wokan

Updated: May 12, 2025

And then they told me that a good many years ago, when the speakers were boys, some Wokan men who were out fishing met these lost people in the sea, and spoke to them; and the chief gave the Wokan men a hundred fathoms of cloth to bring to the men of Wanumbai, to show that they were alive and would soon come back to them, but the Wokan men were thieves, and kept the cloth, and they only heard of it afterwards; and when they spoke about it, the Wokan men denied it, and pretended they had not received the cloth; so they were quite sure their friends were at that time alive and somewhere in the sea.

Alfred Russel Wallace - The Malay Archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise; a narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature — Volume 2

I took advantage of a very fine calm day to pay a visit to the island of Wokan, which is about a mile from us, and forms part of the "canna busar," or mainland of Aru. This is a large island, extending from north to south about a hundred miles, but so low in many parts as to be intersected by several creeks, which run completely through it, offering a passage for good-sized vessels.

Alfred Russel Wallace - The Malay Archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise; a narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature — Volume 2