212 The Gardens of the Sun. |.ch. xi. 



their hearts' content. After this we got an hour or two 

 of rest, and awoke at daybreak, when everybody was 

 astir. We found our breakfast ready, and our ponies 

 were saddled and at the door. 



The men whom the Sultan had promised us as guides, 

 and a buffalo to carry down plants, were also waiting, 

 and "Gelah " was eager to accompany us by order of his 

 royal master. Breakfast over, we started off in excellent 

 spirits up a gently rising path leading past a burial 

 ground, and beneath some of the finest Durian trees in 

 the island. A- newly made grave ornamented with flowers 

 and the young flower-stems of the betel-nut palm, was 

 pointed out to us as being that of a man who had been 

 shot at the Istana in a squabble about one of the ladies 

 of the court. It appears that the man's wife having died 

 he wanted to carry off a relation of his who now belonged 

 to the Sultana's suite, and in the row which followed he 

 met with his death. 



Our ride was a very pleasant one, and led us up through 

 several cultivated patches with here and there a belt of 

 jungle. Soon after leaving the Istana an aerides was 

 seen flowering very freely on the trees, also the ubiquit- 

 ous Dendrobiu7n crumenatum, with pseudo bulbs four feet 

 in length, the flowers much larger than usual. Gymhi- 

 dium aloifolium was everywhere plentiful, clustering in 

 large masses on the boles of large trees in the clearings. 

 At an elevation of about 1000 feet we came to a village 

 and fruit grove, and here we stayed to rest awhUe as the 

 sun was now very hot overhead, and a drink of cocoa-nut 

 milk proved very grateful. On the trees here I obtained 

 a greenish yellow flowered dendrobium, which proved 

 to be a new species very similar to the D. d'Albertisii of 

 New Guinea. At about 1500 feet we reached the skirt 

 of the old forest, and had to dismount and do the rest 



