On the Indian Archipelago. 415 



beneath floating ashes mingled with the charred wrecks of the noble 

 forests which had clothed the mountain sides ; but, hurried though 

 we are from one part of our slight sketch to another, we cannot leave 

 the vegetation of this great region without looking upon it more 

 closely. To recall the full charms, however, of the forests of the Archi- 

 pelago, — which is to speak of the Archipelago itself, for the greater 

 portion of it is at this moment, as the whole of it once was, clothed 

 to the water's edge with trees, — we must animate their solitudes with 

 the tribes which dwell there in freedom, ranging through their bound- 

 less shade as unconscious of the presence of man, and as unwitting 

 of his dominion, as they were thousands of years ago, when he did not 

 dream that the world held such lands and such creatures. 



When we pass from the open sea of the Archipelago into the deep 

 shade of its mountain forests, we have realized all that, in Europe, 

 our fancies ever pictured of the wildness and beauty of primaeval 

 nature. Trees of gigantic forms and exuberant foliage rise on every 

 side ; each species snooting up its trunk to its utmost measure of 

 development, and striving, as it seems, to escape from the dense 

 crowd. Others, as if no room were left for them to grow in the 

 ordinary way, emulate the shapes and motions of serpents, enwrap 

 their less pliant neighbours in their folds, twine their branches into 

 one connected canopy, or hang down, here loose and swaying in the 

 air, or in festoons from tree to tree, and there stiff and rooted like 

 the yards which support the mast of a ship. No sooner has decay 

 diminished the green array of a branch, than its place is supplied 

 by epiphytes, chiefly fragrant Orchidacese, of singular and beautiful 

 forms. While the eye in vain seeks to familiarize itself with the 

 exuberance and diversity of the forest vegetation, the ear drinks in 

 the sounds of life which break the silence and deepen the solitude. 

 Of these, while the interrupted notes of birds, loud or low, rapid 

 or long-drawn, cheerful or plaintive, and ranging over a greater or 

 less musical compass, are the most pleasing, the most constant are 

 those of insects, which sometimes rise into a shrill and deafening 

 clangor; and the most impressive, and those which bring out all 

 the wildness and loneliness of the scene, are the prolonged com- 

 plaining cries of the unkas, which rise, loud and more loud, till the 

 twilight air is filled with the clear, powerful and melancholy sounds. 

 As we penetrate deeper into the forest, its animals, few at any one 

 place, are soon seen to be, in reality, numerous and varied. Green 

 and harmless snakes hang like tender branches. Others of deeper 

 and mingled colours, but less innocuous, lie coiled up, or, disturbed 

 by the human intruder, assume an angry and dangerous look, but 

 glide out of sight. Insects in their shapes and hues imitate leaves, 

 twigs and flowers. Monkeys, of all sizes and colours, spring from 

 branch to branch, or, in long trains, rapidly steal up the trunks. 

 Deer, and amongst them the graceful palandoh, no bigger than a 

 hare and celebrated in Malayan poetry, on our approach fly startled 

 from the pools which they and the wild hog most frequent. Lively 

 squirrels, of different species, are everywhere met with. Amongst a 

 great variety of other remarkable animals which range the forest, we 



