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

—XVI. 1CELEBES. 181heavy loads of palm sugar of very little value. It was alongthe path between the lower and the upper falls, and about themargin of the upper pool, that I found most insects. The largesemi-transparent butterfly, Idea tondana, flew lazily along bydozens, and it Avas here that I at length obtained an insectwhich I had hoped but hardly expected to meet with—themagnificent Paiiilio androcles, one of the largest and rarestknown swallow-tailed butterflies. During my four days' stayat the falls I was so fortunate as to obtain six good specimens.As this beautiful creature flies, the long white tails flicker likestreamers, and when settled on the beach it carries them raisedupwards, as if to preserve them from injury. It is scarce evenhere, as I did not see more than a dozen specimens in all, andhad to follow many of them up and down the river's bankrepeatedly before I succeeded in their capture. When the sunshone hottest about noon, the moist beach of the pool below theupper fall presented a beautiful sight, being dotted with groupsof gay butterflies,—orange, yellow, white, blue, and green,which on being disturbed rose into the air by hundreds, formingclouds of variegated colours.Such gorges, chasms, and precipices as here abound, I havenowhere seen in the Archipelago. A sloping surface is scarcelyanywhere to be found, huge walls and rugged masses of rockterminating all the mountains and inclosing the valleys. Inmany parts there are vertical or even overhanging precij)icesfive or six hundred feet high, yet completely clothed with atapestry of vegetation. Ferns, Pandanacete, shrubs, creepers,and even forest trees, are mingled in an evergreen network,through the interstices of which appears the white limestonerock or the dark holes and chasms with which it abounds.These precipices are enabled to sustain such an amount ofvegetation by their peculiar structure. Their surfaces are veryirregular, broken into holes and fissures, with ledges overhangingthe mouths of gloomy caverns ; but from each projectingpart have descended stalactites, often forming a wild gothictracery over the caves and receding hollow^s, and affording anadmirable support to the roots of the shrubs, trees, and creepers,which luxuriate in the warm pure atmosphere and tlie gentlemoisture which constantly exudes from the rocks. In i^laceswhere the precipice otters smooth surfaces of solid rock, itremains quite bai*e, or only stained with lichens and dottedwith clumps of ferns that grow on the small ledges and in theminutest crevices.The reader who is familiar with tropical nature only throughthe medium of books and botanical gardens, will picture tohimself in sucli a spot many other natural beauties. He willthink that I have unaccountably forgotten to mention thebrilliant flowers, which, in gorgeous masses of crimson, gold,or azure, must spangle these verdant precipices, hang over thecascade, and adorn the margin of the mountain stream. But