IN BUMATBA, 



233 



their own diatrict. The poor people had sold all their saleable 

 goodfl, and were then many of them living in the deep forest, 

 feeding on fruits and green herbs, and making sago from 

 the Areng palm ; or in search of rattan and halam (their name 

 for the varions species of gum-elastic and gutta-percha), to 

 exchange for rice in Palembang, whence all their supplies liad 

 to be brought— a twenty to thirty or more days' laborions 

 pole up the river. They were besides all so very weak from 

 spare diet that we had to arrange the baggage in small bund lea 

 and employ a larger number. Our road lay at first south-east 

 along the Xlingi, and then northward across the ttibataries 

 of the Lakitan, to the village of Suka-Radja, on the Rupit 

 river, where I spent a few profitable weeks. 



Here I obtained an interesting bird, a green species of Spider- 

 eater — an elegant genus with long curved bill— flitting about 

 near the ground on the rocky pavt?ment. On dissection I 

 found its stomach to contain, besides insects and the seeds of 

 Svitamim^^ a waxy substance. The natives say that it feeds on 

 the flowers of the Scitamme^ that bloom on the surface of the 

 ground. These are most of them of very bright colours, and 

 grow in deep shade where few insects are to be found, and it is 

 very probable that the grateful office of cross-fertilisation is per- 

 formed for them by the Spider-eater and other bird*^. The most 

 remarkable feature of the forests here was an immensely tall 

 thick tree entiled by the natives Sekmvan^ (? Bamaj sp.), whose 

 scarlet flowers keep falling, during the two or three weeks of 

 its blossoming time, in one incessant rain, covering the ground 

 with a deep scarlet carpet, so deep that hundretls of bushels 

 might be gathered, frtim which a peculiar and very oppressive 

 but not disagreeable odour emanates. 



Here I made my first acquaintance with the Kuhus, a race 

 of whom I hail Jieard much in the southern parts of my 

 journey as a wild tribe living houseless in the forests, covered 

 with hair, and altogether so peculiar a people as to be famous 

 far from their own regions. As I approiiehed nearer to their 

 haunts the exaggerated tales about them became reduced 

 nearer to the bounds of truth; but still then little reliable 

 inforniilion could be obtained; so that it was with extreme 

 satisfaction that I learned one day that in their wanderings, a 

 small company of them had come iiito the neighbourhood, 



