The inhabitants of Coupang consist of Malays, Chinese, and Dutch, besides the natives, so that there are many strange and complicated mixtures among the population. There is one resident English merchant, and whalers as well as Australian ships often come here for stores and water. The native Timorese preponderate, and a very little examination serves to show that they have nothing in common with Malays, but are much more closely allied to the true Papuans of the Aru Islands and New Guinea. They are tall, have pronounced features, large somewhat aquiline noses, and frizzly hair, and are generally of a dusky brown colour. The way in which the women talk to each other and to the men, their loud voices and laughter, and general character of self-assertion, would enable an experienced observer to decide, even without seeing them, that they were not Malays.
Mr. Arndt, a German and the Government doctor, invited me to stay at his house while in Coupang, and I gladly accepted his offer, as I only intended making a short visit. We at first began speaking French, but he got on so badly that we soon passed insensibly into Malay; and we afterwards held long discussions on literary, scientific, and philosophical questions in that semi-barbarous language, whose deficiencies we made up by the free use of French or Latin words.
After a few walks in the neighbourhood of the town, I found such a poverty of insects and birds that I determined to go for a few days to the island of Semao at the western extremity of Timor, where I heard that there was forest country with birds not found at Coupang. With some difficulty I obtained a large dugout boat with outriggers, to take me over a distance of about twenty miles. I found the country pretty well wooded, but covered with shrubs and thorny bushes rather than forest trees, and everywhere excessively parched and dried up by the long-continued dry season. I stayed at the village of Oeassa, remarkable for its soap springs. One of these is in the middle of the village, bubbling out from a little cone of mud to which the ground rises all round like a volcano in miniature. The water has a soapy feel and produces a strong lather when any greasy substance is washed in it. It contains alkali and iodine, in such quantities as to destroy all vegetation for some distance around. Close by the village is one of the finest springs I have ever seen, contained in several rocky basins communicating by narrow channels. These have been neatly walled where required and partly levelled, and form fine natural baths. The water is well tasted and clear as crystal, and the basins are surrounded by a grove of lofty many-stemmed banyan-trees, which keep them always cool and shady, and add greatly to the picturesque beauty of the scene.