Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
locality and direction; and he was thus enabled to hit straight upon the hut, in the vicinity of
which he had often hunted. In a forest of which he knew nothing, he would be quite as much
at a loss as a European. Thus it is, I am convinced, with all the wonderful accounts of Indi-
ans finding their way through trackless forests to definite points. They may never have
passed straight between the two particular points before, but they are well acquainted with
the vicinity of both, and have such a general knowledge of the whole country, its water sys-
tem, its soil and its vegetation, that as they approach the point they are to reach, many easily
recognised indications enable them to hit upon it with certainty.
The chief feature of this forest was the abundance of rattan palms, hanging from the trees,
and turning and twisting about on the ground, often in inextricable confusion. One wonders
at first how they can get into such queer shapes; but it is evidently caused by the decay and
fall of the trees up which they have first climbed, after which they grow along the ground
till they meet with another trunk up which to ascend. A tangled mass of twisted living rat-
tan, is therefore a sign that at some former period a large tree has fallen there, though there
may be not the slightest vestige of it left. The rattan seems to have unlimited powers of
growth, and a single plant may mount up several trees in succession, and thus reach the
enormous length they are said sometimes to attain. They much improve the appearance of a
forest as seen from the coast; for they vary the otherwise monotonous tree-tops with feath-
ery crowns of leaves rising clear above them, and each terminated by an erect leafy spike
like a lightning-conductor.
The other most interesting object in the forest was a beautiful palm, whose perfectly
smooth and cylindrical stem rises erect to more than a hundred feet high, with a thickness of
only eight or ten inches; while the fan-shaped leaves which compose its crown, are almost
complete circles of six or eight feet diameter, borne aloft on long and slender petioles, and
beautifully toothed round the edge by the extremities of the leaflets, which are separated
only for a few inches from the circumference. It is probably the Livistona rotundifolia of
botanists, and is the most complete and beautiful fan-leaf I have ever seen, serving admir-
ably for folding into water-buckets and
impromptu
baskets, as well as for thatching and oth-
er purposes.
A few days afterwards I returned to Menado on horseback, sending my baggage round by
sea; and had just time to pack up all my collections to go by the next mail steamer to Am-
boyna. I will now devote a few pages to an account of the chief peculiarities of the zoology
of Celebes, and its relation to that of the surrounding countries.
