unfrequently proves fatal. To avoid this malaria, Captain Hart always slept at his
plantation, on a slight elevation about two miles from the town, where Mr.
Geach also had a small house, which he kindly invited me to share. We rode
there in the evening; and in the course of two days my baggage was brought up,
and I was able to look about me and see if I could do any collecting.
For the first few weeks I was very unwell and could not go far from the house.
The country was covered with low spiny shrubs and acacias, except in a little
valley where a stream came down from the hills, where some fine trees and
bushes shaded the water and formed a very pleasant place to ramble up. There
were plenty of birds about, and of a tolerable variety of species; but very few of
them were gaily coloured. Indeed, with one or two exceptions, the birds of this
tropical island were hardly so ornamental as those of Great Britain. Beetles were
so scarce that a collector might fairly say there were none, as the few obscure or
uninteresting species would not repay him for the search. The only insects at all
remarkable or interesting were the butterflies, which, though comparatively few
in species, were sufficiently abundant, and comprised a large proportion of new
or rare sorts. The banks of the stream formed my best collecting-ground, and I
daily wandered up and down its shady bed, which about a mile up became rocky
and precipitous. Here I obtained the rare and beautiful swallow-tail butterflies,
Papilio aenomaus and P. liris; the males of which are quite unlike each other,
and belong in fact to distinct sections of the genus, while the females are so
much alike that they are undistinguishable on the wing, and to an uneducated eye
equally so in the cabinet. Several other beautiful butterflies rewarded my search
in this place, among which I may especially mention the Cethosia leschenaultii,
whose wings of the deepest purple are bordered with buff in such a manner as to
resemble at first sight our own Camberwell beauty, although it belongs to a
different genus. The most abundant butterflies were the whites and yellows
(Pieridae), several of which I had already found at Lombock and at Coupang,
while others were new to me.
Early in February we made arrangements to stay for a week at a village called
Baliba, situated about four miles off on the mountains, at an elevation of 2,000
feet. We took our baggage and a supply of all necessaries on packhorses; and
though the distance by the route we took was not more than six or seven miles,
we were half a day getting there. The roads were mere tracks, sometimes up
steep rocky stairs, sometimes in narrow gullies worn by the horses' feet, and
where it was necessary to tuck up our legs on our horses' necks to avoid having
them crushed. At some of these places the baggage had to be unloaded, at others
it was knocked off. Sometimes the ascent or descent was so steep that it was