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

v.] BORNEO—JOURNEY IN THE INTERIOR. 65English Eajah was accustomed to go tor relaxation and coolfresh air. It is only twenty miles up the river, but the roadup the mountain is a succession of ladders on the face ofprecipices, bamboo bridges over gullies and chasms, and slipperypaths over rocks and tree-trunks and huge boulders as big ashouses. A cool spring under an overhanging rock just belowthe cottage furnished us with refreshing baths and deliciousdrinking Avater, and the Dyaks brought \is daily heaped-upbaskets of Mangusteens and Lansats, two of the most deliciousof the subacid tropical fruits. We returned to Sarawak forChristmas (the second I had spent with Sir .James Brooke),when all the Europeans both in the town and from the outstationsenjoyed the hospitality of the Eajah, who possessed ina pre-eminent degree the art of making every one around himcomfortable and hapjoy.A few days afterwards I returned to the mountain withCharles and a Malay boy named Ali, and stayed there threeweeks for the purpose of making a collection of land-shells,butterflies and moths, ferns and orchids. On the hill itselfferns were tolerably plentiful, and I made a collection of aboutforty species. But what occupied me most was the greatabundance of moths which on cei'tain occasions I was able tocapture. As during the whole of my eight years' wanderingsin the East I never found another spot where these insectswere at all jDlentiful, it will be interesting to state the exactconditions under which I here obtained them.On one side of tlie cottage there was a verandah, lookingdown the whole side of the mountain and to its summit on theright, all densely clothed with forest. The boarded sides of thecottage were whitewashed, and the roof of the verandah waslow, and also boarded and whitewashed. As soon as it got darkI placed my lamp on a table against the wall, and with pins,insect-forceps, net, and collecting-boxes by my side, sat downwith a book. Sometimes during the whole evening only onesolitary moth would visit me, while on other nights they wouldpour in, in a continual stream, keeping me hard at workcatching and pinning till past midnight. They came literallyby thousands. These good nights were very few. During thefour weeks that I spent altogether on the hill I only had fourreally good nights, and these were always rainy, and the bestof them soaking wet. But wet nights were not always good,for a rainy Jiioonlight night produced next to nothing. All thechief tribes of moths were represented, and the beauty andvariety of the species was very great. On good nights I wasable to capture from a hundred to two hundred and fifty moths,and these comprised on each occasion from half to two-thirdsthat number of distinct species. Some of them would settle onthe wall, some on the table, while many would fly up to theroof and give me a chase all over the verandah before I couldsecure them. In order to show the curious connexion betweenF