IN TIMOB. 479 



trees. Just before daybreak while it is still dusk, the morn- 

 ing air is in a similar manner inundated with their noisy hum. 

 This singular habit of these bees, in feeding in the sunless 

 hours of the morning and evening, I was totally unaware 

 of till I came to live at Fatunaba, where close to our door 

 a grove of these trees grew. In the evenings the Melaleuca 

 certainly becomes more fragrant than it is at midday ; but I 

 could not ascertain, what would be very interesting to know, if 

 its flowers exude their nectar, or shed their pollen more freely 

 late in the evening and early in the morning, 



After a comfortable enough night, which favoured us by not 

 raining, we resumed our march before dawn. I was anxious 

 to start sooner, but my carriers refused to travel in the night 

 till " the three rajahs in pursuit of the seven maidens " had 

 set, and Eai-naromak (Yenus) had risen some twenty degrees 

 above the horizon. Following the Vebirak we reached the bed 

 of the Sumasse, a river many hundred yards broad, running be- 

 tween vertical walls of shingly detritus some two hundred feet 

 high. Its channel gradually widened out into a broad shingly 

 expanse full of Tamarind trees, Acacias, Palms, and Cactus, 

 till it finally merged in that of the river Laclo (which I had 

 crossed far up at Sauo on the outward journey), over whose 

 broad tree-dotted estuarine plain, their united streams having 

 outrun their high shingly barriers, distributed their water in 

 rivulets, which near the headland of lUimanu debouched into 

 the sea at no great distance below where we turned our faces 

 back westward to ascend again the valley of the Laclo. 



A little distance up the river's left bank we came to the Rajah 

 of Laicor's, whose people were housed in the most miserable 

 dwellings we had seen — in low huts on the ground of a mere 

 thatched stockade of palm-leaf stems, with a platform or two 

 against the walls within to sleep on. The Rajah, an opium- 

 besotted individual, refused to help me with a change of 

 horses and men, but I compelled him much against his will, 

 to supply our whole company with the breakfast — of pig-flesh, 

 rice, Indian corn, and fresh-drawn palm-wine — which we were so 

 much in need of, it being then nearly ten o'clock, and none of 

 us had eaten since the previous evening. The headquarters of 

 the Rajah of Laclo were fortunately quite near on the other 

 side of the river, and thither we proceeded, and for the first 



