I engaged two Portuguese to accompany me into the interior; one as
a cook, the other to shoot and skin birds, which is quite a trade in
Malacca. I first stayed a fortnight at a village called Gading, where
I was accommodated in the house of some Chinese converts, to whom I was
recommended by the Jesuit missionaries. The house was a mere shed, but
it was kept clean, and I made myself sufficiently comfortable. My
hosts were forming a pepper and gambir plantation, and in the immediate
neighbourhood were extensive tin-washings, employing over a thousand
Chinese. The tin is obtained in the form of black grains from beds of
quartzose sand, and is melted into ingots in rude clay furnaces. The
soil seemed poor, and the forest was very dense with undergrowth, and
not at all productive of insects; but, on the other hand, birds were
abundant, and I was at once introduced to the rich ornithological
treasures of the Malayan region.
The very first time I fired my gun I brought down one of the most
curious and beautiful of the Malacca birds, the blue-billed gaper
(Cymbirhynchus macrorhynchus), called by the Malays the "Rainbird." It
is about the size of a starling, black and rich claret colour with
white shoulder stripes, and a very large and broad bill of the most pure
cobalt blue above and orange below, while the iris is emerald green.
As the skins dry the bill turns dull black, but even then the bird is
handsome. When fresh killed, the contrast of the vivid blue with the
rich colours of the plumage is remarkably striking and beautiful.
The lovely Eastern trogons, with their rich-brown backs, beautifully
pencilled wings, and crimson breasts, were also soon obtained, as well
as the large green barbets (Megalaema versicolor)--fruit-eating birds,
something like small toucans, with a short, straight bristly bill, and
whose head and neck are variegated with patches of the most vivid blue
and crimson. A day or two after, my hunter brought me a specimen of
the green gaper (Calyptomena viridis), which is like a small
cock-of-the-rock, but entirely of the most vivid green, delicately
marked on the wings with black bars. Handsome woodpeckers and gay
kingfishers, green and brown cuckoos with velvety red faces and green
beaks, red-breasted doves and metallic honeysuckers, were brought in day
after day, and kept me in a continual state of pleasurable excitement.
After a fortnight one of my servants was seized with fever, and on
returning to Malacca, the same disease, attacked the other as well as
myself. By a liberal use of quinine, I soon recovered, and obtaining
other men, went to stay at the Government bungalow of Ayer-panas,
30