Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and fruit was reduced to one of the poorest kinds of banana. The natives (during the wet sea-
son at least) live exclusively on rice, as the poorer Irish do on potatoes. A pot of rice cooked
very dry and eaten with salt and red peppers, twice a day, forms their entire food during a
large part of the year. This is no sign of poverty, but is simply custom; for their wives and
children are loaded with silver armlets from wrist to elbow, and carry dozens of silver coins
strung round their necks or suspended from their ears.
As I had moved away from Palembang, I had found the Malay spoken by the common
people less and less pure, till at length it became quite unintelligible, although the continual
recurrence of many well-known words assured me it was a form of Malay, and enabled me
to guess at the main subject of conversation. This district had a very bad reputation a few
years ago, and travellers were frequently robbed and murdered. Fights between village and
village were also of frequent occurrence, and many lives were lost, owing to disputes about
boundaries or intrigues with women. Now, however, since the country has been divided into
districts under 'Controlleurs,' who visit every village in turn to hear complaints and settle
disputes, such things are no more heard of. This is one of the numerous examples I have met
with of the good effects of the Dutch Government. It exercises a strict surveillance over its
most distant possessions, establishes a form of government well adapted to the character of
the people, reforms abuses, punishes crimes, and makes itself everywhere respected by the
native population.
Lobo Raman is a central point of the east end of Sumatra, being about a hundred and
twenty miles from the sea to the east, north, and west. The surface is undulating, with no
mountains or even hills, and there is no rock, the soil being generally a red friable clay.
Numbers of small streams and rivers intersect the country, and it is pretty equally divided
between open clearings and patches of forest, both virgin and second growth, with abund-
ance of fruit trees; and there is no lack of paths to get about in any direction. Altogether it is
the very country that would promise most for a naturalist, and I feel sure that at a more fa-
vourable time of year it would prove exceedingly rich; but it was now the rainy season,
when, in the very best of localities, insects are always scarce, and there being no fruit on the
trees there was also a scarcity of birds. During a month's collecting, I added only three or
four new species to my list of birds, although I obtained very fine specimens of many which
were rare and interesting. In butterflies I was rather more successful, obtaining several fine
species quite new to me, and a considerable number of very rare and beautiful insects. I will
give here some account of two species of butterflies, which, though very common in collec-
tions, present us with peculiarities of the highest interest.
