474 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



»» * 



has exorcised *^ the right which formed the main check upon 

 hxwless outrage, the right of private war. Justice had to 

 spring from each man's personal action, and every freeman was 

 ]iis own avenger. The blood wite, or compensation in money 

 for personal wrong, was the first effort of the tribe as a whole 

 to regulate private revenge. 



As the taking of life is strictly forbidden by the Portuguese, 

 and punished with the utmost severity when proof can be 

 obtained, causes before the Eajah are becoming more frequent 

 in order to obtain the fines which the wrone^ed claims from the 

 wrong-doer for his offence, which in former times, if not paid, 

 wouhl iiave been atoned for by his head. 



After a day or two's botanising at Samoro, accompanied by 

 the king's son, I started on the 30th of April on a sure-footed 

 little x>ony I had purchased from the Eajah of BibifUfu, for the 

 top of Mount Sobale, travelling in a' direction N. 2F W., up a 



more gradual slope than usual to 2600 feet, whence we looked 

 down into the valley of the Buarahu. Here some of the 

 wildest and grandest scenery of our whole journey met my 

 view. It is impossible to describe the castellated crags and 

 lines of perpendicular and inaccessible cliffs that reared their 

 giant masses sheer above the landscape, or the irregular 

 blocks that thrust themselves through the grassy slopes, as if 

 they had been dropped about without any relation to the 

 geology of the region. Meantime they remain in undisturbed 

 keeping for the tourist of the future in quest of striking and 

 impressive scenery. 



Turning to the left, we followed a path on another of these 

 inevitable razor-edge ridges, only the width of the path broad, 

 up which our ponies carried us with scarcely a rest to an 

 elevation of 4000 feet above the sea— a brave feat of climbing 

 which well earned for them the hour's relaxation at Manulu, 

 where we rested before setting our faces towards the steeper 

 shoulder of Sobale. This farther ride took us round the head 

 of the valley of the Buarahu by an eerie and dangerous path, 

 dilapidated and often landslipped, in which at many points a 

 single stumble of our ponies would have left nothing between 

 us and a fall of 2000 feet into the river bed. At 5000 feet, 

 where we reached a safe road on the mass of the mountain 



* Green's ' History of the English People.' 



