The Forests Abound With Gigantic Trees With Cylindrical,
Buttressed, Or Furrowed Stems, While Occasionally The Traveller
Comes Upon A Wonderful Fig-Tree, Whose Trunk Is Itself A Forest
Of Stems And Aerial Roots.
Still more rarely are found trees
which appear to have begun growing in mid-air, and from the same
Point send out wide-spreading branches above and a complicated
pyramid of roots descending for seventy or eighty feet to the
ground below, and so spreading on every side, that one can stand
in the very centre with the trunk of the tree immediately
overhead. Trees of this character are found all over the
Archipelago, and the accompanying illustration (taken from one
which I often visited in the Aru Islands) will convey some idea
of their general character. I believe that they originate as
parasites, from seeds carried by birds and dropped in the fork of
some lofty tree. Hence descend aerial roots, clasping and
ultimately destroying the supporting tree, which is in time
entirely replaced by the humble plant which was at first
dependent upon it. Thus we have an actual struggle for life in
the vegetable kingdom, not less fatal to the vanquished than the
struggles among animals which we can so much more easily observe
and understand. The advantage of quicker access to light and
warmth and air, which is gained in one way by climbing plants, is
here obtained by a forest tree, which has the means of starting
in life at an elevation which others can only attain after many
years of growth, and then only when the fall of some other tree
has made room for then. Thus it is that in the warm and moist and
equable climate of the tropics, each available station is seized
upon and becomes the means of developing new forms of life
especially adapted to occupy it.
On reaching Sarawak early in December, I found there would not be
an opportunity of returning to Singapore until the latter end of
January. I therefore accepted Sir James Brooke's invitation to
spend a week with him and Mr. St. John at his cottage on Peninjauh.
This is a very steep pyramidal mountain of crystalline
basaltic rock, about a thousand feet high, and covered with
luxuriant forest. There are three Dyak villages upon it, and on a
little platform near the summit is the rude wooden lodge where
the English Rajah was accustomed to go for relaxation and cool
fresh air. It is only twenty miles up the river, but the road up
the mountain is a succession of ladders on the face of
precipices, bamboo bridges over gullies and chasms, and slippery
paths over rocks and tree-trunks and huge boulders as big as
houses. A cool spring under an overhanging rock just below the
cottage furnished us with refreshing baths and delicious drinking
water, and the Dyaks brought us daily heaped-up baskets of
Mangosteens and Lansats, two of the most delicious of the subacid
tropical fruits. We returned to Sarawak for Christmas (the second
I had spent with Sir James Brooke), when all the Europeans both
in the town and from the out-stations enjoyed the hospitality of
the Rajah, who possessed in a pre-eminent degree the art of
making every one around him comfortable and happy.
A few days afterwards I returned to the mountain with Charles and
a Malay boy named Ali and stayed there three weeks for the
purpose of making a collection of land-shells, butterflies and
moths, ferns and orchids. On the hill itself ferns were tolerably
plentiful, and I made a collection of about forty species. But
what occupied me most was the great abundance of moths which on
certain occasions I was able to capture. As during the whole of
my eight years' wanderings in the East I never found another spot
where these insects were at all plentiful, it will be interesting
to state the exact conditions under which I here obtained them.
On one side of the cottage there was a verandah, looking down
the whole side of the mountain and to its summit on the right,
all densely clothed with forest. The boarded sides of the cottage
were whitewashed, and the roof of the verandah was low, and also
boarded and whitewashed. As soon as it got dark I placed my lamp
on a table against the wall, and with pins, insect-forceps, net,
and collecting-boxes by my side, sat down with a book. Sometimes
during the whole evening only one solitary moth would visit me,
while on other nights they would pour in, in a continual stream,
keeping me hard at work catching and pinning till past midnight.
They came literally by the thousands. These good nights were very
few. During the four weeks that I spent altogether on the hill I
only had four really good nights, and these were always rainy,
and the best of them soaking wet. But wet nights were not always
good, for a rainy moonlight night produced next to nothing. All
the chief tribes of moths were represented, and the beauty and
variety of the species was very great. On good nights I was able
to capture from a hundred to two hundred and fifty moths, and these
comprised on each occasion from half to two-thirds that number of
distinct species. Some of them would settle on the wall, some on
the table, while many would fly up to the roof and give me a chase
all over the verandah before I could secure them. In order to show
the curious connection between the state of weather and the degree
in which moths were attracted to light, I add a list of my captures
each night of my stay on the hill.
Date (1855) No. of Moths Remarks
Dec. 13th 1 Fine; starlight.
14th 75 Drizzly and fog.
15th 41 Showery; cloudy.
16th 158 (120 species.) Steady rain.
17th 82 Wet; rather moonlight.
18th 9 Fine; moonlight.
19th 2 Fine; clear moonlight.
31st 200 (130 species.) Dark and windy;
heavy rain.
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