United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the morning of Monday, the 3rd of June, the ship being off the coast of Gilolo, the gig with the captain, and the barge with several officers, left the ship with four days' provisions to survey a portion of the coast. At 11 A. M. they landed on a reef, running out about a cable's length from a small island.
An undescribed species of Arachnobas, a curious genus of weevils peculiar to the Moluccas and New Guinea, and remarkable for their long legs, and their habit of often sitting on leaves, and turning rapidly round the edge to the under-surface when disturbed. It was found in Gilolo. All these insects are represented of the natural size.
"That is the island of Ternate, to which we are bound. To the right of it is Tidore. All those peaks are volcanic; and some of them, I believe, occasionally throw up flames. The land we see beyond is the large island of Gilolo a strange land, I believe, but very little is known about it."
The range of islands south of Sumatra, a part of the south coast of Java and of the islands east of it, the west and east end of Timor, portions of all the Moluccas, the Ke and Aru Islands, Waigiou, and the whole south and east of Gilolo, consist in a great measure of upraised coral-rock, exactly corresponding to that now forming in the adjacent seas.
At noon on the 14th, Gilolo bore from south by west half west, to east by north: there is a chain of small islands laying the whole length of these bearings about two leagues from Gilolo; between which and that island, there appears to be good shelter.
They perhaps obtained many of their wives from the natives, which will account for the extraordinary language they speak in some respects closely allied to that of the natives of Gilolo, while it contains much that points to a Malayan origin. To most of these people the Malay language is quite unintelligible, although such as are engaged in trade are obliged to acquire it.
On the 4th of January I left Amboyna for Ternate; but two years later, in October 1859, I again visited it after my residence in Menado, and stayed a month in the town in a small house which I hired for the sake of assorting and packing up a large and varied collection which I had brought with me from North Celebes, Ternate, and Gilolo.
I believe, therefore, that the numerous intermediate forms that occur among the countless islands of the Pacific, are not merely the result of a mixture of these races, but are, to some extent, truly intermediate or transitional; and that the brown and the black, the Papuan, the natives of Gilolo and Ceram, the Fijian, the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands and those of New Zealand, are all varying forms of one great Oceanic or Polynesian race.
The hill was very rugged, but among dry sticks and fallen trees I found some good insects, mostly of forms and species I was already acquainted with from Ternate and Gilolo.
It was now the 18th of May, and Lemaire ordered the course to be changed, that the Moluccas might be reached by the north of New Guinea. After sighting the country of Papua, Schouten and Lemaire reached Gilolo, one of the Moluccas, where they received an eager welcome from their compatriots.
Word Of The Day