After my return to Toego, I endeavoured to find another locality to
collect in, and removed to a coffee-plantation some miles to the north,
and tried in succession higher and lower stations on the mountain; but,
I never succeeded in obtaining insects in any abundance and birds were
far less plentiful than on the Megamendong Mountain. The weather now
became more rainy than ever, and as the wet season seemed to have set
in in earnest, I returned to Batavia, packed up and sent off my
collections, and left by steamer on November 1st for Banca and Sumatra.
CHAPTER VIII. SUMATRA.
(NOVEMBER 1861 to JANUARY 1862.)
The mail steamer from Batavia to Singapore took me to Muntok (or as on
English maps, "Minto"), the chief town and port of Banca. Here I stayed
a day or two, until I could obtain a boat to take me across the straits,
and up the river to Palembang. A few walks into the country showed me
that it was very hilly, and full of granitic and laterite rocks, with a
dry and stunted forest vegetation; and I could find very few insects.
A good-sized open sailing-boat took me across to the mouth of the
Palembang river where, at a fishing village, a rowing-boat was hired to
take me up to Palembang--a distance of nearly a hundred miles by water.
Except when the wind was strong and favourable we could only proceed
with the tide, and the banks of the river were generally flooded
Nipa-swamps, so that the hours we were obliged to lay at anchor passed
very heavily. Reaching Palembang on the 8th of November, I was lodged
by the Doctor, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction, and
endeavoured to ascertain where I could find a good locality for
collecting. Everyone assured me that I should have to go a very long way
further to find any dry forest, for at this season the whole country
for many miles inland was flooded. I therefore had to stay a week at
Palembang before I could determine my future movements.
The city is a large one, extending for three or four miles along a fine
curve of the river, which is as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. The
stream is, however, much narrowed by the houses which project into it
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