82 LETTERS FROM JAMES MOTLEY, ESQ. 
temperature of 45° to 50°, every tree is laden with them. Surely we 
are in the habit of coddling them (to use a Yorkshire word) too much 
in our stoves; and when it is considered that a change of plan would 
bring these lovely and curious plants within reach of many zealous 
cultivators who cannot now afford the expense, it would surely be worth =| 
some nurseryman’s while to try the experiment on a large scale of cooler : | 
houses for orchids. m 
I remained one night on the top of the mountain. It was exceed- | 
ingly cold. I had forgotten to bring up a thermometer, but water was ca 
frozen in a plate raised a couple of feet from the ground. There are 
plenty of excellent strawberries here ; they have of course been planted, 
but, so far as fruiting is concerned, seem quite at home. I did not 
however see one stolon thrown out. They grow with scaly stems, 
in tufts just like Dryas octopetala. We saw nothing the evening we 
got up, as all was enveloped in a wet searching mist, but in the 
morning I was amply repaid for my trouble. The summit of the 
. mountain, evidently an extinct volcano, is a sort of amphitheatre about 
500 yards in diameter, broken through on one side by a deep narrow 
ravine. This space has been cleared, and is chiefly covered with Straw- 
berries; for the Apples and other European trees planted there are so 
covered with foliaceous lichens that they can hardly vegetate. The 
forest of crooked stunted shrubs, chiefly Ericaceous, extends to the 
very edge of this amphitheatre outside. At sunrise I climbed up to 
the ridge, and for half an hour had an uninterrupted view. I could 
see the sea to the north and south of the island of Java, and in the 
distance, to the south-east, chain upon chain of mountains, ending at the 
. sea with the smoking summit of Janykuban-prahu, which has within a 
few years been very active. A heavy haze hung over Bulana, so that I 
could not see it; but nearer to me, on both sides, I looked over miles of 
cultivated country ; the system of sawah, or wet rice cultivation, making 
the country look half lakes and rivers. Nearer to the north-west, within 
about thirty miles, rose the jagged peak of the Salac, one of the best bota- 
nieal mountains in Java, now all green and still, though some seventy 
years ago it committed frightful havoc and destroyed many lives; and 
to the south, almost under my feet, gaped the white barren crater of 
the Gédé, another peak of the mountain on which I stood,—a slight 
smoke rising out of its unfathomable depths, to testify that, though 
slumbering, the fire-king was not dead. You cannot conceive anything 
