IN TIMOR. 453 



o 



magnificent Tiew lay before us of an immense tract of country 

 between both seas, riven and ploughed up in the most gi-antic 

 manner, not an acre of level land being visible anywhere save 

 by the margin of the seas, and in which every isolated peak 

 and crag was capped by a dwelling. Havii ^ 

 time to survey the scene, I observed that the sky was becoming 

 overcast, and gave orders to the men to move on briskly in 

 advance, as I feared it would rain. My boy turned shai-jily 

 and besought me, " Oh, master, do not say that word ! " (for 

 ram); "these mountains are not good, and if you say that 

 word here, we shall certainly be overtaken in a storm." The 

 incident recalled to me a like dread of certain mountain-tops 

 exhibited by the natives in Buru. 



Hence our course lay almost due south right over the peak 

 of Tahaolat— rising up to 6000 feet ; but its impracticable 

 crags necessitated our making a descent of 2000 feet by a 

 spiral track round half its girth, in the face of an almost 

 perpendicular slope, from which radiated many deep and in- 

 accessible ravines, clothed, I could perceive, with a dense and 

 interesting vegetation of Laiirmix, Ericacese and numerous 

 small epidendric orchids and Lycopods. 



Where the spur of Tahaolat commenced to rise towards 

 Mount Ailor~4200 feet— I rode close past a pond full of ducks 

 or the species Tadorna rajah, whose very tameness and utter 

 disregard of us might have told me, even if I had not been 

 carefully warned, that they were on Lull ground, where I dare 

 not shoot; even the scarlet algse covering the surface of the 

 water, it was sacrilege to touch. A long and gradual descent 

 brought us at last to the Eajah's of Bibifufu, where we were 

 assigned a guarda on a windy bluff at 3200 feet above the sea, 

 commanding a view of the whole country along the southern 

 coast from beyond Cape Luca in the east to for past Alias in 

 tlie west, its low littoral grooved by broad blue-black river-bed: 

 margined with casuarinas. Within the neighbouring kingdom 

 of Maniifohi the Peak of Kabalaki, with its rugged battle- 

 nicnts and beetling crags, reared its majestic summit over 

 10,000 feet into the air. The whole region was hewed up into 

 narrower and more precipitous valleys than any I had yet 

 traversed — features awesome and imposing, but with little to 

 commend them ic^ n klnrllv t^lnofi in fhft flffectiona. 



