4 A NATURALIST'S WAXDERIXGS 



bathed in sunlight, its little viUages Avitli their olive groves 

 and vineyards slumbering at the mouth of chasm-like gorges, 

 ^vinding avraj up amongst the mountains Avhieh ruggedly 

 overshadow them. 



In crossing the ^lediterraneau^ we gave a lift to tired >vag- 

 tails and swallows, to a goat-svicker and a fly-catcher, and 

 carried them into Port Said. The squalor of that town, the 

 barrenness of the canal shores and the arid bareness of Aden 

 were a splendid offset to the verdure just ahead of us. In the 

 Indian Ocean our friendly yard-arms gave a rest to several 



bee-eaters 



flocl 



It-* 



swallows before we siglited the llalvlive and T^accadive coral 

 Archipelagoes. Far ahead on the horizon thuir iskts looked 

 like a group of bouquets set ia marble-rimnicd vases; but as 

 we approached, the vase lims changed into the surf of the sea 

 breaking on the reef to feed its builders, and the bouquets 

 into clumps of cocoa-palms, iron-wood, and other trees which 

 the currents of the sea have washed together, and the passing 

 winds and wandering birds have carried thither to deck those 

 lone homes of the ocean fowl, which caino fighting in our 

 wake for the scraps that fell from our floating table. 



Holding on east by southward for a few days more, a hazy 

 streak appeared on our horizon, and my eyes rested ou the 

 first of the Malayan islands— on the distant peaks of Sumatr... 

 We anchored at Padang for a day, and, in sailing southward 

 along Its coast, I could not admire sufficiently the magnificenco 

 of that island— its great mountain chain' running parallel 

 to the coast, and rising into smoking peaks, clad with forest to 

 the very crater rims,-which later I found to be all that I had 

 pictured it from the sea, and more. 



_^ On the morning of the second day, we entered the Sunda 

 .Mraits, that narrow water-pass by the opening of which between 

 Java and Sumatra, Nature has- laid under grateful tribute all 

 tape-coming and -going mariners through the Java Sea to and 

 irom the Archipelago or Chinese ports. Dotted about in this 

 narrow channel, were low picturesque islands and solitary cones 

 oi burnt-out craters, towering sheer up to a height of from two 

 to three thousand feet, all clothed in vegetation. Trominent 

 among the latter stood out the sharp cone of Krakatoa, whose 

 name will scarcely be forgotten by our generation at least, and 



