As Soon As It Was Finished I Moved Into
It, And Found The Change Most Agreeable.
The forest which surrounded me was open and free from underwood,
consisting of large trees, widely scattered with a great quantity
of palm-trees (Arenga saccharifera), from which palm wine and
sugar are made.
There were also great numbers of a wild Jack-
fruit tree (Artocarpus), which bore abundance of large
reticulated fruit, serving as an excellent vegetable. The ground
was as thickly covered with dry leaves as it is in an English
wood in November; the little rocky streams were all dry, and
scarcely a drop of water or even a damp place was anywhere to be
seen. About fifty yards below my house, at the foot of the hill,
was a deep hole in a watercourse where good water was to be had,
and where I went daily to bathe by having buckets of water taken
out and pouring it over my body.
My host Mr. M. enjoyed a thoroughly country life, depending
almost entirely on his gun and dogs to supply his table. Wild
pigs of large size were very plentiful and he generally got one
or two a week, besides deer occasionally, and abundance of
jungle-fowl, hornbills, and great fruit pigeons. His buffaloes
supplied plenty of milk from which he made his own butter; he
grew his own rice and coffee, and had ducks, fowls, and their
eggs, in profusion. His palm-trees supplied him all the year round
with "sagueir," which takes the place of beer; and the sugar made
from them is an excellent sweetmeat. All the fine tropical
vegetables and fruits were abundant in their season, and his
cigars were made from tobacco of his own raising. He kindly sent
me a bamboo of buffalo-milk every morning; it was as thick as
cream, and required diluting with water to keep it fluid during
the day. It mixes very well with tea and coffee, although it has
a slight peculiar flavour, which after a time is not
disagreeable. I also got as much sweet "sagueir "as I liked to
drink, and Mr. M. always sent me a piece of each pig he killed,
which with fowls, eggs, and the birds we shot ourselves, and
buffalo beef about once a fortnight, kept my larder sufficiently
well supplied.
Every bit of flatland was cleared and used as rice-fields, and
on the lower slopes of many of the hills tobacco and vegetables
were grown. Most of the slopes are covered with huge blocks of
rock, very fatiguing to scramble over, while a number of the
hills are so precipitous as to be quite inaccessible. These
circumstances, combined with the excessive drought, were very
unfavourable for lily pursuits. Birds were scarce, and I got but
few new to me. Insects were tolerably plentiful, but unequal.
Beetles, usually so numerous and interesting, were exceedingly
scarce, some of the families being quite absent and others only
represented by very minute species. The Flies and Bees, on the
other hand, were abundant, and of these I daily obtained new and
interesting species. The rare and beautiful Butterflies of
Celebes were the chief object of my search, and I found many
species altogether new to me, but they were generally so active
and shy as to render their capture a matter of great difficulty.
Almost the only good place for them was in the dry beds of the
streams in the forest, where, at damp places, muddy pools, or
even on the dry rocks, all sorts of insects could be found. In
these rocky forests dwell some of the finest butterflies in the
world. Three species of Ornithoptera, measuring seven or eight
inches across the wings, and beautifully marked with spots or
masses of satiny yellow on a black ground, wheel through the
thickets with a strong sailing flight. About the damp places are
swarms of the beautiful blue-banded Papilios, miletus and
telephus, the superb golden green P. macedon, and the rare little
swallow-tail Papilio rhesus, of all of which, though very active,
I succeeded in capturing fine series of specimens.
I have rarely enjoyed myself more than during my residence here.
As I sat taking my coffee at six in the morning, rare birds would
often be seen on some tree close by, when I would hastily sally
out in my slippers, and perhaps secure a prize I had been
seeking after for weeks. The great hornbills of Celebes (Buceros
cassidix) would often come with loud-flapping wings, and perch
upon a lofty tree just in front of me; and the black baboon-
monkeys, Cynopithecus nigrescens, often stared down in
astonishment at such an intrusion into their domains while at
night herds of wild pigs roamed about the house, devouring
refuse, and obliging us to put away everything eatable or
breakable from our little cooking-house. A few minutes' search on
the fallen trees around my house at sunrise and sunset, would
often produce me more beetles than I would meet with in a day's
collecting, and odd moments could be made valuable which when
living in villages or at a distance from the forest are
inevitably wasted. Where the sugar-palms were dripping with sap,
flies congregated in immense numbers, and it was by spending half
an hour at these when I had the time to spare, that I obtained
the finest and most remarkable collection of this group of
insects that I have ever made.
Then what delightful hours I passed wandering up and down the dry
river-courses, full of water-holes and rocks and fallen trees,
and overshadowed by magnificent vegetation. I soon got to know
every hole and rock and stump, and came up to each with cautious
step and bated breath to see what treasures it would produce. At
one place I would find a little crowd of the rare butterfly
Tachyris zarinda, which would rise up at my approach, and display
their vivid orange and cinnabar-red wings, while among them would
flutter a few of the fine blue-banded Papilios.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 86 of 112
Words from 86834 to 87851
of 114260
