Although this was the height of the dry season, and there was a fine
wind all day, it was by no means a healthy time of year. My boy Ali had
hardly been a day on shore when he was attacked by fever, which put me
to great inconvenience, as at the house where I was staying, nothing
could be obtained but at mealtime. After having cured Ali, and with much
difficulty got another servant to cook for me, I was no sooner settled
at my country abode than the latter was attacked with the same disease;
and, having a wife in the town, left me. Hardly was he gone than I fell
ill myself with strong intermittent fever every other day. In about a
week I got over it, by a liberal use of quinine, when scarcely was I on
my legs than Ali again became worse than ever. Ali's fever attacked him
daily, but early in the morning he was pretty well, and then managed
to cook enough for me for the day. In a week I cured him, and also
succeeded in getting another boy who could cook and shoot, and had no
objection to go into the interior. His name was Baderoon, and as he
was unmarried and had been used to a roving life, having been several
voyages to North Australia to catch trepang or "beche de mer", I was in
hopes of being able to keep him. I also got hold of a little impudent
rascal of twelve or fourteen, who could speak some Malay, to carry my
gun or insect-net and make himself generally useful. Ali had by this
time become a pretty good bird-skinner, so that I was fairly supplied
with servants.
I made many excursions into the country, in search of a good station for
collecting birds and insects. Some of the villages a few miles inland
are scattered about in woody ground which has once been virgin forest,
but of which the constituent trees have been for the most part replaced
by fruit trees, and particularly by the large palm, Arenga saccharifera,
from which wine and sugar are made, and which also produces a coarse
black fibre used for cordage. That necessary of life, the bamboo, has
also been abundantly planted. In such places I found a good many birds,
among which were the fine cream-coloured pigeon, Carpophaga luctuosa,
and the rare blue-headed roller, Coracias temmincki, which has a most
discordant voice, and generally goes in pairs, flying from tree to tree,
and exhibiting while at rest that all-in-a-heap appearance and jerking
motion of the head and tail which are so characteristic of the great
Fissirostral group to which it belongs. From this habit alone,
the kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers, trogons, and South American
puff-birds, might be grouped together by a person who had observed them
in a state of nature, but who had never had an opportunity of examining
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