Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
road is carried along the slope of a fine forest ravine. The descent is a long one, so that I es-
timated the village to be not more than 1,500 feet above the sea, yet I found the morning
temperature often 69°, the same as at Tondano at least 600 or 700 feet higher. I was pleased
with the appearance of the place, which had a good deal of forest and wild country around
it; and found prepared for me a little house consisting only of a verandah and a back room.
This was only intended for visitors to rest in, or to pass a night, but it suited me very well. I
was so unfortunate, however, as to lose both my hunters just at this time. One had been left
at Tondáno with fever and diarrhœa, and the other was attacked at Langówan with inflam-
mation of the chest, and as his case looked rather bad I had him sent back to Menado. The
people here were all so busy with their rice-harvest, which it was important for them to fin-
ish owing to the early rains, that I could get no one to shoot for me.
During the three weeks that I stayed at Panghu it rained nearly every day, either in the af-
ternoon only, or all day long; but there were generally a few hours' sunshine in the morning,
and I took advantage of these to explore the roads and paths, the rocks and ravines, in search
of insects. These were not very abundant, yet I saw enough to convince me that the locality
was a good one, had I been there at the beginning instead of at the end of the dry season.
The natives brought me daily a few insects obtained at the Sagueir palms, including some
fine Cetonias and stag-beetles. Two little boys were very expert with the blowpipe, and
brought me a good many small birds, which they shot with pellets of clay. Among these was
a pretty little flower-pecker of a new species (Prionochilus aureolimbatus), and several of
the loveliest honeysuckers I had yet seen. My general collection of birds was, however, al-
most at a standstill; for though I at length obtained a man to shoot for me, he was not good
for much, and seldom brought me more than one bird a day. The best thing he shot was the
large and rare fruit-pigeon peculiar to Northern Celebes (Carpophaga forsteni), which I had
long been seeking after.
I was myself very successful in one beautiful group of insects, the tiger-beetles, which
seem more abundant and varied here than anywhere else in the Archipelago. I first met with
them on a cutting in the road, where a hard clayey bank was partially overgrown with
mosses and small ferns. Here, I found running about, a small olive-green species which nev-
er took flight; and more rarely a fine purplish black wingless insect, which was always
found motionless in crevices, and was therefore probably nocturnal. It appeared to me to
form a new genus. About the roads in the forest, I found the large and handsome Cicindela
heros, which I had before obtained sparingly at Macassar; but it was in the mountain torrent
of the ravine itself that I got my finest things. On dead trunks overhanging the water and on
the banks and foliage, I obtained three very pretty species of Cicindela, quite distinct in size,
