1844.] SCENERY. 109 



ground ; while before us, covered with villages, lay 

 stretched in calm and sunny beauty, the fertile plain of 

 Samboanga, watered by a meandering stream which 

 flowed into the sea near our observatory. Samboanga r 

 although a place of banishment for criminals, is a very 

 pleasant, lively little village ; it is surrounded by green 

 groves of graceful cocoa-nuts, which here attain a very 

 great elevation, and, as you wander under their refreshing 

 shade, you will be amused by numbers of paroquets,, 

 clinging in fantastic attitudes to the great petioles of the 

 leaves, while various other birds hover continually around 

 their spreading tops. As you penetrate more deeply 

 the scenery grows far more wild, and, emerging from 

 some lonely hut, the Indian may be seen proceeding to 

 climb the tall, cylindric trunks, to hang his primitive, 

 bamboo pitchers on the new-cut footstalks of the leaves, 

 for the purpose of collecting toddy. The ground beneath 

 is covered with the fallen nuts, which are greedily de- 

 voured by the land-crabs, which here perforate the soil 

 in every direction. The natives set ingenious traps for 

 these ' nati consumere frugos ', formed of the internodes 

 of large bamboos, provided with a valve, which allows 

 the animal to enter, but forbids his voluntary exit. 

 Numbers of monkeys are heard chattering and wailing 

 in the distant forest ; and in one of our rambles near 

 Calderas, a large species was shot as he sat, unconscious 

 of his fate, munching berries in a lofty tree-top, and I 

 well remember the piteous expression of his brown and 

 wrinkled face, as I drew him from the undergrowth 

 where he had fallen. 



" In these woodland haunts, you will see the native 



