A VISIT TO TflE MOUNTAINEERS, UO J>ONGO, 
eers are closely connected, and whom they manage at their pieasure. 
All this only increased the desire which I had to explore the moun¬ 
tains and to make acquaintance with their inhabitants. The Sultan 
of Bima gave his consent to this, and cheerfully lent his assistance. 
It was more difficult to find a Christian half caste of Bima to ac¬ 
company me and serve as an interpreter. I visited the mountains 
to the west of the bay, running from north to south, during the 7th. 
8th. 9th. and 10th. September, 1847. What follows is a resume of 
my own observations, and of the information I was able to gather, 
regarding the curious people who inhabit them. 
It is not necessary for me to enter into details regarding the 
country itself. Like every country of the Indian Archipelago which 
occupies the sides of an old volcanic mountain, this country consists 
of a great number of trachytic ridges, which descend divergently to 
the bay of Bima, and which are separated by ravines often very deep, 
of which the defiles are frequently almost perpendicular. In these 
ravines run streams very impetuous in the rainy season, while their 
beds are often dry in the good season. 
The kampongs are built on the very summits of ridges of moun¬ 
tains, sometimes however upon the easy sloping declivities, never in 
the vallies or directly upon the banks of rivers. This makes the 
access to these kampongs very difficult, and they must be approach¬ 
ed by paths cut zigzag along nearly perpendicular rocks. Some of 
these kampongs are perched upon chasms 500 feet high like eagles* 
nests, for example Embdwd , and Manga . They are well situated 
between 1500 and 2500 feet above the sea. As the houses in these 
kampongs are very near each other, without having trees between 
them, and as they are covered with little rows of bambus of a grey 
colour, the kampongs are seen from a great distance and present 
quite a different appearance from the kampongs of the plain, which 
are almost always hid by a luxuriant vegetation of trees and bambus. 
The villages of the mountaineers of Bima resemble in this the vil¬ 
lages in the mountains of Tengger in the Island of Java, or, if we 
will, some yillages in the vallies of Switzerland. A great inconve¬ 
nience to the inhabitants of these villages in the mountains of Bim& 
is ? that they must seek their drinking water at a great distance, that 
is to say, in the deep ravines which contain the rivers. 
The houses of the Orang Dongo are built in a very peculiar man¬ 
ner. Those who have ever seen amongst the Malays one of the 
small houses which are used as granaries for rice (paddie) can easily 
