accompanied me to visit the Sultan. We were kept waiting
a few minutes in an outer gate-house, and then ushered
to the door of a rude, half-fortified whitewashed house. A
small table and three chairs were placed in a large outer
corridor, and an old dirty-faced man with grey hair and a
grimy beard, dressed in a speckled blue cotton jacket and
loose red trousers, came forward, shook hands, and asked
me to be seated. After a quarter of an hour’s conversation
on my pursuits, in which his Majesty seemed to take great
interest, tea and cakes—of rather better quality than usual
®n such occasions—were brought in. I thanked him for
the house, and offered to show him my collections, which
he promised to come and look at. He then asked me to
teach him to take views—to make maps—to get him a
small gun from England, and a milch-goat from Bengal;
all of which requests I evaded as skilfully as I was able,
and we parted very good friends. He seemed a sensible
old man, and lamented the small population of the island,
which he assured me was rich in many valuable minerals:,
including gold; but there were not people enough to look
after them and work them. I described to him the great
rush of population on the discovery of the Australian
gold mines, and the huge nuggets found there, with which
he was much interested, and exclaimed, “ Oh! if we had
but people like that, my country would be quite as rich ! ’’
The morning after I had got into my new housey I sent
my boys out to shoot, and went myself to explore the road
to the coal mines. In less than half a mile it entered the
virgin forest, at a place where some magnificent trees
formed a kind of natural avenue. The first part was flat
and swampy, but it soon rose a little, and ran alongside
the fine stream which passed behind my house, and
which here rushed and gurgled over a rocky or pebbly
bed, sometimes- leaving wide sandbanks on its margins,
and at other places flowing between high banks crowned
with a varied and magnificent forest vegetation. After
about two miles, the valley narrowed, and the road was
carried along the steep hill-side which rose abruptly from
the water’s edge. In some places the rock had been cut
away, but its surface was already covered with elegant
ferns and creepers. Gigantic tree-ferns were abundant,
and the whole forest had an air of luxuriance and rich
variety which it never attains in the dry volcanic soil to
which I had been lately accustomed. A little further the
road passed to the other side of the valley by a bridge
across the stream at a place where a great mass of rock in
the middle offered an excellent support for it, and two miles
more of most picturesque and interesting road brought me
to the mining establishment.
This is situated in a large open space, at a spot where
two tributaries fall into the main stream. Several forest-
paths and new clearings offered fine collecting grounds,