DESCRIPTION OF TIMOR. 77 



preparing the latter, and many minor comforts, 

 which denoted that the Rajah was no practised 

 traveller. The old gentleman had added little to 

 his ordinary costume, heyond a larger and more 

 gaudy cloth, a silk waistcoat, made in the ancient 

 Dutch fashion, and a profusion of cotton hand- 

 kerchiefs distributed about his person. His 

 grand-child, an interesting little boy about five 

 years old, was more completely clothed, in a dress 

 partly Asiatic and partly European, and was suf- 

 ficiently bedizened with tinsel to do credit to a 

 stage at Bartholomew Fair. Don Simon was also 

 of the party, but proved un de trop : etiquette 

 forbade him to be seated in the presence of his 

 father, or to partake of food in the same apart- 

 ment, unless expressly invited to do so by the 

 rajah a condescension which, unfortunately, 

 was not extended to him on this occasion. 



Timor, one of the Sunda Isles, is about 240 

 miles in length, (from N.E. to S.W.,) and sixty 

 miles broad. Lying within the limits of the mon- 

 soons, it is subject to the seasonable vicissitudes of 

 climate they produce ; the S.E. monsoon, of the 

 winter months, bringing fair and dry weather; 

 while the N.W. is the harbinger of rain, tem- 

 pests, and an unwholesome atmosphere. Local 

 peculiarities, rather than the climate, (which is 

 also common to many salubrious lands,) render 



