CHAPTER XXIII 



Seasonal Abnormalities and their effects on Vegetation — An able 

 Trapper — I Become Invalided — Excursion to the Auriferous 

 Districts of Sarawak — At Grogo — Freshwater Pearl Oysters — 

 Gold in Caves — The Paku Cave — The End of My Projects — I 

 Return to Italy. 



AT Kuching it rained nearly incessantly for a whole month 

 (from the 20th November to the 20th December), but 

 from the latter date to the 30th December the sky was clear. 

 This abrupt passage from an excessively wet to a dry season soon 

 showed its effects on the vegetation. Thus, opposite my house, a 

 mango tree renewed all its foliage and got covered with flowers in 

 twelve days, and many other trees as quickly underwent a similar 

 change. Such abnormalities in the prevailing course of the mon- 

 soons are not rare in Sarawak. 



About this time — unfortunately too late, because the day was 

 approaching on which I had resolved to leave Sarawak — a most 

 capable trapper came to offer me his services, bringing several 

 interesting species of small mammals which I had been unable to 

 get previously. The manner in which he captured them was simple 

 and efficacious. He enclosed a portion of the forest with a small 

 stockade, leaving narrow openings at intervals, at w T hich he placed 

 his nooses and traps. 



Xew Year's Day of 1868 found me at Kuching, assisting for the 

 third time in the festivities of the season, but in very different spirits 

 from those I had enjoyed on the preceding occasions. My health, 

 which up to the last few months had been excellent, had now com- 

 pletely broken down ; no doubt in consequence of the fatigue and 

 exposure, not to mention the privations, which I had gone through, 

 especially during my last journey. Fever attacks were now fre- 

 quent and violent, and elephantiasis, which had shown itself some 

 months before, was evidently increasing rapidly. My strength and 

 energy were ebbing, and I now felt that the time to leave the country 

 and return to Italy had come, and, indeed, was an absolute necessity. 

 More than once the desire for home had come upon me, but 

 never so strongly as then. Yet before leaving the field of my re- 

 searches I felt that I must pay another visit to the auriferous and 

 antimony districts of the Upper Sarawak river, to collect samples 



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