Our captain, who wanted two of moderate size for the trade among the islands at Aru, immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short tine had arranged the nuns number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs, handkerchiefs, axes, white plates, tobacco, and arrack, which he was to give for a hair which could be got ready in four days.

We then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four huts, situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rocky piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas, and other fruit trees.
The houses were very rude, black, and half rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bamboo or planks, and high thatched roofs.

They had small doors and no windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the smoke out and a little light in.

The floors were of strips of bamboo, thin, slippery, and elastic, and so weak that my feet were in danger of plunging through at every step.

Native boxes of pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed, mats of the same, jars and cooking pots of native pottery, and a few European plates and basins, were the whole furniture, and the interior was throughout dark and smoke-blackened, and dismal in the extreme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some explorations, and we were followed by a train of boys eager to see what we were going to do.