ng scorpions, spiders, and centipedes, ugly and
venomous though they are, and get no harm from them. After living twelve
years in the tropics, I have never yet been bitten or stung by either.

The lean and hungry dogs before mentioned were my greatest enemies,
and kept me constantly on the watch. If my boys left the bird they
were skinning for an instant, it was sure to be carried off. Everything
eatable had to be hung up to the roof, to be out of their reach. Ali
had just finished skinning a fine King Bird of Paradise one day, when
he dropped the skin. Before he could stoop to pick it up, one of this
famished race had seized upon it, and he only succeeded in rescuing
it from its fangs after it was torn to tatters. Two skins of the
large Paradisea, which were quite dry and ready to pack away, were
incautiously left on my table for the night, wrapped up in paper. The
next morning they were gone, and only a few scattered feathers indicated
their fate. My hanging shelf was out of their reach; but having stupidly
left a box which served as a step, a full-plumaged Paradise bird was
next morning missing; and a dog below the house was to be seen still
mumbling over the fragments, with the fine golden plumes all trampled
in the mud. Every night, as soon as I was in bed, I could hear them
searching about for what they could devour, under my table, and all
about my boxes and baskets, keeping me in a state of suspense till
morning, lest something of value might incautiously have been left
within their read. They would drink the oil of my floating lamp and eat
the wick, and upset or break my crockery if my lazy boys had neglected
to wash away even the smell of anything eatable. Bad, however, as they
are here, they were worse in a Dyak's house in Borneo where I was once
staying, for there they gnawed off the tops of my waterproof boots,
ate a large piece out of an old leather game-bag, besides devouring a
portion of my mosquito curtain!

April 28th.--Last evening we had a grand consultation, which had
evidently been arranged and discussed beforehand. A number of the
natives gathered round me, and said they wanted to talk. Two of the best
Malay scholars helped each other, the rest putting in hints and ideas
in their own language. They told me a long rambling story; but, partly
owing to their imperfect knowledge of Malay, partly through my ignorance
of local terms, and partly through the incoherence of their narrative, I
could not ma