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They are all Mahometans, but they speak a variety of curious languages, which seem compounded of Bugis and Javanese, with the languages of the savage tribes of the Moluccas. The savage Malays are the Dyaks of Borneo; the Battaks and other wild tribes of Sumatra; the Jakuns of the Malay Peninsula; the aborigines of Northern Celebes, of the Sula island, and of part of Bouru.
Timor itself consists of ancient stratified rocks, but is said to have one volcano near its centre. Going northward, Amboyna, a part of Bouru, and the west end of Ceram, the north part of Gilolo, and all the small islands around it, the northern extremity of Celebes, and the islands of Sian and Sang-air, are wholly volcanic.
The sky was continually cloudy, dark, and threatening, with occasional drizzling showers, till we were west of Bouru, when it cleared up and we enjoyed the bright sunny skies of the dry season for the rest of our voyage. It is about here, therefore that the seasons of the eastern and western regions of the Archipelago are divided.
I now have to pass over a year spent in Waigiou and Timor, in order to describe my visit to the island of Bouru, which concluded my explorations of the Moluccas. I HAD long wished to visit the large island of Bouru, which lies due west of Ceram, and of which scarcely anything appeared to be known to naturalists, except that it contained a babirusa very like that of Celebes.
Again: "In Amboyna and Ceram the female of the large and handsome Ornithoptera Helena has the large patch on the hind wings constantly of a pale dull ochre or buff colour; while in the scarcely distinguishable varieties from the adjacent islands, of Bouru and New Guinea, it is of a golden yellow, hardly inferior in brilliancy to its colour in the male sex.
Our dinner was of rice and curry as usual, and an extra glass of wine was all I could do to celebrate it. Dec. 26th. Fine view of the mountains of Bouru, which we have now approached considerably. Our crew seem rather a clumsy lot. They do not walk the deck with the easy swing of English sailors, but hesitate and stagger like landsmen.
If we were dividing the Australian region for zoological purposes alone, we should form three great groups: one comprising Australia, Timor, and Tasmania; another New Guinea, with the islands from Bouru to the Solomon's group; and the third comprising the greater part of the Pacific Islands. The relation of the New Guinea fauna to that of Australia is very close.
Having seen a good many of the natives of Bouru from different villages, and from distant parts of the island, I feel convinced that they consist of two distinct races now partially amalgamated. The larger portion are Malays of the Celebes type, often exactly similar to the Tomóre people of East Celebes, whom I found settled in Batchian; while others altogether resemble the Alfuros of Ceram.
For example, I collected only 210 different kinds of beetles during my two months' stay at Bourn, while in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857, I found more than 300 species: One of the finest insects found at Bouru was a large Cerambyx, of a deep shining chestnut colour, and with very long antennae.
It then loosely covers up the mouth of the hole, and is said by the natives to obliterate and disguise its own footmarks leading to and from the hole, by making many other tracks and scratches in the neighbourhood. It lays its eggs only at night, and at Bouru a bird was caught early one morning as it was coming out of its hole, in which several eggs were found.
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