18G 



TIMOR. 



[chap. XllL 



gladly accepted lib offer, as I only intended making a 

 short visit. We at first began speaking French, but he got 

 on so badly that we soon passed insensibly into Malay ; 

 and we afterwards held long discussions on literary, 

 scientific, and philosophical questions, in that semi- 

 barbarous Iniiguage, whose deficiencies we made up by the 

 free use of French or Latin woitls. 



After ft few walks in the neighbourhood of the town, I 

 found such a poverty of insects and birds that I deter- 

 mined to go for a few days to the island of Semao at the 

 western extremity of Timor, where I heard that there wiis 

 forest country with birds uot found at Coupang. Witli 

 some difficulty I obtained a large dug-out boat with out- 

 riggers, to take me over, a distance of about twenty miles. 

 I found the country pretty well wooded, but covered with 

 shrubs and thoiny bushes rather than forest trees, and 

 everywhere excessively parched and dried up by the long- 

 continued dry season. I stayed at the village of Oeassa, 

 leinarkable for its soap springs. One of these is in the 

 uiiddle of the \'illage, bubbling out from a little cone of 

 mud to which the ground rises all round like a volcano in 

 miniature. The water has a soapy feel and produces a 

 strong lather when any greasy substance is washed in it. 

 It contains alkali and iodine, in such quantities as to 

 destroy all %Tgetation for some distance round Close by 

 the village is one of the finest springs I have ever seen, 

 contained in several rocky biisins communicating by 

 narrow channels. These have been neatly walled where 

 required and partly levelled, and form fine natured baths. 

 The water is well tasted and clear as crystal, and the 

 basins are surrounded by a grove of lofty many-stemmed 

 l>anyan4rees, which keep tliem always cool and sbaily, 

 and add greatly to the picturesqvie beauty of the scene. 



The village consists of curiuus little houses very dif- 

 ferent from any I have seen elsewhere. They are of an 

 oval figure, and the walls are made of sticks about four feet 

 high placed close together. From tliis rises a high conical 

 roof thatched with gra,ss. The only opening is a door 

 about three feet high. The people are like the Timorese 

 with frizzly or wavy hair and of a cuppevy br(^^vn colour. 

 The better class appear to have a mixture of some auj>>rioi 



