to
St. Petersburg, and to other parts of Europe, including a few weeks in
London, and had then come out to the past, where he had been for some
years trading and speculating in the various islands. He now spoke
Dutch, French, Malay, and Javanese, all equally well; English with
a very slight accent, but with perfect fluency, axed a most complete
knowledge of idiom, in which I often tried to puzzle him in vain. German
and Italian were also quite familiar to him, and his acquaintance
with European languages included Modern Greek, Turkish, Russian, and
colloquial Hebrew and Latin. As a test of his power, I may mention that
he had made a voyage to the out-of-the-way island of Salibaboo, and had
stayed there trading a few weeks. As I was collecting vocabularies,
he told me he thought he could remember some words, and dictated
considerable number. Some time after I met with a short list of words
taken down in those islands, and in every case they agreed with those
he had given me. He used to sing a Hebrew drinking-song, which he had
learned from some Jews with whom he had once travelled, and astonished
by joining in their conversation, and had a never-ending fund of tale
and anecdote about the people he had met and the places he had visited.

In most of the villages of this part of Ceram are schools and native
schoolmasters, and the inhabitants have been long converted to
Christianity. In the larger villages there are European missionaries;
but there is little or no external difference between the Christian and
Alfuro villages, nor, as far as I have seen, in their inhabitants. The
people seem more decidedly Papuan than those of Gilolo. They are darker
in colour, and a number of them have the frizzly Papuan hair; their
features also are harsh and prominent, and the women in particular are
far less engaging than those of the Malay race. Captain Van der Beck was
never tired of abusing the inhabitants of these Christian villages as
thieves, liars, and drunkards, besides being incorrigibly lazy. In the
city of Amboyna my friends Doctors Mohnike and Doleschall, as well
as most of the European residents and traders, made exactly the same
complaint, and would rather have Mahometans for servants, even if
convicts, than any of the native Christians. One great cause of this
is the fact, that with the Mahometans temperance is a part of their
religion, and has become so much a habit that practically the rule is
never transgressed. One fer