y the Portuguese
themselves. Oh! Lusitania, how art thou fallen!

While the Opzeiner was reading his letters, I took a walk round
the village with a guide in search of a horse. The whole place was
dreadfully damp and muddy, being built in a swamp with not a spot of
ground raised a foot above it, and surrounded by swamps on every side.
The houses were mostly well built, of wooden framework filled in with
gaba-gaba (leaf-stems of the sago-palm), but as they had no whitewash,
and the floors were of bare black earth like the roads, and generally on
the same level, they were extremely damp and gloomy. At length I found
one with the floor raised about a foot, and succeeded in making a
bargain with the owner to turn out immediately, so that by night I had
installed myself comfortably. The chairs and tables were left for me;
and as the whole of the remaining furniture in the house consisted of a
little crockery and a few clothes-boxes, it was not much trouble for the
owners to move into the house of some relatives, and thus obtain a
few silver rupees very easily. Every foot of ground between the homes
throughout the village is crammed with fruit trees, so that the sun and
air have no chance of penetrating. This must be very cool and pleasant
in the dry season, but makes it damp and unhealthy at other times of the
year. Unfortunately I had come two months too soon, for the rains were
not yet over, and mud and water were the prominent features of the
country.

About a mile behind and to the east of the village the hills commence,
but they are very barren, being covered with scanty coarse grass and
scattered trees of the Melaleuca cajuputi, from the leaves of which the
celebrated cajeput oil is made. Such districts are absolutely destitute
of interest for the zoologist. A few miles further on rose higher
mountains, apparently well covered with forest, but they were entirely
uninhabited and trackless, and practically inaccessible to a traveller
with limited time and means. It became evident, therefore, that I must
leave Cajeli for some better collecting ground, and finding a man who
was going a few miles eastward to a village on the coast where he said
there were hills and forest, I sent my boy Ali with him to explore and
report on the capabilities of the district. At the same time I arranged
to go myself on a little excursion up a river which flows into the bay
about five miles north of the town, to a village of the Alfuros, or