IN TIMOR-LAUT. 339 



sharp eyes of the natives descried at break of day a thin line 

 of smoke on the horizon, and before eight o'clock the Amhoina 

 had steamed slowly in, and, with a rattle pleasant to our ears, 

 dropped her anchor a few yards from our door. A couple of 

 hours later, with our precious collections safely on board, we 

 ourselves stood watching from the deck the crowd of struggling 

 boats heaving in the troubled water of our screw putting back 

 to the shore, and on our swarthy and most interesting friends 

 gazing after us from the strand, till our little home — the 

 centre round which, for the rest of our lives, will cluster the 

 reminiscences of most strange and utterly uncommunicable 

 thoughts and sensations — sank down behind our horizon, 

 happy that some of the eager hopes with which we had landed 

 amongst them a few months before had been gratified, yet feeling 

 how much there was left undone of what we had wished to 

 accomplish ; and as the verdure-clad shores faded from our 

 view the recollection of our dangers and anxieties, which had 

 been very real, vanished like an evil dream, while the intense 

 pleasure — whose solidity only a naturalist can really appreciate 

 — that we had derived from our wanderings amid a strange 

 people, and a perfectly new fauna and flora, was henceforth 

 alone to fill the retrospect of our sojourn among the Tenimber 

 Islands. 



Turning to our letters and newspapers we realised how 

 isolated had been our situation, when we found that England 

 had begun and fought out the Egyptian war, and that we were 

 out in our reckoning both of the day of the week and of the 

 day of the month. 



Eeversing the route we had taken in June, we arrived on 

 the 7th of October in Amboina, where we received a most 

 cordial welcome from Dr. and Madame Machik, now installed 

 in a commodious and pleasantly situated house looking out on 

 the Bay, and in which there was at my disposal delightful 

 accommodation for rearranging and preparing my collections 

 for despatch to Europe. 



I should be very unmindful if I did not record here the 

 more than friendly attention and care bestowed on us by both 

 our hosts, during the many days of Tenimber fever — ^^more 

 violently exhibited in Amboina than in Larat — that we had to 

 endure under their roof. 



