The fowls, ducks, and goats all looked fat and thriving on the refuse food of a dense population, and the Chinamen's pigs were in a state of obesity that foreboded early death.

Parrots and Tories and cockatoos, of a dozen different binds, were suspended on bamboo perches at the doors of the houses, with metallic green or white fruit-pigeons which cooed musically at noon and eventide.

Young cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in the hot sunshine, with sometimes a pretty little kangaroo, caught in the Aru forests, but already tame and graceful as a petted fawn.
Of an evening there were more signs of life than at the time of my former residence.

Tom-toms, jews'-harps, and even fiddles were to be heard, and the melancholy Malay songs sounded not unpleasantly far into the night.

Almost every day there was a cock-fight in the street.