478 A NATORALIST'S WANDERINGS 



CHAPTEE V. 



RETURN TO EUROPE. 



Bad news from Dilly — Start thither — Camp in the open — Bees — ^Laclo river — 

 Pajah's of Laicor — The Queen of Laolo — A hot ride — G-eological note — 

 Matu — Metinara — Salt marshes — A long night-ride — Eeturn to Dilly 

 Palace — Extract from A.'s journal — Eeturn to Patunaha — Fevers — Decide 

 to return to Europe — Surprised by the arrival of steamer — Hegvetfiil 

 departure from Fatunaba — Revisit Banda and Amboina — Menado — A 

 lucky accident — Batavia — Krakatoa — Home. 



Next morning, just as we had set out, we were hailed from a 

 neighbouring height by a man whom I made out to be in 

 military uniform. On coming up, he informed me that he had 

 been trying to overtake us for many days, and delivered to me 

 letters from the Government Secretary (Senhor Bento da 

 Franga) to say that Mrs. Forbes was very ill, and urging my 

 immediate return to the Palace whither she had been con- 

 veyed from Fatunaba. As the route I was following was the 

 nearest, I could gain time only by making forced marches. 

 Descending by an undulating route to the Vebirah river, we 

 reached the first level o-round traversed in our journey — a 

 plateau clothed with gum-trees parallel to and sloping gently 

 with the course of the river, and about one hundred feet above its 

 channel. In being entirely composed of a perfectly horizontal 

 mass of sand and small pebbles, embedding strata of crystalline 

 sandstone which protruded through it at a high angle, its 

 geological features were identical with what I have described 

 as seen in the Samoro and other rivers I had crossed. 



A little before sunset, after a march of ten hours broken by 

 a halt of only thirty minutes, we camped on a grassy spot on 

 the bank, in little extemporised grass huts. During the brief 

 twilight after the sun had disappeared, the air for some twenty 

 minutes was suddenly filled with the hum of bees {Apis dorsata), 

 as if a swarm had alighted among the flowers of the Gum- 



