Here Is
Found The Beautiful Crown Lily, Gloriosa Superba, Winding Among The
Bushes, And Displaying Its Magnificent Blossoms In Great Profusion.
A
wild vine also occurs, bearing great irregular bunches of hairy grapes
of a coarse but very luscious flavour.
In some of the valleys where
the vegetation is richer, thorny shrubs and climbers are so abundant
as to make the thickets quite impenetrable.
The soil seems very poor, consisting chiefly of decomposing clayey
shales; and the bare earth and rock is almost everywhere visible. The
drought of the hot season is so severe that most of the streams dry up
in the plains before they reach the sea; everything becomes burned up,
and the leaves of the larger trees fall as completely as in our
winter. On the mountains from two to four thousand feet elevation
there is a much moister atmosphere, so that potatoes and other
European products can be grown all the year round. Besides ponies,
almost the only exports of Timor are sandalwood and beeswax. The
sandalwood (Santalum sp.) is the produce of a small tree, which grows
sparingly in the mountains of Timor and many of the other islands in
the far East. The wood is of a fine yellow colour, and possesses a
well-known delightful fragrance which is wonderfully permanent. It is
brought down to Delli in small logs, and is chiefly exported to China,
where it is largely used to burn in the temples, and in the houses of
the wealthy.
The beeswax is a still more important and valuable product, formed
by the wild bees (Apis dorsata), which build huge honeycombs,
suspended in the open air from the underside of the lofty branches of
the highest trees. These are of a semicircular form, and often three
or four feet in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees' nest,
and a very interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to
collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys
under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal
branch three large bees' combs. The tree was straight and smooth-
barked and without a branch, until at seventy or eighty feet from the
ground it gave out the limb which the bees had chosen for their home.
As the men were evidently looking after the bees, I waited to watch
their operations. One of them first produced a long piece of wood
apparently the stem of a small tree or creeper, which he had brought
with him, and began splitting it through in several directions, which
showed that it was very tough and stringy. He then wrapped it in palm-
leaves, which were secured by twisting a slender creeper round them.
He then fastened his cloth tightly round his loins, and producing
another cloth wrapped it around his head, neck, and body, and tied it
firmly around his neck, leaving his face, arms, and legs completely
bare. Slung to his girdle he carried a long thin coil of cord; and
while he had been making these preparations, one of his companions had
cut a strong creeper or bush-rope eight or ten yards long, to one end
of which the wood-torch was fastened, and lighted at the bottom,
emitting a steady stream of smoke.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 144 of 219
Words from 74717 to 75271
of 114260
