286 A NATVBALIST'S WANDEBINGS 



landed under a salute from the fort, and with a great show 

 of ceremony. Landing later in the day, we perambulated the 

 town, which wanted much before it could be termed neat or 

 clean or other than dilapidated, but when we afterwards 

 came to know how terribly insalubrious it is, we were sur- 

 prised that the incessant fever and languor which made life on 

 the lowlands an absolute burden left a particle of energy in 

 anybody to care for anything. The supreme evil of Dilly is 

 its having been built on a low morass, when it might have 

 stood far more salubriously on the easily accessible slopes 

 close behind it. Before leaving we received from the Governor 

 a most cordial invitation to visit them again, and the generous 

 offer of what assistance I might want, should I have a mind 

 to travel in the interior of the island. 



A sail of two nights and a day brought us to Banda. 

 Coming on deck, before breakfast, we found ourselves slowly 

 steaming in through a narrow winding entrance between 

 thickly foliaged cliffs, which seemed, after giving us passage, 

 to glide together and enclose us within a deep blue inland lake 

 without entrance or exit. It was the most lovely spot we had 

 yet visited. Fronting us as the steamer warped itself to the 

 jetty, lay the town as a cluster of white houses, built along 

 the low, narrow foreshore, overshadowed on all sides by steep 

 heights densely wooded with bright green vegetation ; from 

 an elevated plateau, a battlemented fort overlooked us, the 

 scarlet of its Dutch ensign floating in the wind with a 

 bright gleam of colour ; behind us, across the harbour, rose, 

 from the water's bayleted edge, the high symmetrical islet 

 cone of the Gunung Api, its base and flanks green with trees, 

 amid whose shade a white dwelling here and there peeped 

 out, peacefully reposing, careless of the internal fires that 

 blistered the smouldering summit of the mountain. 



We walked through the town and viewed at Bin Saleh's 

 many native-made Paradise and thousands of other gay New 

 Guinea birds' skins, ready for dispatch to the Paris markets. 

 Two skins of the Seleucides alba and Diphyllodes respuhliea 

 were all that were worth purchasing. We were charmed with 

 its clean aspect, its green parks with gravelled walks, and 

 pretty dwellings. Wandering up the heights by a path over- 

 grown Avith lycopods and ferns, we presently found ourselves 



