animal life in the tropics. Yet the almost entire absence
of Mammalia, and of snch wide-spread groups of birds as
woodpeckers, thrushes, jays, tits, and pheasants, must
convince him that he is in a part of the world which has
in reality but little in common with the great Asiatic
continent, although an unbroken chain of islands seems to
.link them to it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MACASSAR TO THE ARU ISLANDS IN A NATIVE PRAU.
(DECEMBER, 1856.)
TT was the beginning of December, and the rainy season
at Macassar had just set in. > For nearly three months
I had beheld the sun rise daily above the palm-groves,
mount to the zenith, and descend like a globe of fire into
the ocean, unobscured for a single moment of his course.
Now dark leaden clouds-had gathered over the whole
heavens, and seemed to have rendered him permanently
invisible. The strong east winds, warm and dry and dust-
laden, which had hitherto blown as certainly as the sun
had risen, were now replaced by variable gusty breezes
and heavy rains, often continuous for three days and
nights together; and the parched and fissured rice.stubbles
which during the dry weather had extended in every
direction for miles around the town, were already so
flooded as to be only passable by boats, or by means of a
labyrinth of paths on the top of the narrow banks which
divided the separate properties.