Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
coffee. The Missionaries should take up the question, because, by inducing married women
to confine themselves to domestic duties, they will decidedly promote a higher civilization,
and directly increase the health and happiness of the whole community. The people are so
docile, and so willing to adopt the manners and customs of Europeans, that the change
might be easily effected, by merely showing them that it was a question of morality and
civilization, and an essential step in their progress towards an equality with their white
rulers.
After a fortnight's stay at Rurúkan, I left that pretty and interesting village in search of a
locality and climate more productive of birds and insects. I passed the evening with the
Controlleur of Tondáno, and the next morning at nine, left in a small boat for the head of the
lake, a distance of about ten miles. The lower end of the lake is bordered by swamps and
marshes of considerable extent, but a little further on the hills come down to the water's
edge and give it very much the appearance of a great river, the width being about two miles.
At the upper end is the village of Kákas, where I dined with the head man in a good house
like those I have already described; and then went on to Langówan, four miles distant over a
level plain. This was the place where I had been recommended to stay, and I accordingly un-
packed my baggage and made myself comfortable in the large house devoted to visitors. I
obtained a man to shoot for me, and another to accompany me the next day to the forest,
where I was in hopes of finding a good collecting ground.
In the morning after breakfast I started off, but found I had four miles to walk over a
wearisome straight road through coffee plantations before I could get to the forest, and as
soon as I did so it came on to rain heavily, and did not cease till night. This distance to walk
every day was too far for any profitable work, especially when the weather was so uncer-
tain. I therefore decided at once that I must go further on, till I found some place close to or
in a forest country. In the afternoon my friend Mr. Bensneider arrived, together with the
Controlleur of the next district, called Belang, from whom I learnt that six miles further on
there was a village called Panghu, which had been recently formed and had a good deal of
forest close to it; and he promised me the use of a small house if I liked to go there.
The next morning I went to see the hot-springs and mud volcanoes, for which this place is
celebrated. A picturesque path among plantations and ravines, brought us to a beautiful cir-
cular basin about forty feet diameter, bordered by a calcareous ledge, so uniform and truly
curved that it looked like a work of art. It was filled with clear water very near the boiling
point, and emitting clouds of steam with a strong sulphureous odour. It overflows at one
point and forms a little stream of hot water, which at a hundred yards' distance is still too
hot to hold the hand in. A little further on, in a piece of rough wood, were two other springs
