EXPLORATION OF LEW CHEW. 167 



often miles, bnt the mosquitoes were so terribly annoying that few of us slept more than half an 

 hour (lurint;; the whole night. 



Wo rose at dawn, and found the natives already stirring. The morning gave promise of fair 

 weather. The Pe-ching and his associates came up and saluted us gravely as soon as we arose. 

 It required about two hours to cook and eat breakfast, strike the tent, and pack the baggage for 

 carrying. Wlien we were all ready we found eight native coolies on hand, those whom we took 

 from Kapha having returned the evening previous. Leaving Camp Perry (as we named the 

 spot) we took a path leading up a steep hill to the north. Winding around its brow, we 

 descended into a valley, surrounded by abrupt, scarped hills. A stream flowing at the bottom 

 of a deep gully, overhung with large banana trees, made its way out of this broad cul-de-sac 

 towards the sea. We crossed the valley on the ridges of swampy grass, between the flooded 

 rice-fields, and climbed a long and toilsome ridge, by wet, slippery paths, leading up through 

 copses of young pine. We had now gained the spinal ridge of the island, and turned north- 

 westward, over alternate hills and meadows, along its summit. The wood was principally pine, 

 but I observed several new varieties of shrubs, not in flower. Now and then we passed the huts 

 of the natives, generally in clusters of two and three, but even in this secluded region notice of 

 our coming had reached them, and the inhabitants were hidden. I looked into some, and found 

 the interiors to consist of a single room, smoke-blackened, and furnished with the rudest utensils. 

 Two of them had a grating of bamboo, raised, like a floor, about six inches above the ground, 

 and the thick mats which serve the Lew Chewans as beds were spread upon this. 



Mr. Jones left the camp before us, and we had not yet found him. Coming to a deep, wooded 

 gorge, with a stream flowing westward, we discovered that our true course lay further to the 

 east, and retraced our steps through the pine woods, and over upland rice-meadows to an open, 

 grassy height, whence we saw Mr. Jones, surrounded by a group of natives, about half a mile 

 to the south of us. In a shoi't time we again reached the summit ridge, overlooking the bay, 

 and enjoyed the view of a superb landscape. The dividing ridge of the island, as we had already 

 noticed, is nearest the eastern shore, to which the descent is much more abrupt than on the 

 western. The cultivation on this side is also more thorough, and the crops more luxuriant. 

 The knees of the mountains below us were feathered with beautiful groves of the Lew Ciiew pine, 

 intermingled with terraced fields of grain and vegetables, while the plain below, through its 

 whole sweep of fifteen miles, was brown with its harvest of rice. We counted a dozen villages, 

 some of them of considerable size, dotting its expanse. To the northward extended a long head- 

 land, far beyond what we had supposed to be the extremity of the bay, and projecting from the 

 island in a southeasterly direction. It was now plain that we had not yet reached Barrow's 

 Bay, of which this headland formed the southern boundary. While halting to rest our coolies, 

 in the shade of a clump of pines, Mr. Heine shot a raven, with a beak much broader than the 

 European species. There was a very large tomb, of a shape nearly circular, on the northern 

 side of the ridge. About two miles further, the road swerving a little to the west, we came upon 

 a singular rock, rising high out of a forest of pines. The summit, which was very sharp and 

 jagged, was seventy or eighty feet above the crest of the ridge, and being composed of secondary 

 limestone, honeycombed by the weather, it was an exceedingly striking and picturesque object. 

 While Mr. Heine stopped to sketch it, and Mr. Jones to examine its geology, I climbed to tlie 

 summit, which was so sharp as to make it a most uneasy seat. Finding that it was the highest 

 peak in that part of the island, commanding a view which embraced a considerable reach of both 



