VOYAGE FROM II.'DIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA 177 



woods. As my guid-3 and the other people accompanied me. I 

 grew more daring anl I advanced still further; but the deeper I 

 penetrated into the woods, the more often I found this plant. I 

 rubbed the leaves, and found them to have a strong smell of 

 Cardomum I showed it to the people, who assured me that it 

 was Cardomum, of which two different sorts grow here. None 

 of the natives are allowed to sell any of it to strangers, who pay 

 them well for it. All had to be delivered to the king, who paid 

 very little for it. Lastly I found some capsules on the ground, 

 which were overgrown with small fibres. The plant which pro- 

 duces them consists only of one stem growing up slantingly, 

 curving shghtly at the end ; it was not as tall as a man. The 

 roots are horizontal, have knots in rings, and are a little raised 

 and as thick as a finger, like those of the ginger. The stalk ia 

 round and had on both sides distichous alternate widely spread- 

 ing leaves, oblong, acute, the upper surface smooth, the lower 

 glabrous whitish. The real time of blossom was in November, 

 the fruits are gathered in December. 



My curiosity urged me on. I found the Cassia lignea and 

 Cardomum, but I was still very far from the mountains, which 

 Mr. Toren mentions in reference to the thunder in the Cardomum 

 mountains. 



I had the good luck to shoot a Siamese cuckoo in this 

 wood. It had its two long tail feathers, and I saw several 

 birds of this kind here; they were all of a shiny black colour. 

 The inner side of the wings had small white spots as large as au 

 ordinary pea, and there were also some white speckled feathers 

 on the rump, but all the rest was pitchblack. They were busy 

 catching insects. Some Talapoins came after me and warned me 

 not to penetrate deeper into the woods, so I re-collected my flora 

 as much as was possible in a hurry, and went home with many 

 new things. In the afternoon I went to a black pepper planta- 

 tion, which the Chinese have made a quarter of a mile from the 

 town. The pepper plants are planted in the ground, and trained 

 up dry stems of trees about the height of three men ; they stood 

 four steps distant from each other. Little ditches of hardly a 

 foot deep had been made between the stems in order to moisten 

 the roots. The plants were now full of almost ripe fruit, some 

 were already being dried on mats. The king had ordered 

 80,000 piculs to be brought to his capital from this Drago, and 



