16 
MALACCA. 
As soon as the Malays reached the camp they began to be unruly, clamouring for 
biscuits and brandy : they sat still until it was nearly pitch dark without attempting to cut 
a stick of fire-wood or make the least provision against the cold of the night, and not until 
they were chattering with cold did they move. 
The folio-wing morning nine of them, I am glad to say, returned home, three remaining 
with me. Everything was enveloped in mist, and when I ascended to the summit of the 
mountain, only about an hour’s scramble from the encampment, I saw absolutely nothing of 
the surrounding country. On the way up to the summit I found a large Tarantula spider, 
which I dug out of her hole, but I did not see either bird or butterfly. The absence of 
animal life was, however, well compensated for by the vegetable kingdom. Pitcher-plants 
(Nepenthes) were so numerous that at times we had to cut our way through them. I noticed 
some four or five species— N. sangninea, rafflesiana , ampullaria, albo-marginata, and a 
new one still undescribed, the large N. sanguinea being especially remarkable. The low 
weather-beaten trees were covered with mosses ; tree-ferns about eight feet high grew 
plentifully in a deep gap between the two highest peaks, in vegetable mould several feet 
deep. 
The next morning I sent the Chinaman to the summit (which I am told is about 4000 
feet above the sea-level) with two Malays whilst I busied myself making a sketch of the 
distant country. In the afternoon I went for a stroll along the Padang-batu to a small 
stream, where I shot one of those peculiar Eastern Cuckoos, with a beautiful pearly grey 
back and bright red beak ( Zanclostomus javanicus) ; the only other bird collected at this 
camp was a species of Bulbul, which the Malays called Bura Bura ( Hemixus cinereus), 
otherwise I did not see another bird; butterflies were represented by one common white 
and yellow species, Delias orphne. 
The Chinaman tells me tales in the evenings about the war his countrymen are now 
carrying on with the French; and how the Chinese have put “ cannons under the sea 
(torpedoes), and when the French steamboats came, bang! and make finish everything.” 
1st March.—We followed the course of the stream down to the forest: the palms and 
trees were magnificent; added to this the stream formed many waterfalls as it tumbled over 
the precipitous rocks; the whole scene was like a glimpse into fairy-land, which so delighted 
me that I could not bring myself to turn back, much to the disgust of my two Malay 
followers, who tell me that they would not do this sort of work for $5 a day. Most 
remarkable of all palms in the forests are those extraordinary long rattan-canes. 
These canes grow in tropical forests like long thin ropes, climbing to the tops of the 
highest trees, when they often fall to the ground; after running along for some distance 
they clutch hold of a branch or creeper, and gradually, with help of the wind and their 
string-like tentacles, attain a great height; this climbing process may be gone through 
several times, until looking up you may be puzzled to find out where these extraordinary 
forest ropes begin or end; some canes must be over one hundred yards long. The way 
this climbing is accomplished is interesting: the cane has at its end a palm-like tuft of 
leaves, each leaf is provided with a bare wire-like rib, some four feet long, which hangs 
loosely swaying in the wind ; this gradually tapering wire-like tentacle is covered with circles 
of thorny teeth, pointing inwards and about an inch apart, so that wherever they are blown 
