284 A NATURALIST'S WANDESINGS 



Macassar, the greatest disseminator in these seas of the pro- 

 ducts of Western civilisation to the barharous East. Thence, 

 running a day and night's sail southward to the island of 

 Sumbawa, we touched for a few hours at Binaa. The rest of 

 that day and till next afternoon we coasted along the shores 

 of the island of Elores, the Land of Flowers of the early 

 Portuguese navigators, but a heavy mist concealed from our 

 view its wooded features. 



Anchoring at Larantuka at its "eastern point, t accompanied 

 the captain on shore under a dense rain, and spent an hour 

 or two at a lone mbhastery' there, where some eight or nine 

 priests .were living, who hospitably proffered us the best- of 

 their cellar. The buildings and grounds were enclosed aind 

 strongly fenced in by thick hedges- of the impenetrable bam- 

 boo-durie. With a few people from Java and the surrounding 

 islands they were spending their lives in very iQuch like 

 useless solitude. The natives were • anything but friendly, 

 and lived far in the mountains ; but every now and then, the 

 priests told me, they made a raid on their establishment, 

 shooting a few of their people in the dark and then running 

 :away. So that it seemed to me that both the priests and 

 the nuns (who occupied an adjacent nunnery) might have 

 established themselves in a region affording more scope to 

 their self-denying labours. The natives I' saw were mop- 

 haired, with sooty black skins j they wore triton-shell armr 

 lets, squeezed on just below the shoulder so tight that I was 

 astonished that strangulation of the limb was not the result. 

 A pink Periwinkle {Vinca rosea), and the lovely dark blue 

 -climbing Clitorea ternatensis grew abundantly near the shore 

 and in the gardens of the priests. 



Prom Larantuka passing southward through the Flores 

 straits we made for Cupang in the west of Timor — a bright 

 clean, neatly laid-out town at the base of a range of abrupt 

 .hills, with a considerable Dutch population living in sub- 

 stantial houses. On going ashore we were delighted to find 

 there an Englishman, Mr. Drysdale, by whom we were most 

 hospitably entertained during the day. The natives, ta,ll 

 well-made fellows with their hair done up in a large frizzly 

 mop, strolled lazily about the streets looking on unconcernedly 

 at the tide of civilisation and the eager jjustle of trade set 



