ak, and had a curious disease
known (I have since heard) as brow-ague. Directly after breakfast every
morning an intense pain set in on a small spot on the right temple. It
was a severe burning ache, as bad as the worst toothache, and lasted
about two hours, generally going off at noon. When this finally ceased,
I had an attack of fever, which left me so weak and so unable to eat our
regular food, that I feel sure my life was saved by a couple of tins of
soup which I had long reserved for some such extremity. I used often to
go out searching after vegetables, and found a great treasure in a lot
of tomato plants run wild, and bearing little fruits about the size of
gooseberries. I also boiled up the tops of pumpkin plants and of ferns,
by way of greens, and occasionally got a few green papaws. The natives,
when hard up for food, live upon a fleshy seaweed, which they boil till
it is tender. I tried this also, but found it too salt and bitter to be
endured.

Towards the end of September it became absolutely necessary for me to
return, in order to make our homeward voyage before the end of the east
monsoon. Most of the men who had taken payment from me had brought the
birds they had agreed for. One poor fellow had been so unfortunate
as not to get one, and he very honestly brought back the axe he had
received in advance; another, who had agreed for six, brought me the
fifth two days before I was to start, and went off immediately to the
forest again to get the other. He did not return, however, and we loaded
our boat, and were just on the point of starting, when he came running
down after us holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with
great satisfaction, "Now I owe you nothing." These were remarkable and
quite unexpected instances of honesty among savages, where it would have
been very easy for them to have been dishonest without fear of detection
or punishment.

The country round about Bessir was very hilly and rugged, bristling with
jagged and honey-combed coralline rocks, and with curious little chasms
and ravines. The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which in
the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the extreme, and
often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants and curious blue-foliaged
Lycopodiaceae. It was in such places as these that I obtained many of
my most beautiful small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila
pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many others