that I have never tasted good coffee where people grow it
themselves.
Although this was the height of the dry season, and
there was a fine wind all day, it was by no means a
healthy time of year. My boy Ali had hardly been a
day on shore when he was attacked by fever, which put
me to great inconvenience, as at the house where I was
staying nothing could be obtained but at meal-times.
After having cured Ali, and with much difficulty got
another servant to cook for me, I was no sooner settled
at my country abode than the latter was attacked with
the same disease ; and, having a wife in the town, left me.
Hardly was he gone than I fell ill myself, with strong
intermittent fever every other day. In about a week I
got over it, by a liberal use of quinine, when scarcely was
I on my legs than Ali again became worse than ever. His
fever attacked him daily, but early in the morning he was
pretty well, and then managed to cook me enough for the
day. In a week I cured him, and also succeeded in
getting another boy who could cook and shoot, and had no
objection to go into the interior. His name was Baderoon,
and as he was unmarried and had been used to a rovingO
life, having been several voyages to North Australia to
catch trepang or “ bêche de mer,” I was in hopes of being
able to keep him. I also got hold of a little impudent rascal
of twelve or fourteen, who could speak some Malay, to
carry my gun or insect-net and make himself generally
useful. Ali had by this time become a pretty good bird-
skinner, so that I was fairly supplied with servants.
I made many excursions into the country, in search of a
good station for collecting birds and insects. Some of the
villages a few miles inland are scattered about in woody
ground which has once been virgin forest, but of which -
the constituent trees have been for the most part replaced
by fruit trees, and particularly by the large palm, Arenga
saccharifera, from which wine and sugar are made, and
which also produces a coarse black fibre used for cordage.
That necessary of life, the bamboo, has also been abundantly
planted. In such places I found a good many
birds, among which were the fine cream-coloured pigeon,
Carpophaga luctuosa, and the rare blue-headed roller,
Coracias temmincki, which has a most discordant voice,
and generally goes in pairs, flying from tree to tree, and
exhibiting while at rest that all-in-a-heap appearance and
jerking motion of the head and tail which are so characteristic
of the great Fissirostral group to which .it belongs.
*
From this habit alone, the kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers,
trogons, and South American puff-birds, might be grouped
together by a person who had observed them in a state of
nature, but who had never had an opportunity of examining
their form and structure in detail. Thousands of
crows, rather smaller than our rook, keep up a constant
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