The Malay Archipelago Volume 1

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On the second day they left the last village behind them and
entered the wild country that surrounds the great mountain, and
rested in the huts that had been prepared for them on the banks
of a stream of cold and sparkling water. And the Rajah's hunters,
armed with long and heavy guns, went in search of deer and wild
bulls in the surrounding woods, and brought home the meat of both
in the early morning, and sent it on in advance to prepare the
mid-day meal. On the third day they advanced as far as horses
could go, and encamped at the foot of high rocks, among which
narrow pathways only could be found to reach the mountain-top.
And on the fourth morning when the Rajah set out, he was
accompanied only by a small party of priests and princes with
their immediate attendants; and they toiled wearily up the rugged
way, and sometimes were carried by their servants, until they
passed up above the great trees, and then among the thorny
bushes, and above them again on to the black and burned rock of
the highest part of the mountain.

And when they were near the summit, the Rajah ordered them all to
halt, while he alone went to meet the great spirit on the very
peak of the mountain. So he went on with two boys only who
carried his sirih and betel, and soon reached the top of the
mountain among great rocks, on the edge of the great gulf whence
issue forth continually smoke and vapour. And the Rajah asked for
sirih, and told the boys to sit down under a rock and look down
the mountain, and not to move until he returned to them. And as
they were tired, and the sun was warm and pleasant, and the rock
sheltered them from the cold grind, the boys fell asleep. And the
Rajah went a little way on under another rock; and as he was tired,
and the sun was warm and pleasant, and he too fell asleep.

And those who were waiting for the Rajah thought him a long time
on the top of the mountain, and thought the great spirit must
have much to say, or might perhaps want to keep him on the
mountain always, or perhaps he had missed his way in conning down
again. And they were debating whether they should go and search
for him, when they saw him coming down with the two boys. And
when he met them he looked very grave, but said nothing; and then
all descended together, and the procession returned as it had
come; and the Rajah went to his palace and the chiefs to their
villages, and the people to their houses, to tell their wives and
children all that had happened, and to wonder yet again what
would come of it.

And three days afterwards the Rajah summoned the priests and the
princes and the chief men of Mataram, to hear what the great
spirit had told him on the top of the mountain. And when they
were all assembled, and the betel and sirih had been handed
round, he told them what had happened. On the top of the mountain
he had fallen into a trance, and the great spirit had appeared to
him with a face like burnished gold, and had said--"0h Rajah! much
plague and sickness and fevers are coming upon all the earth,
upon men and upon horses and upon cattle; but as you and your
people have obeyed me and have come up to my great mountain, I
will teach you how you and all the people of Lombock may escape
this plague." And all waited anxiously, to hear how they were to
be saved from so fearful a calamity. And after a short silence
the Rajah spoke again and told them, that the great spirit had
commanded that twelve sacred krisses should be made, and that to
make them every village and every district must send a bundle of
needles--a needle for every head in the village. And when any
grievous disease appeared in any village, one of the sacred
krisses should be sent there; and if every house in that village
had sent the right number of needles, the disease would
immediately cease; but if the number of needles sent had not been
exact, the kris would have no virtue.

So the princes and chiefs sent to all their villages and
communicated the wonderful news; and all made haste to collect
the needles with the greatest accuracy, for they feared that if
but one were wanting, the whole village would suffer. So one by
one the head men of the villages brought in their bundles of
needles; those who were near Mataram came first, and those who
were far off came last; and the Rajah received them with his own
hands and put them away carefully in an inner chamber, in a
camphor-wood chest whose hinges and clasps were of silver; and on
every bundle was marked the name of the village and the district
from whence it came, so that it might be known that all had heard
and obeyed the commands of the great spirit.

And when it was quite certain that every village had sent in its
bundle, the Rajah divided the needles into twelve equal parts,
and ordered the best steelworker in Mataram to bring his forge
and his bellows and his hammers to the palace, and to make the
twelve krisses under the Rajah's eye, and in the sight of all men
who chose to see it. And when they were finished, they were
wrapped up in new silk and put away carefully until they might be
wanted.

Now the journey to the mountain was in the time of the east wind
when no rain falls in Lombock. And soon after the krisses were
made it was the time of the rice harvest, and the chiefs of
districts and of villages brought their tax to the Rajah
according to the number heads in their villages. And to those
that wanted but little of the full amount, the Rajah said
nothing; but when those came who brought only half or a fourth
part of what was strictly due, he said to them mildly, "The
needles which you sent from your village were many more than came
from such-a-one's village, yet your tribute is less than his; go
back and see who it is that has not paid the tax." And the next
year the produce of the tax increased greatly, for they feared
that the Rajah might justly kill those who a second time kept
back the right tribute. And so the Rajah became very rich, and
increased the number of his soldiers, and gave golden jewels to
his wives, and bought fine black horses from the white-skinned
Hollanders, and made great feasts when his children were born or
were married; and none of the Rajahs or Sultans among the Malays
were so great or powerful as the Rajah of Lombock.

And the twelve sacred krisses had great virtue. And, when any
sickness appeared in a village one of them was sent for; and
sometimes the sickness went away, and then the sacred kris was
taken back again with great Honour, and the head men of the
village came to tell the Rajah of its miraculous power, and to
thank him. And sometimes the sickness would not go away; and then
everybody was convinced that there had been a mistake in the
number of needles sent from that village, and therefore the
sacred kris had no effect, and had to be taken back again by the
head men with heavy hearts, but still, with all honour--for was
not the fault their own?

CHAPTER XIII.

TIMOR.

(COUPANG, 1857-1869. DELLI, 1861.)

THE island of Timor is about three hundred miles long and sixty wide,
and seems to form the termination of the great range of volcanic
islands which begins with Sumatra more than two thousand miles to the
west. It differs however very remarkably from all the other islands of
the chain in not possessing any active volcanoes, with the one
exception of Timor Peak near the centre of the island, which was
formerly active, but was blown up during an eruption in 1638 and has
since been quiescent. In no other part of Timor do there appear to be
any recent igneous rocks, so that it can hardly be classed as a
volcanic island. Indeed its position is just outside of the great
volcanic belt, which extends from Flores through Ombay and Wetter to
Banda.

I first visited Timor in 1857, staying a day at Coupang, the chief
Dutch town at the west end of the island; and again in May 1859, when
I stayed a fortnight in the same neighbourhood. In the spring of 1861
I spent four months at Delli, the capital of the Portuguese
possessions in the eastern part of the island.

The whole neighbourhood of Coupang appears to have been elevated at a
recent epoch, consisting of a rugged surface of coral rock, which
rises in a vertical wall between the beach and the town, whose low,
white, red-tiled houses give it an appearance very similar to other
Dutch settlements in the East. The vegetation is everywhere scanty
and scrubby. Plants of the families Apocynaceae and Euphorbiacea,
abound; but there is nothing that can be called a forest, and the
whole country has a parched and desolate appearance, contrasting
strongly with the lofty forest trees and perennial verdure of the
Moluccas or of Singapore. The most conspicuous feature of the
vegetation was the abundance of fine fanleaved palms (Borassus
flabelliformis), from the leaves of which are constructed the strong
and durable water-buckets in general use, and which are much superior
to those formed from any other species of palm. From the same tree,
palm-wine and sugar are made, and the common thatch for houses formed
of the leaves lasts six or seven years without removal. Close to the
town I noticed the foundation of a ruined house below high-water mark,
indicating recent subsidence. Earthquakes are not severe here, and are
so infrequent and harmless that the chief houses are built of stone.

The inhabitants of Coupang consist of Malays, Chinese, and Dutch,
besides the natives, so that there are many strange and complicated
mixtures among the population. There is one resident English merchant,
and whalers as well as Australian ships often come here for stores and
water. The native Timorese preponderate, and a very little examination
serves to show that they have nothing in common with Malays, but are
much more closely allied to the true Papuans of the Aru Islands and
New Guinea. They are tall, have pronounced features, large somewhat
aquiline noses, and frizzly hair, and are generally of a dusky brown
colour. The way in which the women talk to each other and to the men,
their loud voices and laughter, and general character of self-
assertion, would enable an experienced observer to decide, even
without seeing them, that they were not Malays.

Mr. Arndt, a German and the Government doctor, invited me to stay at
his house while in Coupang, and I gladly accepted his 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 language, whose
deficiencies we made up by the free use of French or Latin words.

After a few walks in the neighbourhood of the town, I found such a
poverty of insects and birds that I determined to go for a few days to
the island of Semao at the western extremity of Timor, where I heard
that there was forest country with birds not found at Coupang. With
some difficulty I obtained a large dugout boat with outriggers, to
take me over a distance of about twenty miles. I found the country
pretty well wooded, but covered with shrubs and thorny 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,
remarkable for its soap springs. One of these is in the middle of the
village, 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 vegetation for some distance around. Close by the village is one of
the finest springs I have ever seen, contained in several rocky basins
communicating by narrow channels. These have been neatly walled where
required and partly levelled, and form fine natural baths. The water
is well tasted and clear as crystal, and the basins are surrounded by
a grove of lofty many-stemmed banyan-trees, which keep them always
cool and shady, and add greatly to the picturesque beauty of the
scene.

The village consists of curious little houses very different 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 this
rises a high conical roof thatched with grass. The only opening is a
door about three feet high. The people are like the Timorese with
frizzly or wavy hair and of a coppery brown colour. The better class
appear to have a mixture of some superior race which has much improved
their features. I saw in Coupang some chiefs from the island of Savu
further west, who presented characters very distinct from either the
Malay or Papuan races. They most resembled Hindus, having fine well-
formed features and straight thin noses with clear brown complexions.
As the Brahminical religion once spread over all Java, and even now
exists in Bali and Lombock, it is not at all improbable that some
natives of India should have reached this island, either by accident
or to escape persecution, and formed a permanent settlement there.

I stayed at Oeassa four days, when, not finding any insects and very
few new birds, I returned to Coupang to await the next mail steamer.
On the way I had a narrow escape of being swamped. The deep coffin-
like boat was filled up with my baggage, and with vegetables, cocoa-
nut and other fruit for Coupang market, and when we had got some way
across into a rather rough sea, we found that a quantity of water was
coming in which we had no means of baling out. This caused us to sink
deeper in the water, and then we shipped seas over our sides, and the
rowers, who had before declared it was nothing, now became alarmed and
turned the boat round to get back to the coast of Semao, which was not
far off. By clearing away some of the baggage a little of the water
could be baled out, but hardly so fast as it came in, and when we
neared the coast we found nothing but vertical walls of rock against
which the sea was violently beating. We coasted along some distance
until we found a little cove, into which we ran the boat, hauled it on
shore, and emptying it found a large hole in the bottom, which had
been temporarily stopped up with a plug of cocoa-nut which had come
out. Had we been a quarter of a mile further off before we discovered
the leak, we should certainly have been obliged to throw most of our
baggage overboard, and might easily have lost our lives. After we had
put all straight and secure we again started, and when we were
halfway across got into such a strong current and high cross sea that
we were very nearly being swamped a second time, which made me vow
never to trust myself again in such small and miserable vessels.

The mail steamer did not arrive for a week, and I occupied myself
in getting as many of the birds as I could, and found some which were
very interesting. Among them were five species of pigeons of as many
distinct genera, and most of then peculiar to the island; two
parrots--the fine red-winged broad-tail (Platycercus vulneratus),
allied to an Australian species, and a green species of the genus
Geoffroyus. The Tropidorhynchus timorensis was as ubiquitous and as
noisy as I had found it at Lombock; and the Sphaecothera viridis, a
curious green oriole with bare red orbits, was a great acquisition.
There were several pretty finches, warblers, and flycatchers, and
among them I obtained the elegant blue and red Cyornis hyacinthina;
but I cannot recognise among my collections the species mentioned by
Dampier, who seems to have been much struck by the number of small
songbirds in Timor. He says: "One sort of these pretty little birds
my men called the ringing bird, because it had six notes, and always
repeated all his notes twice, one after the other, beginning high and
shrill and ending low. The bird was about the bigness of a lark,
having a small, sharp, black bill and blue wings; the head and breast
were of a pale red, and there was a blue streak about its neck." In
Semao, monkeys are abundant. They are the common bare-lipped monkey
(Macacus cynomolgus), which is found all over the western islands of
the Archipelago, and may have been introduced by natives, who often
carry it about captive. There are also some deer, but it is not quite
certain whether they are of the same species as are found in Java.

I arrived at Delli, the capital of the Portuguese possessions in
Timor, on January 12, 1861, and was kindly received by Captain Hart,
an Englishman and an old resident, who trades in the produce of the
country and cultivates coffee on an estate at the foot of the hills.
With him I was introduced to Mr. Geach, a mining-engineer who had been
for two years endeavouring to discover copper in sufficient quantity
to be worth working.

Delli is a most miserable place compared with even the poorest of the
Dutch towns. The houses are all of mud and thatch; the fort is only a
mud enclosure; and the custom-house and church are built of the same
mean materials, with no attempt at decoration or even neatness. The
whole aspect of the place is that of a poor native town, and there is
no sign of cultivation or civilization round about it. His Excellency
the Governor's house is the only one that makes any pretensions to
appearance, and that is merely a low whitewashed cottage or bungalow.
Yet there is one thing in which civilization exhibits itself--
officials in black and white European costume, and officers in gorgeous
uniforms abound in a degree quite disproportionate to the size or
appearance of the place.

The town being surrounded for some distance by swamps and mudflats is
very unhealthy, and a single night often gives a fever to newcomers
which not unfrequently proves fatal. To avoid this malaria, Captain
Hart always slept at his plantation, on a slight elevation about two
miles from the town, where Mr. Geach also had a small house, which he
kindly invited me to share. We rode there in the evening; and in the
course of two days my baggage was brought up, and I was able to look
about me and see if I could do any collecting.

For the first few weeks I was very unwell and could not go far from
the house. The country was covered with low spiny shrubs and acacias,
except in a little valley where a stream came down from the hills,
where some fine trees and bushes shaded the water and formed a very
pleasant place to ramble up. There were plenty of birds about, and of
a tolerable variety of species; but very few of them were gaily
coloured. Indeed, with one or two exceptions, the birds of this
tropical island were hardly so ornamental as those of Great Britain.
Beetles were so scarce that a collector might fairly say there were
none, as the few obscure or uninteresting species would not repay him
for the search. The only insects at all remarkable or interesting were
the butterflies, which, though comparatively few in species, were
sufficiently abundant, and comprised a large proportion of new or rare
sorts. The banks of the stream formed my best collecting-ground, and I
daily wandered up and down its shady bed, which about a mile up became
rocky and precipitous. Here I obtained the rare and beautiful swallow-
tail butterflies, Papilio aenomaus and P. liris; the males of which
are quite unlike each other, and belong in fact to distinct sections
of the genus, while the females are so much alike that they are
undistinguishable on the wing, and to an uneducated eye equally so in
the cabinet. Several other beautiful butterflies rewarded my search in
this place, among which I may especially mention the Cethosia
leschenaultii, whose wings of the deepest purple are bordered with
buff in such a manner as to resemble at first sight our own Camberwell
beauty, although it belongs to a different genus. The most abundant
butterflies were the whites and yellows (Pieridae), several of which I
had already found at Lombock and at Coupang, while others were new to
me.

Early in February we made arrangements to stay for a week at a village
called Baliba, situated about four miles off on the mountains, at an
elevation of 2,000 feet. We took our baggage and a supply of all
necessaries on packhorses; and though the distance by the route we
took was not more than six or seven miles, we were half a day getting
there. The roads were mere tracks, sometimes up steep rocky stairs,
sometimes in narrow gullies worn by the horses' feet, and where it was
necessary to tuck up our legs on our horses' necks to avoid having
them crushed. At some of these places the baggage had to be unloaded,
at others it was knocked off. Sometimes the ascent or descent was so
steep that it was easier to walk than to cling to our ponies' backs;
and thus we went up and down over bare hills whose surface was
covered with small pebbles and scattered over with Eucalypti,
reminding me of what I had read of parts of the interior of Australia
rather than of the Malay Archipelago.

The village consisted of three houses only, with low walls raised a
few feet on posts, and very high roofs thatched with brass hanging
down to within two or three feet of the ground. A house which was
unfinished and partly open at the back was given for our use, and in
it we rigged up a table, some benches, and a screen, while an inner
enclosed portion served us for a sleeping apartment. We had a splendid
view down upon Delli and the sea beyond. The country around was
undulating and open, except in the hollows, where there were some
patches of forest, which Mr. Geach, who had been all over the eastern
part of Timor, assured me was the most luxuriant he had yet seen in
the island. I was in hopes of finding some insects here, but was much
disappointed, owing perhaps to the dampness of the climate; for it was
not until the sun was pretty high that the mists cleared away, and by
noon we were generally clouded up again, so that there was seldom more
than an hour or two of fitful sunshine. We searched in every direction
for birds and other game, but they were very scarce. On our
way I had shot the find white-headed pigeon, Ptilonopus cinctus, and
the pretty little lorikeet, Trichoglossus euteles. I got a few more of
these at the blossoms of the Eucalypti, and also the allied species
Trichoglossus iris, and a few other small but interesting birds. The
common jungle-cock of India (Gallus bankiva) was found here, and
furnished us with some excellent meals; but we could get no deer.
Potatoes are grown higher up the mountains in abundance, and are very
good. We had a sheep killed every other day, and ate our mutton with
much appetite in the cool climate, which rendered a fire always
agreeable.

Although one-half the European residents in Delli are continually ill
from fever, and the Portuguese have occupied the place for three
centuries, no one has yet built a house on these fine hills, which, if
a tolerable road were made, would be only an hour's ride from the
town; and almost equally good situations might be found on a lower
level at half an hour's distance. The fact that potatoes and wheat of
excellent quality are grown in abundance at from 3,000 to 3,500 feet
elevation, shows what the climate and soil are capable of if properly
cultivated. From one to two thousand feet high, coffee would thrive;
and there are hundreds of square miles of country over which all the
varied products which require climates between those of coffee and
wheat would flourish; but no attempt has yet been made to form a
single mile of road, or a single acre of plantation!

There must be something very unusual in the climate of Timor to permit
wheat being grown at so moderate an elevation. The grain is of
excellent quality, the bread made from it being equal to any I have
ever tasted, and it is universally acknowledged to be unsurpassed by
any made from imported European or American flour. The fact that the
natives have (quite of their own accord) taken to cultivating such
foreign articles as wheat and potatoes, which they bring in small
quantities on the backs of ponies by the most horrible mountain
tracks, and sell very cheaply at the seaside, sufficiently indicates
what might be done if good roads were made, and if the people were
taught, encouraged, and protected. Sheep also do well on the
mountains; and a breed of hardy ponies in much repute all over the
Archipelago, runs half-wild, so that it appears as if this island, so
barren-looking and devoid of the usual features of tropical
vegetation, were yet especially adapted to supply a variety of
products essential to Europeans, which the other islands will not
produce, and which they accordingly import from the other side of the
globe.

On the 24th of February my friend Mr. Geach left Timor, having finally
reported that no minerals worth working were to be found. The
Portuguese were very much annoyed, having made up their minds that
copper is abundant, and still believing it to be so. It appears that
from time immemorial pure native copper has been found at a place on
the coast about thirty miles east of Delli.

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