The vegetables and fruit in the plantations around us did not suffice for the wants of the inhabitants, and were almost always dug up or gathered before they were ripe. It was very rarely we could purchase a little fish; fowls there were none; and we were reduced to live upon tough pigeons and cockatoos, with our rice and sago, and sometimes we could not get these. Having been already eight months on this voyage, my stock of all condiments, spices and butter, was exhausted, and I found it impossible to eat sufficient of my tasteless and unpalatable food to support health. I got very thin and weak, and had a curious disease known (I have since heard) as brow-ague. Directly after breakfast every morning an intense pain set in on a small spot on the right temple. It was a severe burning ache, as bad as the worst toothache, and lasted about two hours, generally going off at noon. When this finally ceased, I had an attack of fever, which left me so weak and so unable to eat our regular food, that Ifeel sure my life was saved by a couple of tins of soup which Ihad long reserved for some such extremity. I used often to go out searching after vegetables, and found a great treasure in a lot of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the size of gooseberries. I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants and of ferns, by way of greens, and occasionally got a few green papaws. The natives, when hard up for food, live upon a fleshy seaweed, which they boil till it is tender. I tried this also, but found it too salt and bitter to be endured.
Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for me to return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end of the east monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from me had brought the birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had been so unfortunate as not to get one, and he very honestly brought back the axe he had received in advance; another, who had agreed for six, brought me the fifth two days before I was to start, and went off immediately to the forest again to get the other. He did not return, however, and we loaded our boat, and were just on the point of starting, when he came running down after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were remarkable and quite unexpected instances of honesty among savages, where it would have been very easy for them to have been dishonest without fear of detection or punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged, bristling with jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with curious little chasms and ravines. The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which in the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the extreme, and often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiaceae. It was in such places as these that I obtained many of my most beautiful small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many others. On the skirts of the plantations I found the handsome blue Deudorix despoena, and in the shady woods the lovely Lycaena wallacei. Here, too, Iobtained the beautiful Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the upper side; while below it is intense crimson and glossy black;and a superb specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely fresh and perfect, and which still remains one of the glories of my cabinet.
My collection of birds, though not very rich in number of species, was yet very interesting. I got another specimen of the rare New Guinea kite (Henicopernis longicauda), a large new goatsucker (Podargus superciliaris), and a most curious ground-pigeon of an entirely new genus, and remarkable for its long and powerful bill. It has been named Henicophaps albifrons. I was also much pleased to obtain a fine series of a large fruit-pigeon with a protuberance on the bill (Carpophaga tumida), and to ascertain that this was not, as had been hitherto supposed, a sexual character, but was found equally in male and female birds.
I collected only seventy-three species of birds in Waigiou, but twelve of them were entirely new, and many others very rare; and as I brought away with me twenty-four fine specimens of the Paradisea rubra, I did not regret my visit to the island, although it had by no means answered my expectations.