132 Sumatra. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



SUMATRA, 

 NOVEMBEK, 18G1, TO JANUARY, 1862. 



The raail-steamer from Batavia to Singapore took me to 

 Muntok (or, as on English maps, " Minto "), the chief town and 

 port of Bauca. Here I staid a day or two, till I could obtain 

 a boat to take me across the straits and up the river to Palem- 

 bang. A few walks into the country showed me that it was 

 very hilly, and full of granitic and laterite rocks, with a dry 

 and stunted forest vegetation, and I could find very few insects. 

 A good-sized open sailing-boat took me across to the mouth 

 of the Palembang River, where, at a fishing-village, a rowing- 

 boat was hired to take me up to Palembang, a distance of 

 nearly a hundred miles by water. Except when the wind was 

 strong and favorable we could only proceed with the tide, and 

 the banks of the river were generally flooded Nipa-swamps, so 

 that the hours we were obliged to lay at anchor passed very 

 heavily. Reaching Palembang on the 8th of Novembei-, I was 

 lodged by the doctoi-, to whom I had brought a letter of intro- 

 duction, and endeavored to ascertain where I could find a good 

 locality for collecting. Every one assured me that I should 

 have to go a very long way further to find any dry forest, for 

 at this season the whole country for many miles inland was 

 flooded. I therefore had to stay a week at Palembang before 

 I could determine on my future movements. 



The city is a large one, extending for three or four miles 

 along a fine curve of the river, which is as wide as the Thames 

 at Greenwich. The stream is, however, much narrowed by 

 the houses which project into it upon piles, and within these 

 again there is a row of houses built upon great bamboo rafts, 

 which are moored by rattan cables to the shore or to piles, and 

 rise and fall with the tide. The whole river-front on both 

 sides is chiefly formed of such houses, and they are mostly 

 shops open to the water, and only raised a foot above it, so 



