cult and
dangerous, and that we should gain very little more knowledge about it
than we should by gazing up at it from the base.

While sleeping on shore, the house we occupied was one night so shaken
that we thought it would fall about our heads; but the inhabitants
seemed to take it as a thing of course, and we heard that nearly every
month an earthquake occurs. Several most disastrous eruptions of the
mountain have taken place, causing great destruction of life and havoc
among the plantations.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans who took possession of the
Bandas. They were driven out by the Dutch, who exterminated the
aboriginal inhabitants, and then had to import slaves to cultivate the
plantations. Since slavery was abolished by Holland, convicts have been
sent there for the purpose; and now, people from various neighbouring
regions have been collected to perform the part of labourers. The
Bandas are not properly included in the Moluccas. The cultivation of
the clove-tree is now chiefly confined to Amboyna, and the surrounding
islands, to which we were now bound.

A day's sail took us off Amboyna, the capital of the Moluccas. It is
one of the oldest European settlements in the East. The island is
divided into two parts by the sea, a narrow sandy isthmus alone joining
them. We sailed up the western inlet, the shores of which were lined by
groves of cocoa-nut palm-trees, furnishing food and shade to the natives
who dwell in the rude huts beneath them. We came to an anchor off the
town of Amboyna. In few places we visited was the forest vegetation
more luxuriant or beautiful than on this island. Ferns and palms of
graceful forms were seen everywhere; climbing ratans formed entangled
festoons pendent from every forest tree; while fine crimson lories and
brush-tongued turkeys, also of a bright crimson colour, flew in and out
amidst the foliage, forming a magnificent sight, especially when a flock
of the former settled down on some flowering tree, the nectar from which
the lories delight to suck. Amboyna is a large city for the East,
containing 14,000 people, about 8000 of whom are Europeans, with half
that number, perhaps, of Chinese and Arabs. Our great wish was to see a
clove plantation in full bearing. We found, however, that the
proprietors had discovered that there were more profitable means of
employing their ground and labour, and that cacao plantations were
superseding them.

The two youn