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Updated: May 9, 2025
Captain Davis who was passionately fond of tobacco, and would travel almost any distance to obtain an ounce or two from the Malay beche-de-mer fishers pointed out to me a blazed tree near his camp on which the following inscription was cut: LUDWIG LEICHHARDT, Overland from Sydney, 1847.
We walked about four hundred yards along a grassy road to the sea, where Mabelle and I paddled about in shallow water and amused ourselves by picking up coral, shells, and bêche-de-mer, and watching the blue and yellow fish darting in and out among the rocks, until at last we found a place in the coral which made a capital deep-water bath.
This man that worked in the store with him was a fast sort of card, who had been mate of a brig cruising all about and back to Sydney with sandalwood, beche-de-mer, and what they call island trade. Well, the captain of the craft, who was part owner, had settled in his mind that he'd trade regular with San Francisco now, and touch at Honolulu going and coming.
We stayed with them, however, a few weeks longer, and at length they accompanied me to a camp of black fellows near some lagoons, a little way farther south of their own camp. Before they left, they presented me with a quantity of beche-de-mer, or sea-slugs, which make most excellent soup. At the place indicated by the Malays, which was in Raffles Bay, the chief spoke quite excellent English.
And we told them that we were sorry, that never again would we harm a white man, and in token of our submission we poured sand upon our heads. And all the women and children set up a great wailing for water, so that for some time no man could make himself heard. Then we were told our punishment. We must fill the three schooners with copra and beche-de-mer.
"I'll have to remember hard to resurrect any beche-de-mer," Harley said, nodding approval of the suggestion. "At the same time I'll distract him," she rushed on. Sitting down and bending forward to Michael so that his head was buried in her arms and breast, she began swaying him and crooning to him as was her wont with Jerry.
The Spaniards say that a paper cigarette, a glass of water, and the kiss of a pretty girl, will sustain a man for a day without eating. But what is a man to do who has no tobacco, only stale water, who is separated from the nearest girl by seventy miles of perilous seas forlorn, and whose appetite sickens at the sight of the coarse fare of a beche-de-mer boat?
The largest and most bulky items are pearl-shell and tripang, or "beche-de-mer," with smaller quantities of tortoise-shell, edible birds' nests, pearls, ornamental woods, timber, and Birds of Paradise. These are purchased with a variety of goods. Of arrack, about equal in strength to ordinary West India rum, 3,000 boxes, each containing fifteen half-gallon bottles, are consumed annually.
Never after was anything seen or heard of the brothers or the yacht. And for nearly a fortnight the disconsolate wife and her little ones were alone on the island. Ten years later, on one of the two bare patches of sand, another BECHE-DE-MER smoke-house was built. While the owner a swarthy Arabian, was out on the reef miles away, a phenomenally high tide occurred.
He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish face eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot-gun, as he quavered, in Beche-de-mer English: "Me fella too much fright along bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush." Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection.
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