lift it over the shallowest places; but at length we overcame all obstacles and reached a wide bay or estuary studded with little rocks and islets, and opening to the western sea and the numerous islands of the "blakang-tuna." I now found that the village we were going to was miles away; that we should have to go out to sea, and round a rocky point.

A squall seemed coming on, and as I have a horror of small boats at sea, and from all I could learn Watelai village was not a place to stop at (no birds of Paradise being found there), I determined to return and go to a village I had heard of up a tributary of the Watelai river, and situated nearly in the centre of the mainland of Aru.

The people there were said to be good, and to be accustomed to hunting and bird-catching, being too far inland to get any part of their food from the sea.

While I was deciding this point the squall burst upon us, and soon raised a rolling sea in the shallow water, which upset an oil bottle and a lamp, broke some of my crockery, and threw us all into confusion.