hells, and _beche-de-mer_ (the sea-slug of Chinese
cuisine) supplement the important export of the cloves, the speciality
of Ambon, chosen by the East India Company as the sole place of
cultivation for this spice-bearing tree, when the system of monopoly
extirpated the clove gardens of the other islands. Vases, mats, and
miniature boats, of fringed and threaded cloves, are offered as
fantastic souvenirs of Amboyna, and the spirit of the place seems
imprisoned in these tiny curios which revive so many haunting memories
of the romantic island.

Nominal adherence to Dutch Calvinism fails to repress the natural
instincts of a gay and pleasure-loving race. The national dance known
as _Menari_, and often performed on the shore in honour of the outgoing
steamer, no longer satisfies Ambonese requirements, with the slow
gyrations and studied postures of Oriental tradition. The eager and
passionate temperament finds truer expression in the walzes and galops
of European origin, known as _dansi-dansi_, enthusiastically practised
on those festive occasions, when the full dress of funereal black and
white seems specially inappropriate to the wild abandon of the
merry-making populace. In sunny Amboyna the cowl does not make the
friar, and the last recollection of the little Moluccan capital is a
vision of whirling figures and twanging lutes at the water's edge,
while the receding steamer furrows the milky azure of the land-locked
bay. The vivid green of one palm-clad shore burns in the gold of
sunset, but the eastern side lies veiled in shadow, and as the
sheltered inlet gives place to the open sea, the luminous
phosphorescence of the Southern ocean bathes the rocky bastions of
enchanted Ambon in waves of liquid fire. A strange history belongs to
the physical conformation of volcanic shores, alternately raised and
depressed by the agitation of earth and sea. The coast-line has varied
from time to time; straits have become lakes, islands have severed or
united, occasionally rising suddenly from the waves, or vanishing in
the bosom of the deep. Geologists assert that the Malay Archipelago was
originally thrown off by volcanic action from Asia and Australia, and
that an interchange of animal and vegetable life has frequently taken
place. Hurricanes have uprooted forest trees, and floods have borne
them out to sea, the tide eventually washing them up on the shores of
distant islands. A fresh growth of foreign vegetation was thus
inaugura