Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
window. Two bamboo chairs, an easy cane chair, and hanging shelves suspended with insu-
lating oil cups, so as to be safe from ants, completed my furnishing arrangements.
In the afternoon succeeding my arrival, the Secretary accompanied me to visit the Sultan.
We were kept waiting a few minutes in an outer gate-house, and then ushered to the door of
a rude, half-fortified whitewashed house. A small table and three chairs were placed in a
large outer corridor, and an old dirty-faced man with grey hair and a grimy beard, dressed in
a speckled blue cotton jacket and loose red trousers, came forward, shook hands, and asked
me to be seated. After a quarter of an hour's conversation on my pursuits, in which his
Majesty seemed to take great interest, tea and cakes—of rather better quality than usual on
such occasions—were brought in. I thanked him for the house, and offered to show him my
collections, which he promised to come and look at. He then asked me to teach him to take
views—to make maps—to get him a small gun from England, and a milch-goat from
Bengal; all of which requests I evaded as skilfully as I was able, and we parted very good
friends. He seemed a sensible old man, and lamented the small population of the island,
which he assured me was rich in many valuable minerals, including gold; but there were not
people enough to look after them and work them. I described to him the great rush of popu-
lation on the discovery of the Australian gold mines, and the huge nuggets found there, with
which he was much interested, and exclaimed, 'Oh! if we had but people like that, my coun-
try would be quite as rich!'
The morning after I had got into my new house, I sent my boys out to shoot, and went
myself to explore the road to the coal mines. In less than half a mile it entered the virgin
forest, at a place where some magnificent trees formed a kind of natural avenue. The first
part was flat and swampy, but it soon rose a little, and ran alongside the fine stream which
passed behind my house, and which here rushed and gurgled over a rocky or pebbly bed,
sometimes leaving wide sandbanks on its margins, and at other places flowing between high
banks crowned with a varied and magnificent forest vegetation. After about two miles, the
valley narrowed, and the road was carried along the steep hill-side which rose abruptly from
the water's edge. In some places the rock had been cut away, but its surface was already
covered with elegant ferns and creepers. Gigantic tree-ferns were abundant, and the whole
forest had an air of luxuriance and rich variety which it never attains in the dry volcanic soil
to which I had been lately accustomed. A little further the road passed to the other side of
the valley by a bridge across the stream at a place where a great mass of rock in the middle
offered an excellent support for it, and two miles more of most picturesque and interesting
road brought me to the mining establishment.
