26Q A NATURALIST'S WANDEBINaS 



off than at close quarters. Besides these, a little way from 

 the town, are the tombs of the Sultans, where many of the 

 deyout go to pray ; but perhaps the most interesting and 

 curious to the Western visitor — a spot held in the utmost 

 veneration by the Palembangers^s the grave of Sekandar 

 Alam, or Alexander the Great, M'hom the Sultans and most 

 of the chiefs of Palembang claim as their illustrious fore- 

 father. . ' ' 



In the neighbourhood of the Government offices stands the 

 market, which — as are many of the houses, especially those of 

 the Chinese shop-keepers^is substantially built of stone, a 

 material which along with iron-wood, was during the reign of 

 the Sultans forbidden to all save members of the Eoyal house 

 as a building material. 



On Sunday, the 25th December, twelve months from my 

 starting from the mouth of the Semangka River, I sailed for 

 Batavia, and the last pictures of Sumatra that I recall are the 

 heaving and surging in the troubled water of our screw of the 

 floating dwellings on both banks as far as the eye could reach 

 to what seemed their imminent destruction, attended by the 

 overthrow from the gaping and closing of the log platforms 

 of the children at their play (some of them actually into the 

 river), their ineffectual scrambling to regain their footing, 

 and the' attempts of their more unconcerned elders to retain 

 theirs on the unstable foundations of their home— in some 

 Aspects a very ludicrous scene ; and the interminable stretch 

 of nipa-palms that cover, in a low dense forest, the watery 

 uninhabitable mud-flats that extend for fifty miles from the 

 city to the sea. 



After making a short call at Muntok in Banka, between 

 which and Sumatra a plateau covered by only three fathoms of 

 water exists, I was landed on the 27th of the month in Batavia, 

 where I at once set about my preparations for an extended 

 journey to the less civilised islands in the Far East of the 

 Archipelago. 



