o 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 strai