fine beetles before I left.
During the whole of my stay, however, insects never became plentiful. My
clearing produced me a few fine, longicorns and Buprestidae, different from any
I had before seen, together with several of the Amboyna species, but by no
means so numerous or, so beautiful as I had found in that small island. For
example, I collected only 210 different kinds of beetles during my two months'
stay at Bourn, while in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857, I found more than 300
species: One of the finest insects found at Bouru was a large Cerambyx, of a
deep shining chestnut colour, and with very long antennae. It varied greatly in
size, the largest specimens being three inches long, while the smallest were only
an inch, the antenna varying from one and a half to five inches.
One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big snake. He was walking
through some high grass, and stepped on something which he took for a small
fallen tree, but it felt cold and yielding to his feet, and far to the right and left
there was a waving and rustling of the herbage. He jumped back in affright and
prepared to shoot, but could not get a good vies of the creature, and it passed
away, he said, like a tree being dragged along through the grass. As he lead
several times already shot large snakes, which he declared were all as nothing
compared with this, I am inclined to believe it must really have been a monster.
Such creatures are rather plentiful here, for a man living close by showed me on
his thigh the marks where he had been seized by one close to his house. It was
big enough to take the man's thigh in its mouth, and he would probably have
been killed and devoured by it had not his cries brought out his neighbours, who
destroyed it with their choppers. As far as I could make out it was about twenty
feet long, but Ali's was probably much larger.
It sometimes amuses me to observe how, a few days after I have taken
possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable home. My house at
Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end
of this platform, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito
curtain, and partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a comfortable
little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor,
and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried
my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf was arranged my small
stock of crockery and hardware: Boxes were ranged against the thatch walls, and
hanging shelves, to preserve my collections from ants while drying, were
suspended both without and within the house. On my table lay books, penknives,
scissors, pliers, and pins, with insect and bird labels, all of which were unsolved
mysteries to the native mind.