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 senomaus
and P. liris; the males of which fire quite unlike each
other, and belong in fact to distinct sections of the genus,
while the females are so much alike that they are un-
distinguishable 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 Lom-
bock 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 pack-
horses ; 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 easier to walk than to