When This Finally Ceased, I Had An Attack Of Fever, Which
Left Me So Weak And So Unable To Eat Our Regular Food, That I
Feel Sure My Life Was Saved By A Couple Of Tins Of Soup Which I
Had Long Reserved For Some Such Extremity.
I used often to go out
searching after vegetables, and found a great treasure in a lot
of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the
size of gooseberries.
I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants
and of ferns, by way of greens, and occasionally got a few green
papaws. The natives, when hard up for food, live upon a fleshy
seaweed, which they boil till it is tender. I tried this also,
but found it too salt and bitter to be endured.
Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for
me to return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end
of the east monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from
me had brought the birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had
been so unfortunate as not to get one, and he very honestly
brought back the axe he had received in advance; another, who had
agreed for six, brought me the fifth two days before I was to
start, and went off immediately to the forest again to get the
other. He did not return, however, and we loaded our boat, and
were just on the point of starting, when he came running down
after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with
great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were
remarkable and quite unexpected instances of honesty among
savages, where it would have been very easy for them to have been
dishonest without fear of detection or punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged,
bristling with jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with
curious little chasms and ravines. The paths often passed through
these rocky clefts, which in the depths of the forest were gloomy
and dark in the extreme, and often full of fine-leaved herbaceous
plants and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiaceae. It was in such
places as these that I obtained many of my most beautiful small
butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila pulchra, the
gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many others. On the skirts
of the plantations I found the handsome blue Deudorix despoena,
and in the shady woods the lovely Lycaena wallacei. Here, too, I
obtained the beautiful Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the
upper side; while below it is intense crimson and glossy black;
and a superb specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely fresh
and perfect, and which still remains one of the glories of my
cabinet.
My collection of birds, though not very rich in number of
species, was yet very interesting. I got another specimen of the
rare New Guinea kite (Henicopernis longicauda), a large new
goatsucker (Podargus superciliaris), and a most curious ground-
pigeon of an entirely new genus, and remarkable for its long and
powerful bill.
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