quantities are acacias and the fragrant sandalwood, while the higher
mountains, which rise to about six or seven thousand feet, are either
covered with coarse grass or are altogether barren. In the lower
grounds are a variety of weedy bushes, and open waste places are covered
everywhere with a nettle-like wild mint. Here is found the beautiful
crown lily, Gloriosa superba, winding among the bushes, and displaying
its magnificent blossoms in great profusion. A wild vine also occurs,
bearing great irregular bunches of hairy grapes of a coarse but very
luscious flavour. In some of the valleys where the vegetation is richer,
thorny shrubs and climbers are so abundant as to make the thickets quite
impenetrable.
The soil seems very poor, consisting chiefly of decomposing clayey
shales; and the bare earth and rock is almost everywhere visible. The
drought of the hot season is so severe that most of the streams dry up
in the plains before they reach the sea; everything becomes burned up,
and the leaves of the larger trees fall as completely as in our winter.
On the mountains from two to four thousand feet elevation there is a
much moister atmosphere, so that potatoes and other European products
can be grown all the year round. Besides ponies, almost the only exports
of Timor are sandalwood and beeswax. The sandalwood (Santalum sp.) is
the produce of a small tree, which grows sparingly in the mountains of
Timor and many of the other islands in the far East. The wood is of
a fine yellow colour, and possesses a well-known delightful fragrance
which is wonderfully permanent. It is brought down to Delli in small
logs, and is chiefly exported to China, where it is largely used to burn
in the temples, and in the houses of the wealthy.
The beeswax is a still more important and valuable product, formed by
the wild bees (Apis dorsata), which build huge honeycombs, suspended
in the open air from the underside of the lofty branches of the highest
trees. These are of a semicircular form, and often three or four feet
in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees' nest, and a very
interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to collect insects,
I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys under a high tree,
and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees'
combs. The tree was straight and smooth-barked and without a branch,
until at seventy or eighty feet from the ground it gave out the limb
which the bees had chosen for their home. As the men were evidently
looking after the bees, I waited to watch their operations. One of them
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