TIMOR, 



469 



CHxiPTEK lY. 



SOJOUKDT m KAIXAKUK AKD SAMOBO. 



I proceed to Futuboi— Rirer Motaai— Crystalline roclss — A weird village — 

 llare additions to niy bcrbariimv — Butterflies— Move oo to the Ilajah of 

 isitinoro's— Vegetation l»y the way — Gmdugical not^^ — Penalties ot thert 

 — Samoro — Visit Subale Peak — Botanising untler tlifficullies — Large 

 herbarium—Eetum to Samoro and leave for Mauuleo. 



Erom Saluki I proceeded with, a fresh mvalcade towards 

 Fatuboi, a conspicuous quadruple- crested mountain of remark- 

 able configuration, in the Suku of Kailukuk. We had to 

 commence with an inevitable descent of more than 1000 feet, 

 to the bed of the Hotaai, which, like all the Timor rivers 

 I had made the acquaintance of, ran in a deep bed T^ithin 

 precipitous walls, which in some places rose nearly 300 feet 

 in height, clothed with unfortunately for me inaccessible 

 vegetation, After following its course for four or five hours, 

 we turned off to the right, np the bed of a small tributary, in 

 which I Ibund blocks of pure white crystalline limestone, a 

 kind of rock I had not encountered before. Hence ascend- 

 ing a long steep ascent of 1500 feet streisved with disrupted 

 blocks of limestone, we reached the top of the mountain, and 

 by a narrow rocky stairway winding through a belt of impene- 

 trable junplo of thorny shrubs, were guided into the most weird 

 s|>ot conceivable for human habitation, into a small plateau on 

 the summit of one of the nigged eminences of the mountain. 

 Guardeil on all sides but one, by verticiil walls of limestone, 

 the plateau was dotted about with gigantic blocks of rag^^ed 

 and warted coral-liko limestone, against and between which 

 dwellings standing on piles on the bare rock, were scattered 

 about. To right and left rose immense rough, almost in- 

 accessible pinnacles of the same black withered calcareous 

 crags, riven in all directions with enicks, cavemed into dark 



