liG W. Doherty — The Butterflies of Sumha and Samlawa, 8fc. [No. 2, 



stones of Grreece, in Boeotia and Arcadia. Its surface is infinitely rough 

 and broken, capable of destroying the stoutest boots in a few days. It 

 is owino" to tliis that the Sandalwood ponies develop such hard hoofs 

 that they rarely require to be shod. Fortunately, wherever the ground 

 is level, the coral is hidden by a coating of indurated clay like laterite, 

 and the native paths keep to this as much as possible. A scanty growth 

 of grass, especially the horrible spear-grass, which renders travelling 

 almost unendurable, covers the coral. Wherever the surface consists of 

 irregular piles of jagged fragments, bristling with needle-like points, 

 and full of deep rifts and well-like cavities, a dry, thorny jungle 

 grows, since horses cannot find foothold there, nor fire reach it. The 

 grass is burnt every May or June, and for some months later, the country 

 is as black as a coal, but travelling is easier and is usually done at this 

 season. In some places the soil is exceedingly rich, and the population 

 dense, especially in Melolo and Laura ; but the country is everywhere 

 dreary, and is far from green even just after the rains. Nevertheless 

 this reo-ion, the north-east coast from Laura to Rendi, is the civilized 

 part of the island, and the seat of all the larger states. The coast 

 itself is generally uninhabited for several miles inland, owing to the 

 depredations of the Endinese pirates. The heat is terrible, but the 

 coast seems singularly healthy, and the climate is more like that of 

 Northern Australia than of the Indian Archipelago. 



Till I came to Sumba, no European had ever visited the interior. 

 Learning from the natives that a well-wooded and watered tract existed 

 inland, I pushed across forty miles of a desolate coral wilderness and 

 reached a wholly different country. At Pada Dalung, and thence 

 to Man das* (south-west) and Karita (south-east), and, I was told, to 

 Tarimbang on the south coast, the rock is stratified and calcareous, 

 apparently a soft decomposed chalk, and in one deep ravine I saw some 

 huo-e round boulders which may have been granitic. The interior of the 

 island is a great plateau, somewhat hollowed out in the middle by the 

 river Kambera, which rises in the forests around Lewa, and in that 

 called Ketikujara or the Horse's Head, west of Mandas, flows eastward, 

 and near Mandas is a considerable river in deep jangle, difficult to 

 ford, haunted by crocodiles, and much larger in volume than at its 

 mouth seventy or eighty miles below. Indeed most rivers of northern 

 Sumba tend to disappear on approaching the coast. The table-land is 

 flat in general outline, but deeply cut by an infinity of exceedingly steep 

 ravines each with a clear swift stream. Flat or steep it is everywhere the 

 richest possible meadow land. The forests lie in great masses, and, except 



* Or Mandasu ; spelt Maanalas in Mr, Eoos's map of Sumba, which, except over 

 a part of the north coast, seems to have been compiled wholly from hearsay. 



