shore, and were extremely anxious to prevent our taking any inland paths.
This excited our suspicion, and we imagined their object to be to prevent our
seeing the interior. Finally, coming to a well-trodden path,which struck off
up the hills, we shut our ears to all remonstrance and took it. In a short time
it brought us to a handsome village, shaded not only with bamboo, but with
splendid banyan trees. Beyond it there was a deep ravine, with a faintly
marked foot-path leading to some water at the bottom. Again the natives
entreated us to take a path which plainly led to the shore. They pointed
to the gorge, crying “ m m ,” intimating that the path went no further than
the water. Nevertheless, seeing traces of a path on the opposite side, we
descended, followed by the unwilling officers and coolies. The pool of water
which supplied the village was shaded by the largest pines I saw on the
Island. They were 70 or 80 feet in height, whereas the average is not more
than 40 feet.
Our suspicions did injustice to the natives, for we soon found that they
had our convenience in view. Our path struck into a side-branch of the ravine,
which, though not more than twenty feet wide, was a rice-swamp at the
bottom. The sides were nearly perpendicular walls of earth and loose rocks,
so that we were obliged to plunge up to the knees in mud. One of the men,
Smith, sank so deep that it required the strength of three natives to extricate
him. When, at last, we reached the top of the hill, we found it covered with
waste thickets, and no path to be seen except one on an opposite height,
which we reached with some trouble. The path, an old and unused one, led
us back to the beach, which it now seemed impossible to leave. The coolies,
who had had a hard tug to get through the rice-swamp, took the whole matter
very good humoredly, and the officers laughed, as I thought, with a sort
of malicious pleasure at our discomfiture, The walk over the white sand
was doubly fatiguing after this, and on the arrival of Mr. Jones we determined
again to make for the interior, especially as we had reached the head
of the last cove, whence the coast appeared to run almost due westwardly to
Cape Broughton.
Mr. Jones and Dr. Lynah, with the men Davis and Smith, took a footpath
leading southward into the mountains, and after proceeding a little
further along the coast, I followed them with the seaman Mitchell. Mr.
Heine, with Terry and the Lew Chew coolies, still kept the shore. We
(Mitchell and I) reached with great difficulty the path taken by the first
party. I t ascended steeply through pine forests, alternating with dense
copsewood, for about two miles, till we gained the summit of the ridge.
The whole expanse of Barrow’s Bay came full into view to the eastward,
while to the south we looked beyond the promontory we had been doubling
so tediously, and saw the same deep cove we had beheld three days before
from the top of Banner Book. But all the interior of the island was still a
wilderness, and for ten miles in advance stretched an unbroken forest. Our
path did not appear to have been much travelled—other small paths branched
from it, but the party in advance had broken off boughs and left them as
guides for us. I was much spent with the heat and the exertion of climbing
so rapidly, and after drinking out of a muddy hole filled with leaves, felt
an attack of mingled heat and cold, with an oppression of the heart which
took away all my strength. We saw the other party on the top of a high
peak ahead of us. The path crossed a ledge as narrow as a wall, with deep
gulfs on each side, and then ascended a rocky ladder, the steepness of which
took away what little strength I had remaining—I was obliged to lie down
for some time before I could proceed further. A raincloud coming up rapidly
over Barrow’s Bay, admonished us to leave our lofty look-out. The
path kept on southward through miles of wilderness, but the natives who had
accompanied us pointed to another, which led back almost the way we came,
and which they said would bring us to a Oung-qui. As there were no signs
of the baggage, we were thus under the necessity of retracing our steps
almost to the shore. On our way we passed through a singular gorge, which
was closed up, in its narrowest part, by fragments hurled from above by some
convulsion of nature. The stream flowing at the bottom disappeared for
about fifty yards, when it again issued to the light through a cavernous open-
ing.
A rain now came on, which continued for two or three hours, and made
the road slippery and toilsome. We passed through a village, romantically
situated in a wooden glen, and over uplands, covered with groves of pine,
the path gradually swerving to the south, till it finally struck directly across
the promontory. A great part of the way was a waste of wild thickets, with
marshy hollows between the hills. We saw several times the tracks of wild
boar, which the natives assured us were abundant; but we were not so fortunate
as to get a sight of one. ¿There were no traces of our baggage until
we found the Pe-ching, and two other natives, crouching under a bush to
keep out of the rain, and smoking their pipes. Finally, about half-past two,
we heard the report of fire-arms, and soon after reached the Cung-qua of
I Chandakosa,” where Mr. Heine and the coolies had already been waiting
some time for us. We were uncertain whether the building was a bona fide
Cung-qua or the residence of a bunyo, or officer, for it was occupied, when
Mr. Heine arrived,Ay a personage of some kind with his attendants, but immediately
given up for our use, There was a crowd of at least a hundred natives
collected within the enclosure, and looking on, with great astonishment,
while Mr. Heine fired at a mark. What seemed most to interest them, next
to the accuracy of his aim, was the fact of the piece exploding without the
application of fire, (nothing but Japanese matchlocks ever being seen on the
island,) and its being loaded at the breech. They appeared familiar with the
nature of gunpowder, and the use of our cutlasses; but during our journey
we never saw a single weapon of any kind. There is said to be a small gar