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

aXXXI.] AEU ISLANDS.—RESIDENCE IN THE INTERIOR. 353coralline rock, allows the surface water rapidly to escape. Theonly dry season they have is for a month or two about Septemberor October, and there is then an excessive scarcity of water,so that sometimes hundreds of birds and other animals die ofdrought. The natives then remove to houses near the sourcesof the small streams, where, in the shady depths of the forest,a small quantity of water still remains. Even then many ofthem have to go miles for their water, which they keep in largebamboos and use very sparingly. They assure me that theycatch and kill game of all kinds, by watcliing at the waterholes or setting snares around them. That would be the timefor me to make my collections ; l)ut the want of water would bea terrible annoyance, and the impossibility of getting aAvaybefore another whole year had passed made it out of thequestion.Ever since leaving Dobbo I had suffered terribly from insects,who seemed here bent upon revenging my long-continued persecutionof their race. At our first stopping-i^lace sand-flieswere very abundant at night, jDenetrating to every part of thebody, and producing a more lasting irritation than mosquitoes.My feet and ankles especially suffered, and were completelycovered with little red swollen specks, whicli tormented mehorribly. On arriving here we were delighted to find the housefree from sand-flies or mosquitoes, but in the plantations wheremy daily walks led me, the day-biting mosciuitoes swarmed, andseemed especially to delight in attacking my poor feet. Aftera month's incessant jiunishment, those useful members rebelledagainst such treatment and broke into open insurrection, throwingout numerous inflamed vilcers, which were very painful, andstopped me from walking. So I found myself confined to thehouse, and Avith no immediate prospect of leaving it. Woundsor sores in the feet are especially difficult to heal in hot climates,and I therefore dreaded them more than any other illness. Theconfinement was very annoying, as the fine hot weather wasexcellent for insects, of which I had every promise of obtaininga fine collection ; and it is only by daily and unremitting seai'chthat the smaller kinds, and the rarer and more interesting specimens,can be obtained. When I crawled down to the ri\'er-sideto bathe, I often saw the blue-winged Papilio ulysses, or someother equally rare and beautiful insect ; but tliere was nothingfor it but patience, and to return quietly to my bird-skinning, orwhatever other work I had indoors. The stings and bites andceaseless irritatioia caused by these i^ests of the tropical forestswould be borne uncomplainingly ; but to be kept prisoner bythem in so rich and unexplored a country, where rare andbeautiful creatures are to be met with in every forest ramble—country reached by such a long and tedious voyage, and whiclimight not in the present century be again visited for the samepurpose—is a punishment too severe for a naturalist to passover in silence.