Yet this, as well as most of the forts in the Moluccas, was originally built by the Portuguese themselves.

Oh! Lusitania, how art thou fallen! While the Opzeiner was reading his letters, I took a walk round the village with a guide in search of a horse.

The whole place was dreadfully damp and muddy, being built in a swamp with not a spot of ground raised a foot above it, and surrounded by swamps on every side.
The houses were mostly well built, of wooden framework filled in with gaba-gaba (leaf-stems of the sago-palm), but as they had no whitewash, and the floors were of bare black earth like the roads, and generally on the same level, they were extremely damp and gloomy.

At length I found one with the floor raised about a foot, and succeeded in making a bargain with the owner to turn out immediately, so that by night I had installed myself comfortably.

The chairs and tables were left for me; and as the whole of the remaining furniture in the house consisted of a little crockery and a few clothes-boxes, it was not much trouble for the owners to move into the house of some relatives, and thus obtain a few silver rupees very easily.