IN TIMOR. 439 



myself observe, though it is said to grow in Timor in abun- 

 dance. 



April 3. — From behind our rest-house, I got a good view of 



the river below us, where its tributary, the Tahaolat, descending 



a long steep gradient, and looking from my elevated station like 



a narrow line of black fluid winding through the centre of its 



wide, flat and stony channel, dashes down a noisy cataract into 



but does not commingle for a long way after its union with 



the paler water of the Wai Matang-Kaimauk, whose bed, 



judging from the dwarfed appearance of the tall casuarinas 



growing against tke high shingle banks in the fork of their 



confluence, must be quite fifty feet lower. So broad is the 



channel of this river that even the conjoint flood — on the way 



to the sea at Mantutu — ^meanders like a narrow ribband 



through it. The grandeur of these streams, if ever their vast 



beds are filled from bank to bank with a roaring torrent, must 



be left to the imagination. Guided by the Dato, down the 



steep and broken slopes to the river margin, 2000 feet above 



the sea, I had a fuU view of the giant trihedral blocks down 



to their bases in a side tributary of the Wai Mutang- 



Kaimauk, and estimated them at not less than 1000 feet in 



height. The river itself, which looked so small from above, 



was found to be wide, deep, and rapid, demanding our utmost 



caution in fording on account of the number of large boulders 



which were being constantly rolled down by it. I am told that 



in the rainy season, travellers have often to camp on the bank 



for weeks waiting for an opportunity to cross in safety ; and 



that many a time horses and men, who in their impatience 



attempt to force their way, are (tarried down and crushed by 



the rolling blocks. 



From the river it was a long weary climb of 1500 feet to the 

 summit of the opposite ridge, over a rough shingly ground, from 

 which the soil has been nearly all washed away, so that to 

 raise his little crop of maize the native here has had to build 

 up terraces of low walls in the more sheltered nooks to hold 

 the precious hoard of earth he has laboriously collected behind 

 them. On reaching the summit we were overtaken by a 

 dense drizzling mist, in which, amid the innumerable ravinelets 

 of the descent, each of which looked like the usual ditch-like 

 track of a road, we lost our way. Stumbling up against a 



