The Malay Archipelago [pp. 479-495]

T/he Malay Arch/ihclgo.
animals, disappear as you go east. But New Guinea and the
adjacent islands can lay claim to being the home of that most
beautiful of all birds —the bird of Paradise.
The products of these islands are so valuable and peculiar
that there is no little reason for supposing that Solomon's ships
touched at some of them in their three years' voyage to Ophir.
Gold and diamonds are to be had in Borneo. Apes and elephants' teeth are there, or on the Malay Peninsula, while the peacocks we fancy were this more rare, and most beautiful bird of
the world.*
Without following Mr. Wallace in detail as he traveled from
island to island, now living in European towns, now in native
huts, now traveling in a steamer, and then in a native prau, we
wish to state some of the results of his researches; and * The word translated peacocks in I Kings x: 22 and 2 Chron. ix: 2I is, ~'
-toucayimn, which Gesenius fancies to have been the domestic name of the peacock in India, of which country it is a native. A bird very similar to the peacock
of India is found in Java, and it is easily domesticated in almost any country.
That India was not the Ophir or Tarshish of Solomon's three years' voyages seems
likely, not merely because it was so near, but also because it was in all probability
reached by an overland trade, of which we have an indication in the building of
Tadmor, I20 miles N.E. of Damascus, and more than half the distance to the Euphrates. While the peacock can be easily domesticated, and thus introduced
without difficulty into neighboring countries, it is almost impossible to tame the
Bird of Paradise or make it live in confinement, and thus transport it to other countries. Mr. Wallace tried caging several varieties, but though feeding well, and
lively for a day or two, they all died by the third or fourth day. He finally found
a pair alive at Singapore, and purchased them for,Ioo, and brought them to
England, where they lived for a year or two. It is doubtful whether any light can
be thrown upon the question of the right interpretation of toucayirn from the present names of these birds. Gesenius says the Sanscrit name for peacock is sikii.
Mr. Wallace says one variety of the birds of Paradise (for there are eighteen different kinds) is called by the natives "goby goby," and its cry is wawk-wawkwawk, wok-wok-wok, which resounds in early morning through the woods. The
nearest resemblance that we know in sound is the Toucan of South America. But
neither the beauty of the bird, nor the direction from Ezion-geber, would point to
South America as the Ophir. Besides beauty of plumage, another idea may possibly have been the attraction when apes were brought in those ships, and that is
the power of imitation which belongs to the parrot tribe. The distance across
oceans is not such an obstacle as we might suppose. The Asiatics of Solomon's
time, and a few centuries later, when Babylon was built, and when Lautoz, the
Chinese philosopher, visited Greece, and Brahminism spread to Java, where its
solid brick and stone ruins are now seen among bamboo huts, and Buddhism sent
its missionaries to Ceylon, Siam and Japan, and across the Himalayas to Thibet
and China, were a race whose intellectual activity and enterprise are in striking
contrast with the apathy and sluggishness of their descendants.
1877.]
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