wants of the inhabitants, and were almost always dug up or gathered before they
were ripe. It was very rarely we could purchase a little fish; fowls there were
none; and we were reduced to live upon tough pigeons and cockatoos, with our
rice and sago, and sometimes we could not get these. Having been already eight
months on this voyage, my stock of all condiments, spices and butter, was
exhausted, and I found it impossible to eat sufficient of my tasteless and
unpalatable food to support health. I got very thin and weak, and had a curious
disease known (I have since heard) as brow-ague. Directly after breakfast every
morning an intense pain set in on a small spot on the right temple. It was a
severe burning ache, as bad as the worst toothache, and lasted about two hours,
generally going off at noon. When this finally ceased, I had an attack of fever,
which left me so weak and so unable to eat our regular food, that I feel sure my
life was saved by a couple of tins of soup which I had long reserved for some
such extremity. I used often to go out searching after vegetables, and found a
great treasure in a lot of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the
size of gooseberries. I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants and of ferns, by
way of greens, and occasionally got a few green papaws. The natives, when hard
up for food, live upon a fleshy seaweed, which they boil till it is tender. I tried
this also, but found it too salt and bitter to be endured.
Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for me to
return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end of the east
monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from me had brought the
birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had been so unfortunate as not to get
one, and he very honestly brought back the axe he had received in advance;
another, who had agreed for six, brought me the fifth two days before I was to
start, and went off immediately to the forest again to get the other. He did not
return, however, and we loaded our boat, and were just on the point of starting,
when he came running down after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me,
saying with great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were remarkable
and quite unexpected instances of honesty among savages, where it would have
been very easy for them to have been dishonest without fear of detection or
punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged, bristling with
jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with curious little chasms and
ravines. The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which in the depths
of the forest were gloomy and dark in the extreme, and often full of fine-leaved
herbaceous plants and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiaceae. It was in such
places as these that I obtained many of my most beautiful small butterflies, such