206 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



CHAPTER VI. 



SOJOUEN IN THE POLEMBANG EESIDENCV — continued. 



rassurnali Lands (conirf.) — The Volcano of the Dempo — Its flora anl fauna — 

 The crater — Spectre of the Broeken^-The view from the summit — Leave 

 for the Kaha Volcano — Gunung Meraksa — River journey on a raft — 

 Lampar — Find again the spider Orniilwscatoides dedpiens — -Batu- 

 pantjeh — A marriage scene — ^Games of the boys — -Hnuses — Tcbbing- 

 Tinggi — -Tandjong-ning — Great trees — My party attacked by a tiger — 

 Its vviliness — Its capture^ — Graveyard. 



TriE chief object of interest in the Passumah Lands is its 

 Tolcano — the Dempo. Almost daily I explored some part of 

 its vast extent, and when I left I could have profitably spent 

 months more without exhausting its treasures. The village of 

 Pau, in which I had my quarters, was 3500 feet above the sea. 

 The first few hundred feet of the flanks of the mountain were 

 appropriated by the villagers for their coffee gardens, and the 

 few fields in ■\Ahich they now cultivate rice and roots. The 

 coffee-trees, despite their being densely crowded, yielded large 

 crops of a very superior kind of fruit ; above these cultivated 

 fields ran a broad belt of low forest consisting of a shrubbery of 

 Fluggea microcarpa and the usual broad-leaved scitamineous 

 plants, in whose damp shade balsams and white-flowered Ges- 

 neracese and hairy-leaved Begonias flourished. About 4000 feet 

 began the virgin forest, which for 2000 feet upwards displayed 

 unrivalled luxuriance, under which grew a tangled mass of 

 shrubs and thorny climbers. Crashing through these, I one 

 day nearly trampled on a fine new species of that curious 

 family, the Bafflesiaceas ; it smelt powerfully of putrid flesh, 

 and was infested with a crowd of flies, which followed me all 

 the way as I carried it home, and was besides overrun with 

 ants, notwithstanding the long hairs which protected its centre. 

 In the deep shade at this elevation few flowers except from 

 the climbers and epiphytes on the trees, such as many species 

 of Melastoma oftener more rich in colour of fruit than of flower. 



