第67章

My readers may now partially understand why a travelling naturalist of limited means, like myself, does so much less than is expected or than he would himself wish to do. It would be interesting to preserve skeletons of many birds and animals, reptiles and fishes in spirits, skins of the larger animals, remarkable fruits and woods and the most curious articles of manufacture and commerce; but it will be seen that under the circumstances I have just described, it would have been impossible to add these to the collections which were my own more especial favourites. When travelling by boat the difficulties are as great or greater, and they are not diminished when the journey is by land. It was absolutely necessary therefore to limit my collections to certain groups to which I could devote constant personal attention, and thus secure from destruction or decay what had been often obtained by much labour and pains.

While Manuel sat skinning his birds of an afternoon, generally surrounded by a little crowd of Malays and Sassaks (as the indigenes of Lombock are termed), he often held forth to them with the air of a teacher, and was listened to with profound attention. He was very fond of discoursing on the "special providences" of which he believed he was daily the subject.

"Allah has been merciful today," he would say--for although a Christian he adopted the Mahometan mode of speech- "and has given us some very fine birds; we can do nothing without him." Then one of the Malays would reply, "To be sure, birds are like mankind;they have their appointed time to die; when that time comes nothing can save them, and if it has not come you cannot kill them." A murmur of assent follow, until sentiments and cries of "Butul! Butul!" (Right, right.) Then Manuel would tell a long story of one of his unsuccessful hunts--how he saw some fine bird and followed it a long way, and then missed it, and again found it, and shot two or three times at it, but could never hit it, "Ah!" says an old Malay, "its time was not come, and so it was impossible for you to kill it." A doctrine is this which is very consoling to the bad marksman, and which quite accounts for the facts, but which is yet somehow not altogether satisfactory.