44 Malacca, 



we found the ascent veiy laborious, the slojje being so steep 

 as often to necessitate hand-climbing. Besides a bushy veg- 

 etation, the ground was covered knee-deep with mosses on a 

 foundation of decaying leaves and rugged rock, and it was 

 a hard hour's climb to the small ledge just below the sum- 

 mit, where an overhanging rock forms a convenient shelter, 

 and a little basin collects the trickling water. Here we put 

 down- our loads, and in a few minutes more stood on the sum- 

 mit of Mount Ophir, 4000 feet above the sea. The top is a 

 small rocky platform covered with rhododendrons and other 

 shrubs. The afternoon was clear, and the view fine in its 

 way — ranges of hill and valley everywhere covered with in- 

 terminable forest, with glistening rivers winding among them. 

 In a distant view a forest country is very monotonous, and 

 no mountain I have ever ascended in the tropics presents a 

 panorama equal to that from Snowdon, while the views in 

 Switzerland are immeasurably superior. When boiling our 

 cofiee I took observations with a good boiling-point ther- 

 mometer, as well as with the sympiesometer, and we then en- 

 joyed our evening meal and the noble prospect that lay be- 

 fore us. The night was calm and very mild, and having 

 made a bed of twigs and branches over which we laid our 

 blankets, we passed a very comfortable night. Our poi'ters 

 had followed us after a rest, bringing only their rice to cook, 

 and luckily we did not require the baggage they left behind 

 them. In the morning I caught a few butterflies and beetles, 

 and my friend got a few land-shells ; and we then descended, 

 bringing with us some specimens of the ferns and j^itcher- 

 plants of Padang-batu. 



The place where we had first encamped at the foot of the 

 mountain being very gloomy, we chose another in a kind of 

 swamp near a stream overgrown with zinziberaceous plants, 

 in which a clearing was easily made. Here our men built 

 two little huts without sides that would just shelter us from 

 the rain ; and we lived in them for a Aveek, shooting and in- 

 sect-hunting, and roaming about the forests at the foot of 

 the mountain. This was the country of the great Argus 

 pheasant, and we continually heard its cry. On asking the 

 old Malay to try and shoot one for me, he told me that al- 

 though he had been for twenty years shooting birds in these 



