440 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



native of the district whom luckily we caught unawares before 

 he could make off, we persuaded him with the offer of a 

 gaudy kerchief to guide us to the Eajah of Turskain's. In his 

 rear we slid and stumbled down on the slippery clay for 1000 

 feet to the Maukuda, a noisy sparkling stream in a narrow 

 ravine which finds its way to the south coast (showing that we 

 had crossed the water-shed of the country), up which we 

 clambered over boulders and through deep pools for nearly an 

 hour. The sides of the ravine, however, were densely covered 

 with vegetation, and bright with hedychium, balsams, and the 

 French marigold (Tagetes paiula) so common in our gardens 

 at home, but which was here growing wild far from coast 

 influence or the higbways of the world, and was seen by me 

 nowhere else along my route. It is a widespread plant, 

 hailing from Mexico originally, but also found in Africa ; but 

 how did it reach the interior of Timor ? 



Turning to the right out of the stream our horses had to be 

 urged up one of the steepest inclines we had yet encountered, 

 in trenches as deep as their own height, and along more pre- 

 cipitous and dangerous ravines than those we had passed. In 

 compensation for these difficulties the scenery was charmingly 

 picturesque, in the glimpses we got of it through the rolling 

 mist-clouds, and above all, we had entered a more fertile 

 grass-clad region though without much arboreal vegetation 

 beyond acacias and casuarinas. Every foot of the way was 

 dotted \vith bright herbs in full flower, with violets, white- 

 flowered geraniums like our Herb-Robert in habit, Galium 

 very like our common Bedstraw, pink Lahiatse resembling the 

 Penny-royal of our English roadsides, Oxalis, and Polygonum, 

 while among the grass and in rocky nooks grew small terres- 

 trial orchids and the most lovely silver and other graceful 

 ferns ; and where the soil was broken by land-slips, and in the 

 ravines, flowering shrubs abounded, so that I mourned that I 

 had not arms big enough to embrace specimens of all I might 

 have gathered. Though we had been climbing up and clam- 

 bering down — first down 500 feet then up 1700, down 1000 

 only to rise again the same number of feet — since early 

 morning till past five o'clock in the evening, I quite forgot the 

 steepness of this last ascent (leading up to our destination, the 

 residence of the Eajah of Turskain), and my weariness of limb 



