206 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINOS 



CHAPTER VL 



SOJOURN IN THE POLEMBANG RESIDEN'CY — continued. 



rassuraah Lands (coritd,) — The Volciino of the Dempo — Its flora an 1 fauna 

 The crater — Spectre of the Broeken — The view from the summit — Leave 

 for the Kaha Yolcano — Gunung Meraksi — River journey on a raft 

 Lampar — -Find again the spider .OrnitJioscaio'ides decipiens — Batu- 

 pantjeh. — A marriage scene — Games of the boys — Houses — Tebbing- 

 Tinggi — Tandjong-ning — Great trees — ^My party attacked by a tiger — 

 Its wiliness — Its capture — Graveyard. 



TriE chief object of interest in the Passumah Lands is its 

 volcano — the Dempo. Almost daily I explored some part of 

 its vast extent, and when I left I conld have profitably spent 

 months more withont exhaustinsf its treasures. The villa^^re of 



^v^. ^.^^^...^^. ^ — ^ 



PaUj in which I had my quarters^ was 3500 feet above the sea. 

 The first few hundred feet of the flanks of the mountain were 

 appropriated by the villagers for their coffee gardens, and the 

 few fields in which they now cultivate rice and roots. The 

 coffee-trees, despite their being densely crowded, yielded large 

 crops of a very superior kind of fruit ; above these cultivated 

 fields ran a broad belt of low forest consisting of a shrubbery of 

 Fluggea microcarpa and the usual broad-leaved scitamineous 

 plants, in whose damp shade balsams and white-flowered Ges- 

 neraeew^jv^ hairy-leaved Begonias flourished. About 4000 feet 

 began the virgin forest, which for 2000 feet upwards displayed 

 unrivalled luxuriance, under which grew a tangled mass of 

 shrubs and thorny climbers. Crashing through these, I one 

 day nearly trampled on a fine new species of that curious 

 family, the Piafflesiaeew; it smelt powerfully of putrid flesb, 

 and was infested with a crowd of flies, which followed me all 

 the way as I carried it home, and was besides overrun with 

 ants, notwithstanding the long hairs which protected its centre. 

 In the deep shade at this elevation few flowers except from 

 the climbers and epiphytes on the trees, such as many species 

 of Melastoma oftener more rich in colour of fruit than of flower. 



