The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

;XIII.] TIMOR. 145fort is only a mud inclosure ; and the custom-house and cliurchare built of the same mean materials, with no attempt atdecoration or even neatness. The whole aspect of the place isthat of a poor native town, and there is no sign of cultivation orcivilization round about it. His Excellency the Governor'shouse is the only one that makes any pretensions to appearance,and that is merely a low white-washed cottage or bungalow.Yet there is one thing in which civilization exhibits itself.Officials in black and white European costume, and officers ingorgeous uniforms, abound in a degree quite disproportionateto the size or appearance of the place.The town being surrounded for some distance by swampsand mud-flats is very unhealthy, and a single niglit often givesa fever to new-comers which not unfrequently proves fatal. Toavoid this malaria, Captain Hart always slept at his plantation,on a slight elevation about two miles from the town, Avhere Mr.Geach also had a small house, which he kindly invited me toshare. We rode there in the evening ; and in the course of twodays my baggage was brought up, and I was able to look aboutme and see if I could do any collecting.For the first few weeks I was very unwell and could not gofar from the house. The country was covered with low spinyshrubs and acacias, except in a little valley where a stream camedown from the hills, where some fine trees and bushes shadedtlie water and formed a very pleasant place to ramble up. Therewere plenty of birds about, and of a tolerable variety of sj^ecies ;but very few of them were gaily coloui'ed. Indeed, with one ortwo exceptions, the birds of this tropical island were hardly soornamental as those of Great Britain. Beetles were so scarcethat a collector might fairly say there were none, as the fewobscure or uninteresting species would not repay him for thesearch. The only insects at all remarkable or interesting werethe butterflies, which, thougli comparatively few in sjDecies, weresufficiently abundant, and comprised a large proportion of newor rare sorts. The banks of the stream formed my loest collectingground,and I daily wandered up and down its shady bed, whicliabout a mile up became rocky and precipitous. Here I obtainedthe rare and beautiful swallow-tail butterflies, PajDilio senomausand P. liris ; the males of wliich are quite unlike each otlier, andbelong in fact to distinct sections of the genus, while the femalesare so much alike that they are undistinguishable on the wing,and to an uneducated eye equally so in the cabinet. Severalother beautiful butterflies rewai'ded my seai'ch in this placeamong which I may especially mention the Cethosia leschenaultii,whose Avings of the deepest purj^le are bordered with bufi" in sucha manner as to resemble at first sight our own Camberwell beauty,although it belongs to a diflerent genus. The most abundantbutterflies were the wliites and yellows (Pieridge), several ofwhich I had already found at Lombock and at Coupang, whileothers were new to me.