396 A NATUBALIST'S WANDERINGS 



palm cut down and arranged for us by the Alefarus* Un- 

 fortunately for the quick progress of our march, my German 

 companion, nnaccustomed to travel, was easily fatigued, and 

 both the native chiefs were devotees of the opium pipe, and 

 were constantly finding all manner of excuses for a halt too 

 readily acquiesced in by Mr, Bergmann. No sooner was the 

 order given than their blankets were at once spread on the 

 ground, and the soothing narcotic produced. 



Next day we journeyed through Kussu-grass fields, Avith 

 scarcely a vestige of forest, and only sparse belts or low scrub 

 of Melaleuea and Melastoma, without having the satisfaction of 

 seeing a single bird or insect. The country now began to rise 

 in successive steps, first over a height of 500 feet, down 400 

 feet, to rise again 600 feet. 



On the third day we were compelled to camp at noon on the 

 banks of tlie Klaba, on another of those excuses — that no 

 other stream could be readied within the day's inarch — which 

 the Rajah of Kajeli, who had never gone the road in his life, 

 was constantly making to enable him to resume his soporific 

 smoke. The Klaba, like all the other streams we had crossed, 

 was making for tlie Apu. The valley was set with more clumps 

 of trees and eycads than any of those we had yet traversed. 



A short way behind I had observed tall bamboo 

 bristling thickly among the grass, for tlie purpose evidently o 

 catching deer and pig driven towards them by firing the grass 

 in a wide semicircle around them. After our huts — made of 

 the bark of Commersonia echinata, a very abundant tree 

 there — were erected, I started with my hunters and some of 

 the Alefurus as beaters, in hopes of securing a haunch of 

 venison for our larder. We were fortunate in meeting within 

 an hour with two little herds, from the second of which I secured 

 a fine young stag. While it was being prepared, I scoured the 

 bed of a dry stream behind the camp, and caught numerous 

 fine Tiger Beetles {Cecindelidee) and many species of a Tenan's, 

 a butterfly closely resembling the Tenaris urania of Amboina, 

 but being much paler, I have separated it by the name 

 T. buruensis. 



Next day another very short march was made, a halt being 

 called on the pretext that a ridge of the mountain in front of 

 ns was Kiiing or tabooed. As we could not pass over it before 



f 



