178 



A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



peaks of the Tajia Skaiulri, or FooMejjof (no less a liero ihim) 

 Aleximdcr the fireat, whom the chiefs of these regions (^laini, 

 singuhirly enough, aa their illustrious stem -father. The 

 industry of the lake borders, for wliidi it is famed through- 

 out the Archipelago, is Its tobar^co culture, which is grown on 

 a loose porous earth composed of the detritus of pumicestone 

 mixed with humus* The finest quality is made from none 

 hut the very topmost leaves of the phmt^ and commands a 

 very high price* 



From the lake, on my nest stage towards the Dempo, the 

 road descended through the same picturesque couiitry fin 

 former ages probably the bottom of a I-£anau lake greater than 

 now) all the way to Muara-dua. Tliis town, **at the mouth ol 

 two rivers " as its namo signifies, is situated at the union 

 of the Sako with the broad Komering river, and is the 

 seat of a large trade by river with Palembang in cotton, 

 tobacco, rice, timber, and " birds' nests " — the edible swifts' 

 nests— gathered from dark calcareous grottoes in the neigh- 

 bourhood. The towTi, though distant 200 miles in a direct 

 lino from the sea, is only 400 feet above its level, and stauils 

 really on the edge of the great alluvial phiin which lies along 

 the entire eastern shores of Sumatra, formed by the detritus 

 washed down from the Baris^m range into a sea wliose coast- 

 line, retreating by a slight elevation of the land, left dry this 

 broad plain, which rises nowhere throughout its vast extent 

 more tlian 600 feet above the level of the sea. Before its 

 nplieavab South Sumatra conld not have been more than lOO 

 miles broad. Several great river systems, running in a general 

 west to-east direction fan-shape in form, traverse it, and are 

 laying down along the nuirgin of the land a further deposit, 

 the slight elevation of which, for some thirty feet only 

 between Falembang and the Island of Bank a, wtjuld niise the 

 ghallow sea into dry land. Near the town of !Mnara-dua 1 was 

 surprised to net a European moth {Fhragmata'cia arundinis). 



My further course northward traversed the sources of the 

 great arms of the southern of these systems. 



Sending my baggage on to Peugandonan by the level road 

 on the low lands, I proceeded on foot thither over the Kisam 

 Hills. Just above Muara-dua the Blabuug river was crossed by 

 a very high sus{3*'nsion-bridge of a mtist picturesque construe- 



