As soon as the South-East monsoon is fairly set in, the junks are hauled up on the western side of the sandy spit at high-water spring tides, a sort of dam is then built round them, with bamboos, and a kind of mat the Malays call kadgang, banked up with sand; from this the water is bailed out by hand, so as to form a dry dock in which they clean and coat the bottom with chinam which lasts till the next season. The cargo, as it is brought in by the different trading boats, is carefully dried and stowed away in the different storehouses on the point. CHARACTER OF THE NATIVES. Of the natives of the islands we had not on this occasion an opportunity of seeing much, but the traders on the whole gave them a good character for honesty, and described them as a harmless race very much scattered. They used formerly to bring their articles of barter to Dobbo, but discontinued it within the last few years, in consequence of having been ill-used by the Bughis. Many of them profess Christianity, having been converted by Dutch Missionaries sent from Amboyna. THE KI ISLANDS. Having completed our survey of the harbour and obtained such supplies as we could, which, from the traders only bringing with them enough for their own consumption, did not amount to much, we sailed for the Ki Islands; a group sixty miles to the eastward of Arru, consisting of two large islands called the greater and lesser Ki, and a number of small islands lying to the westward of the latter. The great Ki is about sixty miles long, high, and mountainous; the lesser Ki and the small islands are low, few parts of the group attaining an elevation of more than fifty feet. Owing to the light airs and unsettled weather attendant on the change of the monsoon, it was not till the 3rd that we arrived off the village of Ki Illi, situated on the north-east end of the great Ki, and finding no anchorage, the brig stood on and off, while we landed in the boats at the village which is built close down on the beach and surrounded by a wall, but not so strongly protected by its position as the villages in Timor Laut. The houses, like those at Oliliet, were raised on piles above the ground, but were not surmounted by the carved gables which seem to be peculiar to the Tenimber group. In the centre of the village we noticed a large building, evidently a place of worship, surrounded by a grass plot, on which a number of stones were ranged in a circle with some taller ones in the middle. Ki Illi is celebrated for its manufacture of pottery, of which we saw many specimens, formed with great taste, of a coarse porous material, which being unglazed is well adapted for cooling by evaporation, in the manner so much used in the east. BOAT-BUILDING AT KI ILLI.