Holy Land of the Celestial
Empire, for the second generation established on an alien soil is
forbidden to seek burial in China. The so-called _Paranak_ of the Malay
Archipelago frequently marries a native wife, and, as purity of race
becomes destroyed, ancestral obligations lose their power even over the
mind of the most conservative people in the world.

The woods of Ambon teem with the abundant bird-life peculiar to the
Moluccas. An exquisite kingfisher, with golden plumage and emerald
throat, darts across the stream, and the scarlet crests of green
parrots resemble tropical flowers, glowing amidst the verdant foliage
hardly distinguishable from the fluttering wings of the feathered
tribe, which includes twenty-two species indigenous to the islands.
The megapodius or mound-maker, an ash-coloured bird about the size of a
small fowl, grasps sand or soil in the hollow of a powerful claw, and
throws it backwards into mounds six feet high, wherein the eggs are
deposited, to be hatched by this natural incubator, through the heat of
the vegetable matter contained in the rubbish heap. The young birds
work their way through the mound, and run off at once into the forest,
where they start on an independent career. They emerge from their
birthplace covered with thick down and provided with fully-developed
wings. The maternal instinct of the megapodius ceases with the laying
of eggs, and, having supplied a safe cradle for the rising generation,
she takes no further thought for her precocious progeny, capable of
securing a livelihood in the unknown world from the moment of their
first appearance in public.

A merry group, half-hidden in the shadows of clustering sago-palms,
gathers the harvest of precious grain, the pith of a large tree
producing thirty bundles, each of thirty pounds weight. The baking of
the sago-cakes made from this lavish store occupies two women for five
days, and the housekeeping cares of the largest family only need
quarterly consideration in this island of plenty, where the struggle
for the necessaries of existence is unknown and unimaginable. Leisure
and liberty, those priceless gifts which can only be attained where
the pressure of poverty is unfelt, serve valuable purposes in Ambonese
hands, for the European energies fused into the native race prevent
mental stagnation, and spur tropical indolence to manifold activities.
A variety of thriving industries belong to this far-off colony.
Mother-of-pearl s