A Low Hut With
A Very Rotten Roof, Showing The Sky Through In Several Places,
Was The Only One I Could Obtain.
Luckily it did not rain that
night, and the next day we pulled down some of the walls to
repair the roof, which was of immediate importance, especially
over our beds and table.
About half a mile from the house was a fine mountain stream,
running swiftly over a bed of rocks and pebbles, and beyond this
was a hill covered with fine forest. By carefully picking my way
I could wade across this river without getting much above my
knees, although I would sometimes slip off a rock and go into a
hole up to my waist, and about twice a week I went across it in
order to explore the forest. Unfortunately there were no paths
here of any extent, and it did not prove very productive either
in insects or birds. To add to my difficulties I had stupidly
left my only pair of strong hoots on board the steamer, and my
others were by this time all dropping to pieces, so that I was
obliged to walk about barefooted, and in constant fear of hurting
my feet, and causing a wound which might lay me up for weeks, as
had happened in Borneo, Are, and Dorey. Although there were
numerous plantations of maize and plantains, there were no new
clearings; and as without these it is almost impossible to find
many of the best kinds of insects, I determined to make one
myself, and with much difficulty engaged two men to clear a patch
of forest, from which I hoped to obtain many fine beetles before
I left.
During the whole of my stay, however, insects never became
plentiful. My clearing produced me a few fine, longicorns and
Buprestidae, different from any I had before seen, together with
several of the Amboyna species, but by no means so numerous or,
so beautiful as I had found in that small island. For example, I
collected only 210 different kinds of beetles during my two
months' stay at Bourn, while in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857,
I found more than 300 species: One of the finest insects found at
Bouru was a large Cerambyx, of a deep shining chestnut colour,
and with very long antennae. It varied greatly in size, the
largest specimens being three inches long, while the smallest
were only an inch, the antenna varying from one and a half to
five inches.
One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big snake. He was
walking through some high grass, and stepped on something which
he took for a small fallen tree, but it felt cold and yielding to
his feet, and far to the right and left there was a waving and
rustling of the herbage. He jumped back in affright and prepared
to shoot, but could not get a good vies of the creature, and it
passed away, he said, like a tree being dragged along through the
grass. As he lead several times already shot large snakes, which
he declared were all as nothing compared with this, I am inclined
to believe it must really have been a monster. Such creatures are
rather plentiful here, for a man living close by showed me on his
thigh the marks where he bad been seized by one close to his
house. It was big enough to take the man's thigh in its mouth,
and he would probably have been killed and devoured by it had not
his cries brought out his neighbours, who destroyed it with their
choppers. As far as I could make out it was about twenty feet
long, but Ali's was probably much larger.
It sometimes amuses me to observe how, a few days after I have
taken possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable
home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo
platform at one side. At one end of this platform, which was
elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito curtain, and
partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a
comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on
legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-
chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried my daily-
washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf was arranged my
small stock of crockery and hardware: Boxes were ranged against
the thatch walls, and hanging shelves, to preserve my collections
from ants while drying, were suspended both without and within
the house. On my table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers,
and pins, with insect and bird labels, all of which were unsolved
mysteries to the native mind.
Most of the people here had never seen a pin, and the better
informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant companions
the peculiarities and uses of that strange European production - a
needle with a head, but no eye! Even paper, which we throw away
hourly as rubbish, was to them a curiosity; and I often saw them
picking up little scraps which had been swept out of the house,
and carefully putting them away in their betel-pouch. Then when I
took my morning coffee and evening tea, how many were the strange
things displayed to them! Teapot, teacups, teaspoons, were all
more or less curious in their eyes; tea, sugar, biscuit, and
butter, were articles of human consumption seen by many of them
for the first time. One asks if that whitish powder is "gula
passir" (sand-sugar), so called to distinguish it from the coarse
lump palm-sugar or molasses of native manufacture; and the
biscuit is considered a sort of European sago-cake, which the
inhabitants of those remote regions are obliged to use in the
absence of the genuine article. My pursuit, were of course
utterly beyond their comprehension. They continually asked me
what white people did with the birds and insects I tools so much
care to preserve.
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