The Orang Sirani are good cooks, having a much greater variety of
savoury dishes than the Malays. Here, they live chiefly on sago
as bread, with a little rice occasionally, and abundance of
vegetables and fruit.

It is a curious fact that everywhere in the Past where the
Portuguese have mixed with the native races they leave become
darker in colour than either of the parent stocks. This is the
case almost always with these "Orang Sirani" in the Moluccas, and
with the Portuguese of Malacca. The reverse is the case in South
America, where the mixture of the Portuguese or Brazilian with
the Indian produces the "Mameluco," who is not unfrequently
lighter than either parent, and always lighter than the Indian.
The women at Batchian, although generally fairer than the men,
are coarse in features, and very far inferior in beauty to the
mixed Dutch-Malay girls, or even to many pure Malays.

The part of the village in which I resided was a grove of cocoa-
nut trees, and at night, when the dead leaves were sometimes
collected together and burnt, the effect was most magnificent--
the tall stems, the fine crowns of foliage, and the immense
fruit-clusters, being brilliantly illuminated against a dark sky,
and appearing like a fairy palace supported on a hundred columns,
and groined over with leafy arches. The cocoa-nut tree, when well
grown, is certainly the prince of palms both for beauty and
utility.

During my very first walk into the forest at Batchian, I had seen
sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of a dark
colour marked with white and yellow spots. I could not capture it