284 



A natuhalist'B wanderings 



Macassar, the greatest disseminator in these seas of the pro- 

 ducts of Western civilisation to the barbarous East. Thence, 

 running: a tlfly and night's sail southward to the island of 

 Sumbiiwa, wo touched for a few hours at Bima. The rest of 

 that day and till next aftemoon we coasted along the shores 

 of the island of Flores, the Land of Flowers of the early 

 Portuguese navigators, but a heavy mist concealed from our 

 view its wooded features. 



Anchoring at Larautuka at its eastern point, I accompanied 

 the captain on shore under a dense rain, and spent an hour 

 or two at a lone monastery there, where some eight or nine 

 priests were living, who hospitably proffered us the best of 

 their cellar. The buildings and grounds were enclosed and 

 stTongly fenced in by thick hedges of the impenetrable bam- 

 boo-durie. With a few people from Java and the surroimding 

 islands they were spending their lives in very much like 

 useless solitude. The natives were anjrthing but friendly, 

 and lived far in the mountains ; but every now and then, the 

 priests told me, they made a raid on their estabiishment^ 

 shooting a few of their people in the dark and then running 

 away. So that it seemed to me that both the priests and 

 the nuns (who occupied an adjacent nunnery) might have 

 established themselves in a region affording more scope to 

 their self-denying labours. The mitires I saw were mop- 

 haired, with sooty black skins; they wore triton-shell arm- 

 lets, squeezed on just below the shoulder so tight that I was 

 astouished that strangulation of the limb was not the result. 

 A pink Periwinkle (Vinm rosed), and the lovely dark blue 

 climbing ClUorm ternatenma grew abundantly near the shore 

 and in the gardens of the priests. 



From Larautuka passing southward through the Flores 

 straits we made for Cnpang in the west of Timor — a bright 

 clean, neatly laid-out town at the base of a range of abrupt 

 hills, with a considerable Dutch population living in sub- 

 sttmtial houses. On going ashore we were delighted to find 

 there an Englishman, Mr. Drysdale, by whom we were most 

 hospitably entertained during the da}^ The natives, tall 

 well-made fellows with their hair done up in a large iiizzly 

 mop, strolled la^iJy about the streets looking on unconcernedly 

 at tJio tide nf rivilisation and the eagor bustle tmdf^ scf 



