Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
invited me to share. We rode there in the evening; and in the course of two days my baggage
was brought up, and I was able to look about me and see if I could do any collecting.
For the first few weeks I was very unwell and could not go far from the house. The coun-
try was covered with low spiny shrubs and acacias, except in a little valley where a stream
came down from the hills, where some fine trees and bushes shaded the water and formed a
very pleasant place to ramble up. There were plenty of birds about, and of a tolerable variety
of species; but very few of them were gaily coloured. Indeed, with one or two exceptions,
the birds of this tropical island were hardly so ornamental as those of Great Britain. Beetles
were so scarce that a collector might fairly say there were none, as the few obscure or unin-
teresting species would not repay him for the search. The only insects at all remarkable or
interesting were the butterflies, which, though comparatively few in species, were suffi-
ciently abundant, and comprised a large proportion of new or rare sorts. The banks of the
stream formed my best collecting-ground, and I daily wandered up and down its shady bed,
which about a mile up became rocky and precipitous. Here I obtained the rare and beautiful
swallow-tail butterflies, Papilio ænomaus and P. liris; the males of which are quite unlike
each other, and belong in fact to distinct sections of the genus, while the females are so
much alike that they are undistinguishable on the wing, and to an uneducated eye equally so
in the cabinet. Several other beautiful butterflies rewarded my search in this place; among
which I may especially mention the Cethosia leschenaultii, whose wings of the deepest
purple are bordered with buff in such a manner as to resemble at first sight our own Cam-
berwell beauty, although it belongs to a different genus. The most abundant butterflies were
the whites and yellows (Pieridæ), several of which I had already found at Lombock and at
Coupang, while others were new to me.
Early in February we made arrangements to stay for a week at a village called Baliba,
situated about four miles off on the mountains, at an elevation of 2,000 feet. We took our
baggage and a supply of all necessaries on pack-horses; and though the distance by the route
we took was not more than six or seven miles, we were half a day getting there. The roads
were mere tracks, sometimes up steep rocky stairs, sometimes in narrow gullies worn by the
horses' feet, and where it was necessary to tuck up our legs on our horses' necks to avoid
having them crushed. At some of these places the baggage had to be unloaded, at others it
was knocked off. Sometimes the ascent or descent was so steep that it was easier to walk
than to cling to our ponies' backs; and thus we went up and down, over bare hills whose sur-
face was covered with small pebbles and scattered over with Eucalypti, reminding me of
what I had read of parts of the interior of Australia rather than of the Malay Archipelago.
