210 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



against a sky of the most delicate tint of sea-green. At 9700 

 feet, the summit of what the natives call the Dempo was 

 surmounted, whence I looked down into the Sawah, or ancient 

 crater of the mountain the site of their sacred feasts and offer- 

 ings, and across to the Merapi, or Firepeak, a more recent cone, 

 now the true summit of the volcano. Here almost no insects, 

 except annoying swarms of blue-bottle flies, were seen ; but 

 the little White-eyes (Zosterops clilorata) which had accompa- 

 nied us all the way up, flitted about on the Vaccinium forbesii, 

 their nostrils laden with its pollen, busily performing that 

 important part in the economy of nature by which vigour is 

 added to the plants, and size and beauty to their flowers by 

 their cross-fertilisation. 



A steep descent of 200 feet brought me to the Sawah (where 

 I built a camp), whose dark brown and greyish-black sandy 

 soil emitted a powerful odour of sulphur. It was dotted every- 

 where with clumps of heaths and rhododendrons and plants 

 with crisp dark green leaves, and with white wooUy-foliaged 

 species of Compositse characteristic of volcanic soil (Anaphalis 

 javanica and A. saxatilis), which have a strong aromatic odour 

 somewhat like that of camomile. An infusion of its leaves 

 is supposed, from its sacred habitat (for it grows nowhere 

 else on the mountain), to possess healing powers. The slope 

 of the cone was dotted with " Long-age " whortleberry get- 

 ting more and more stunted as we ascended, till, within 200 

 feet of the rim of the crater, it almost disappeared except as a 

 low bush of one and a-half to two feet high. The whole face 

 of the ascent was covered ^^ith loose stones and pieces of 

 pnmice and scoriaj. 



After a puffing clamber from the Sawah we gained the rim 

 of the crater, looking down some 300 feet of precipitous rock, 

 on what seemed a pure white polished mirror, set in a central 

 basin from which was slowly rising a column of steam. All 

 was quiet and placid, and I sat down a little to take in the 

 details of a scene so novel to me : — a vast circular basin half a 

 mile in diameter, with rocky sides of sheer precipices, display- 

 ing at various places horizontal strata ; at the bottom of this 

 another smaller basin, some 20O feet in diameter, filled to 

 within about 30 or 40 feet of its rim with a smoking substance, 

 whose surface, like burnished silver, reflected the blue sky and 



