424 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINQS 



profit, by his willing attempts to serve us. As lie was only 

 delaying in Dilly, for a favourable wind to go home by, we 

 soon lost him, and for a whole fortnight — days of privation 

 anything but slight — we had to rely on ourselves for the 

 performance of all our domestic duties, till our kind helper, 

 Senhor Albino, sent us a Timorese, the son of a chief in one of 

 the kingdoms of the interior, who had been for some time a 

 prisoner in Dilly, but whose freedom was restored to him on 

 the sole condition of his serving us faithfully as long as we 

 wanted him. 



The results of the haste with which our thatched roof was 

 finished off soon became evident enough. At times not a single 

 spot in the hut — except where our bed, roofed over with a 

 waterproof sheet, stood — was dry. Everything of value, there- 

 fore, that we possessed, food, books, plants, gunpowder, clothes, 

 had to be stored on or under this piece of furniture, so that we 

 derived little rest or comfort from it. The repeated gales bent 

 the hut itself so far that it would have been carried down the 

 valley but for a couple of gum-trees which I had to fell and 

 prop it up with. Our food supply was wretchedly poor and 

 very scanty, often necessitating a purchasing expedition to 

 Dilly to replenish our stores — visits which in our solitary life 

 were red-letter days from the few hours of Europsan inter- 

 course with our kind friends at the? palace which they brought 

 us, for which we invariably paid dearly, however, in fever 

 attacks — in A.'s case of a very violent kind — a few days after 

 our return. Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, we had no 

 lack of enjoyment of a most serene description in this rough 

 and ricketty abode — if in nothing else, certainly in the inex- 

 pressibly delightful scene ever before us under the morning 

 and evening sun, and in the bright moonlight nights. 



With the natives we had a good deal of intercourse, as they 

 came often past our but on their way to Dilly wth their 

 produce — chiefly Indian corn and European potatoes. Their 

 character did not gain favourably on us. If their demands for 

 hanipa were not complied with, they took themselves off in a 

 very offensive and threatening way, muttering curses as they 

 went. If not watched closely, they were apt to think that 

 various useful or attractive objects of ours were belongings of 

 theirs. Among them some had frizzy, some had straight hair, 



