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

XXIX.] THE Kfi ISLANDS. 323himself at liberty to trade, and to carry with hini whatever hecan afford to buy.Monej^ is unknown and valueless here—knives, cloth, andarrack forming the only medium of exchange, with tobacco for \ysmall coin. Every transaction is the subject of a special bargain,and the cause of much talking. It is absolutely necessary tooffer very little, as the natives are never satisfied till you add alittle more. They are then far better pleased than if you hadgiven them twice the amount at tirst and refused to increase it.I, too, was doing a little business, having persuaded some ofthe natives to collect insects for me ; and when they reallyfound that I gs.\Q them most fragrant tobacco for worthlessblack and green beetles, I soon had scores of visitors, men,women, and children, bringing bamboos full of creeping things,which, alas ! too fi-equently had eaten each other into fragmentsduring the tedium of a day's confinement. Of one grand newbeetle, glittering with ruby and emerald tints, I got a largequantity, having first detected one of its wing-cases ornamentingthe outside of a native's tobacco pouch. It w^as quite a newspecies, and had not been found elsewhere than on this littleisland. It is one of the Buprestida?, and has been namedCyphogastra calepyga.Each morning after an early breakfast I wandei'ed by myselfinto the forest, where I found deliglitful occupation in capturingthe large and handsome butterfies, which were tolerablj' abundant,and most of them new to me ; for I was now upon theconfines of the Moluccas and New Guinea—a region the productionsof which were then among the most precious and rarein the cabinets of Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for thetirst time with splendid scarlet lories on the wing, as well as bytlie sight of that most imperial butterfly, the " Priamus "' of collectors,or a closely allied species, but flying so high that I didnot succeed in capturing a specimen. One of them was broughtme in a bamboo, boxed up with a lot of beetles, and of coursetorn to pieces. The principal drawback of the place for a collectoris the want of good paths, and the dreadfullj' ruggedcharacter of the surface, requiring the attention to be so continuallydirected to securing a footing, as to make it verydifficult to capture active winged things, who pass out of reachwhile one is glancing to see that the next step may not plungeone into a chasm or over a precipice. Another inconvenience isthat there are no running streams, the rock being of so porousa nature that the surface-water e^erywhere penetrates itsfissures ; at least such is the character of the neighbourhood wevisited, the only water being small springs trickling out closeto the sea-beach.In the forests of Ke, arboreal Liliacete and Pandanaceaeabound, and give a character to the vegetation in the moreexposed rocky places. Flowers were scarce, and there werenot many orchids, but I noticed the tine white butterfly-orchis,Y 2