We have on board a gentleman connected with the Dutch
Government, who visits their out-of-the-way possessions in the
Malay Archipelago. He has been where a white man never was
before--in the interior of New Guinea--and has seen strange
things. He tells us that the birds of paradise take seven years to
develop. The first year male and female are alike, but year after
year the male acquires brighter feathers, until it becomes the
superb bird we know. Some one remarked that it is just the reverse
with the birds of paradise in man's creation. Here our Eve puts on
gayer plumage year after year until finally she develops into a
still more superb bird, while the male remains the same
sober-suited fowl he was at first; but this was from a bachelor,
I think.
We are in a new world, and the talk is all of people and islands and
animals we never heard of. Do you know, for instance, that such a
potentate as the Sultan of Terantor exists? and, ambitious ruler
that he is, that he now claims tribute from the whole of New Guinea?
Then, again, let me tell you that the Sultan of Burnei gets $6,000
per year tribute from Setwanak, and, like a grasping tyrant, demands
more; hence the wars which rage in that quarter of the globe. The
Setwanaks have appealed to the "God of Battles," and are no doubt
shouting on all hands that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to
God;" and "Millions for defence; not a cent for tribute.
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