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If she was a trader, I concluded she was bound to the coast of New Guinea for tripang, or sea-slug considered a great delicacy by the Chinese and other people to the north; perhaps for pearls to the Aru Islands, or for other productions of the southern part of the archipelago. We found, at all events, that they were steering to the south. For several days they stood on, not altering their course.
During our stay, I observed the habits of some marine animals. A large Aplysia is very common. This sea-slug is about five inches long; and is of a dirty yellowish colour, veined with purple. On each side of the lower surface, or foot, there is a broad membrane, which appears sometimes to act as a ventilator, in causing a current of water to flow over the dorsal branchiae or lungs.
There is a certain amount of quiet humour about Campbell's record; for instance, he states that they used their "pram" or Norwegian skiff and tried trawling for biological specimens on March 27 "our total catch was one sea-louse, one sea-slug, and one spider."
After a windy night, that nasty-looking Chinese delicacy the sea-slug was sometimes thrown up on the beach, which was at such times thickly strewn with some of the most beautiful shells that adorn our cabinets, along with fragments and masses of coral and strange sponges, of which I picked up more than twenty different sorts.
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