The Weather Now Became More Rainy Than Ever,
And As The Wet Season Seemed To Have Set In In Earnest, I
Returned To Batavia, Packed Up And Sent Off My Collections, And
Left By Steamer On November 1st For Banca And Sumatra.
CHAPTER VIII.
SUMATRA.
(NOVEMBER 1861 to JANUARY 1862.)
The mail steamer from Batavia to Singapore took me to Muntok (or
as on English maps, "Minto"), the chief town and port of Banca.
Here I stayed a day or two, until I could obtain a boat to take me
across the straits, and all the river to Palembang. A few walks
into the country showed me that it was very hilly, and full of
granitic and laterite rocks, with a dry and stunted forest
vegetation; and I could find very few insects. A good-sized open
sailing-boat took me across to the mouth of the Palembang river
where, at a fishing village, a rowing-boat was hired to take me up
to Palembang - a distance of nearly a hundred miles by water.
Except when the wind was strong and favourable we could only
proceed with the tide, and the banks of the river were generally
flooded Nipa-swamps, so that the hours we were obliged to lay at
anchor passed very heavily. Reaching Palembang on the 8th of
November, I was lodged by the Doctor, to whom I had brought a
letter of introduction, and endeavoured to ascertain where I
could find a good locality for collecting. Everyone assured me
that I should have to go a very long way further to find any dry
forest, for at this season the whole country for many miles
inland was flooded.
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