We Found It To Be A Steep Slope
Of Even Rock, Extending Along The Mountain Side Farther Than We
Could See.
Parts of it were quite bare, but where it was cracked
and fissured there grew a most luxuriant vegetation, among which
the pitcher plants were the most remarkable.
These wonderful
plants never seem to succeed well in our hot-houses, and are
there seen to little advantage. Here they grew up into half
climbing shrubs, their curious pitchers of various sizes and
forms hanging abundantly from their leaves, and continually
exciting our admiration by their size and beauty. A few
coniferae of the genus Dacrydium here first appeared, and in the
thickets just above the rocky surface we walked through groves of
those splendid ferns Dipteris Horsfieldii and Matonia pectinata,
which bear large spreading palmate fronds on slender stems six or
eight feet high. The Matonia is the tallest and most elegant, and
is known only from this mountain, and neither of them is yet
introduced into our hot-houses.
It was very striking to come out from the dark, cool, and shady
forest in which we had been ascending since we started, on to
this hot, open rocky slope where we seemed to have entered at one
step from a lowland to an alpine vegetation. The height, as
measured by a sympiesometer, was about 2,800 feet. We had been
told we should find water at Padang-batuas we were exceedingly thirsty;
but we looked about for it in vain.
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