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There were about eighty at the service, including a few Australians employed by one of the white men on the island to fish for trepang. The Darnley islanders appear a much more interesting people than the Australians. Many of those present at the service were clothed.
After being gathered from the rocks they are cleaned, boiled, and partly dried in the air; then they are smoked with mangrove wood until dry and hard. The best class of trepang is packed in tin cases to keep it perfectly dry, as moisture ruins it. The product is marketed chiefly at Hongkong, where it is used in making the gelatinous soups for which the Chinese are so famous.
The missionaries cited this as a parable of Christianity, which would save from damnation the convert no matter how fungusy he was with sin. In tribal wars the enemy laid a sea-slug at the heart of the maori, and, its foe unseen, the tree perished from the corruption of the hideous trepang.
More so to the former and the islands surrounding it on the north and east, where evidence exists of the voyage of the Chinese traders and fishermen in search of the precious trepang.
Termed also trepang, sea cucumber, sea slug, cotton spinner, and known scientifically as Holothuridae, no less than twenty varieties have been described and are identified by popular and technical titles. The "fish" are collected by black boys on the coral reefs dived for, picked up with spears from punts, or by hand in shallow water.
I have fed on the emblematical animal, which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache enragee; I have lived on ancient salt junk, I know the taste of shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing things without a name but of the Lithuanian village dog never!
One of them had a singular weapon, neatly made, and consisting of a long wooden handle, with a sharp piece of iron fixed in at the end, like a lancet. The iron most probably had been obtained from the Malays who annually visit the gulf for trepang. Some of their spears were barbed. July 12.
The number of the species of Holothuria, and of the individuals which swarm on every part of these coral-reefs, is extraordinarily great; and many shiploads are annually freighted, as is well-known, for China with the trepang, which is a species of this genus.
While at Timor, "Dramah," the principal rajah of the Malay fishing fleet, gave King the following information respecting the coast of New Holland, which he had frequently visited in command of the fleet that visits its shores yearly for trepang: "The coast is called by them 'Marega, and has been known to them for many years.
These are the Bajow divers or fishermen, to whom Sulu is indebted for procuring the submarine treasures with which her seas are stored. They are also very frequently employed in the bêche de mer or trepang fisheries among the islands to the south. The Bajows generally look upon Macassar as their principal place of resort.
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