absence of cultivation there were scarcely any paths leading into
the forest. I was therefore unable to collect much during my
enforced stay, and found no rare birds or insects to improve my
opinion of Ceram as a collecting ground. Finding it quite
impossible to get men here to accompany me on the whole voyage, I
was obliged to be content with a crew to take me as far as Wahai,
on the middle of the north coast of Ceram, and the chief Dutch
station in the island. The journey took us five days, owing to
calms and light winds, and no incident of any interest occurred
on it, nor did I obtain at our stopping places a single addition
to my collections worth naming. At Wahai, which I reached on the
15th of June, I was hospitably received by the Commandant and my
old friend Herr Rosenberg, who was now on an official visit here.
He lent me some money to pay my men, and I was lucky enough to
obtain three others willing to make the voyage with me to
Ternate, and one more who was to return from Mysol. One of my
Amboyna lads, however, left me, so that I was still rather short
of hands.

I found here a letter from Charles Allen, who was at Silinta in
Mysol, anxiously expecting me, as he was out of rice and other
necessaries, and was short of insect-pins. He was also ill, and
if I did not soon come would return to Wahai.

As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among islands
inhabited by the Papuan race, and was an eventful and disastrous
one, I will narrate its chief incidents in a separate chapter in
that division of my work devoted to the Papuan Islands. 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