178 A NATURALIST'S WAXDEUINGS 



peaks of the Tapa Skandri, or Footstep of (no less a hero than) 

 Alexander the Great, ^vhom the chiefs of these regions chiini, 

 singuhirly enough, as their illustrious stem-father. The 

 industry of the lake borders, for \vhi(?h it is famed through- 

 out the Archipelago, is its tubacco culture, which is grown on 



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a loose porous earth composed of the detritus of pumicestone 

 mixed with humus. The finest quality is made from none 

 but the very topmost leaves of the plant, and commands a 

 very high price. 



From the lake, on my next stage towards the Dempo, the 

 road descended through the same picturesque country (in 

 former ages probably the bottom of a Ranau lake greater than 

 now^) all the way to Muara-dua. This town, " at the mouth of 

 two rivers" as its name signifies, is situated at the union 

 of the Sako Avith the broad Komel-ing river, and is the 

 seat of a large trade by river w*ith Palembang in cotton, 

 tobacco, rice, timber, and " birds' nests " — the edible swifts' 

 nests— gathered from dark calcareous grottoes in the neigh- 

 bourhood. The town, though distant 200 miles in a direct 

 line from the sea, is only 400 feet above its level, and stands 

 really on the edge of the great alluvial plain which lies along 

 the entire eastern shores of Sumatra, formed bv the detritus 

 washed down from the Earisan range into a sea whose coast- 

 line, retreating by a slight elevation of the land, left dry this 

 broad plain, which rises nowhere throughout its vast extent 

 more than 600 feet above the level of the sea* Before its 

 upheaval, South Sumatra could not have been more than 100 

 miles broad. Several great river systems, running in a genera 

 west to-east direction fan-shape in form, traverse it, and are 

 laying down along the margin of the land a further deposit, 

 the slight elevation of ^hich, for some thirty feet only 

 between Palembang and the Island of Banka, would raise the 



1 



shallow sea into dry land, Xear the town of Muara-dua I was 

 surprised to net a European moth {Phragmat^eia arundinis). 



My further course northward traversed the sources of the 

 great arms of the southern of these systems. 



Sending my baggage on to Pengandonan by the level road 

 on the low lands, I proceeded on foot thither over the Kisam 

 Hills, Just above Muara-dna the Slabung river was crossed by 

 a very high suspension-bridge of a most picturesque construe- 



