416 A NATURALIST'S WANDEBINGS 



Early on the following morning, therefore, on horses kindly 

 provided by the Government Secretary, Mr- Bento da Franga, 

 and aocompanied by Senhor Albino— one of the most genial 

 spirits and most influential officials in Dilly^ who in his own 

 person was Master of the Port, Director of Public Works, and 

 Colonel of the native troops— we rode up the hills in quest of a 

 location. A damp mist hung about the town as we started, 

 but when we had ridden a few miles southward and ascended 

 some 300 feet, the sun rose and displayed before us a land- 

 scape whose great beauty I was utterly unprepared for, dis- 

 heartened somewhat as I was by the hot sandy town and the 

 depressing effect of the fever-stricken condition of the 

 Europeans. Before we had reached 500 feet above the sea, I 

 felt as if in a new atmosphere, so fresh and exhilirating was 

 the air. Now winding round the flanks of deep glens, the 

 watercourses dug out by the rain (for there was neither path 

 nor road otherwise), now ascending slopes so steep as to make 

 it impossible to sit on horseback without clutching grimly 

 to the mane, now by the edge of sheer precipices, the path 

 brought us, at 1700 feet, to a coffee-garden whose shrubs 

 growing under deep shade, exhibited the richest display of 

 fragrant blossom that I have ever seen. Close by on a pro- 

 jecting shoulder, over which the summit of the mountain rose 

 1000 feet higher, was a grassy plateau of a few yards in width 

 commanding a view of unexampled beauty, and convenient to 

 a c^uiet nook, where under the shade of a grove of Kanary 

 trees a sparkling stream fell with a noisy purl over a rocky 

 projection into a shallow pool. A few feet in front of the 

 plateau the ground dropped suddenly into the wooded sides of 

 a precipitous valley, widening out as it descended, till its 

 enclosing spurs broke off abruptly in the green seaward plain, 

 beyond which the white spire of the church, the Governor's 

 Palace, the grey dwellings of the natives, and the guard-ship 

 lying m the bay, glinted through the palms. Due north full 

 in our face, rose abruptly out of the sea the high blue peaks of 

 Pulo Kambing, while half hidden by the arms of the valley 

 down which our view extended, on the left the lofty eastern 

 buttresses of Allor, and on the right the serrated ridges of 

 Wetter, touched the sky, boundaries within which the blue 

 sea lay calm as an inland lake. Ko second thousrhts were 



