TIMOR

See also:

• LAUT

LAUT (" Seaweed Timor '; Dutch, Timor Laae1), TENIMBER  or TENIMBAR, a group of islands in the Malay Archipelago, S.W. of the Aru Islands, between 6° 20' and 8° 3d S., and 130° 40' and 132° 5' E . By the Dutch, in whose residency of Amboyna they are included, they are politically divided into two districts; Larat, including the inhabited islands of Larat, Vordate, Molu, and Mare, together with many uninhabited islands; and Sera, including the Sera Islands, Selaru, and the southern part of Yamdena, all inhabited, Only Yamdena and Selaru are by the natives called Timor Laut; all the others they call Tenimbar . The group is in the main coralline . Vordate, Molu and south-eastern Yamdena have a maximum height of 820 ft.; the rest are low and flat, except Laibobar, apparently a volcanic islet on the west, which has an extinct crater 2000 ft. high . Yamdena, the largest island, has an area of about 'too sq. m.; the rest together about moo . Ritabel in Larat is the only safe roadstead during the east and west monsoons . The fauna includes buffaloes, a marsupial cuscus, some bats, the beautiful scarlet lory, rare varieties of the ground-thrush, honey-eater and oriole . The population is estimated at about Ig,000 . The aborigines are Papuans, but much mixed with Malayan and perhaps Polynesian elements . They are a fine race, often over '6 ft. tall, noted for , their artistic sense . In other respects they are pagans in a low state of culture, mostly divided into hostile communities and addicted to piracy . The only means of subsistence is primitive agriculture the temple of Aesculapius on that site, and to execute in marble the external decorations (acroteria) for one of the gables .

Considerable remains of the acroteria and the pedimental figures have been discovered (see

GREEK ART, fig . 44, and EPIDAURUS) .