56 BATCH I AN. [chap. xxiv. 



we entered the little river, and in about an hour we 

 reached the Sultan's house, which I had obtained per- 

 mission to use. It was situated on the bank of the river, 

 and surrounded by a forest of fruit trees, among which 

 were some of the very loftiest and most graceful cocoa-nut 

 palms I have ever seen. It rained nearly aR that day, 

 a/ud I could do little but unload and unpack. Towards 

 the afternoon it cleared up, and I attempted to explore in 

 various directions, but found to ray disgust that the only 

 path was a perfect mud swamp, along which it was almost 

 impossible to walk, and the surrounding forest so damp 

 and dark as to promise little in the way of insects. I 

 found too on inquiry that the people here made no clear- 

 ings, living entirely on sago, fruit, fish, and game ; and the 

 path only led to a steep rocky mountain equally imprac- 

 ticable and unproductive. The next day I sent my men 

 to this hill, hoping it might produce some good birds ; but 

 they returned with only two common species, and I myself 

 liad been able to get nothing, every little track I had 

 attempted to follow leading to a dense sago swamp. I 

 s-aw that I should waste time by staying here, and deter- 

 mined to leave the following day. 



This is one of those spots so hard for the European 

 naturalist to conceive, where with all the riches of a 

 tropical vegetation, and partly perhaps from the very 

 luxuriance of that vegetation, insects are as scarce as in 



