IN TIMOR 



469 



CHAPTER lY. 



SOJOURN IN KAILAKUK AXD SAMOEO. 



i proceed to Fatuboi— River Motaai 



■A weird villa 



-Ciystaliine rocks 



Rare additions to my herbarium — Butterflies — Move on lo the Eajah of 

 Sainoro's — Veo;etation by tlie way — Geological notes — Penalties of theft 



■Samoro — Tisit Sobale Peak — Botanising under difSculties 

 herbarium — Return to Samoro and leave for Manuleo. 



Large 



FiiOM Saliiki I proceeded with a fresh cavalcade towards 

 Fatuboi, a conspicuous quadruple-crested mountain of remarlc- 

 able configuration, in the Suku of Kailakuk. We had to 

 commence with an inevitable descent of more than 1000 feet, 

 to the bed of the 3Iotaai, which, like all the Timor rivers 

 I had made the acquaintance of, ran in a deep bed within k- 

 precijjitous walls, wliich in some places rose nearly SOO feet 

 ill height, clothed ivith unfortunately for me inaccessible 

 vegetation. After following its course for four or five hours, 

 n-e turned off to the right, up tho bed of a small tributary, in 

 \\hich I found blocks of pure white crystalline limestone, a 

 kind of rock I had not encountered before. Hence ascend- 

 ing a long steep ascent of 1500 feet strewed with disrupted 

 blocks of limestone, we reached the top of the mountain, and 

 by a narrow rocky stairway winding through a belt of impene- 

 trable jungle of tliorny shrubs, were guided into the most weird 

 spot conceivable for human habitation, into a small plateau on 

 the summit of one of the rugged eminences of the mountain. 



Guarded on all sides but one, by vertical walls of limestone, 

 the plateau was dotted about with gigantic blocks of rugged 

 and warted coral-like limestone, against and between which 

 d\\ ellings standing on piles on the bare rock, were scattered 

 about. To rio-ht^and left rose immensa rough, almost in- 



accessible pinnacles of the same black withered calcareous 

 erags, riven in all directions with cracks, caverncd into dark 



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