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-47-

This Chinese seems to be the head of the animal collectors here. They all haunt the shipyards and pick up what they can from sailors coming in from Ternate and New Guinea and other distant islands. Gerds gets what he can from all of them, but Yong is the most prosperous, respectable and respected of the Chinese clan. From him we hope to get a good collection on the way back. 

From his orchid collection Yong gave me several sprays of P apuan orchids, pale lavender with purple centers, smallish blossoms, but six or seven to a spray. He told me if I would keep them in water they would last for several days.

On our way to the hotel we went out through the native quarter, the fishing village on the sea.  Here were little houses built out over the water, woven of palm, and thatched of course. The harbor, and canals were full of native praus, built with a high bow, with multicolored sails, and sometimes one, sometimes two outriggers.  The ones with two outriggers looked like enormous water boatmen skidding over the water.   Men were mending their nets, women doing the washing, children ran after us laughing and shouting "Tabe, Tuan" but not begging.  Here and there along the coast were lookout towers for the fishermen -  where the watchman spends hours waiting for a school of fish to appear and then shouts the good word [[strikethrough]] that [[/strikethrough]]

Beyond the village was the tomb of "Captain China" - not a sea-faring man as I had supposed, but the head man of the village.   His tomb, and the nearby temple, were ornate with carved and colored stucco.  There were some nice bits of porcelain, small and complicated rock gardens, and some grotesque figures of the Captain, of Malay soldiers, and two Dutch soldiers on guard.

The famous prau habor is near here, but the boats are anchored so close together, their sails furled, that one really gets little idea of what they look like. Housekeeping goes on busily aboard;  people are born, grow up into fishermen, spend their whole lives on these praus and never know any other home.

Back at the hotel our various Chinese agents, and also rather embarrassingly Herr Gerds, kept appearaing and reappearing. Rather than have them think we were playing one against the other we told them we were going to buy from all of them, and wanted Yong to supervise the lot.  They all managed to extract considerable guilders as guaranty of good faith, but we are assured that they are honest, and we will not lose by financing them in advance.

In the evening we went to a Chinese restaurant, seeking a change from the pseudo-French of the hotel, but the Chinese food was not as good as we had had in Semarang.  In fact, the tummy-ache that woke me in the night was probably due to the fried shrimps, or the crab eggs that had been a bit heavy with grease.

Coenraad and Bill are still worrying about permits.  No word has come from Batavia.  Coenraad tried to telephone to Batavia, and learned that the telephone can be used on Sunday only in case of a volcanic eruption - just what good it would be then seems uncertain.  At any rate he was able to get a cable