LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| Wives of one of the great Princes of Java | (from a Photograph) | [Frontispiece] |
| Poultry Vender, Batavia | ” | [Page 27] |
| Government Buildings in Batavia | ” | [4] |
| Sapis, or oxen from Madura | ” | [11] |
| Javanese and family | ” | [33] |
| Rahden Saleh | ” | [37] |
| Rahden Saleh’s Palace | ” | [37] |
| Watering the streets, Java | ” | [49] |
| A Tandu | ” | [49] |
| A Kling | [63] | |
| A Native of Beloochistan | (from a Photograph) | [63] |
| Fruit-Market | ” | [89] |
| The Pinang, or Betel-nut Palm (from a Drawing by Rahden Saleh) | [180] | |
| After the bath | (from a Photograph) | [182] |
| Musical Instruments of the Malays (Batavia) | [191] | |
| Dyak, or Head-hunter of Borneo | (from a Photograph) | [206] |
| Landing through the Surf on the south coast of Ceram | (from a Sketch) | [209] |
| The Lontar Palm | [220] | |
| Ascent of the Volcano of Banda—saved by a fern | (from a Sketch) | [234] |
| A Jungle | [261] | |
| A Malay Opium-smoker | (from a Photograph) | [281] |
| The Gomuti Palm | (from a Sketch) | [370] |
| The Bamboo | [374] | |
| Approach to the Cleft near Padang | [390] | |
| Women of Menangkaban | [395] | |
| Scene in the interior of Sumatra | [404] | |
| Driving round a dangerous Bluff | [419] | |
| Suspension Bridge of rattan | [428] | |
| Native of Nias | [445] | |
| Natives of the Pagi Islands | [482] | |
| Singapore | [521] | |
| River Scene in Sumatra, on the Limatang | [525] | |
| Natives of Palembang | } | [530] |
| Palembang—high water | } | |
| Killing a Python | [541] | |
| Map of Sumatra | [To face page 384] | |
| Tomb of the Sultan—Palembang | [546] | |
| Map of the Eastern Archipelago | [at the end] | |
TRAVELS
IN THE
EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.
CHAPTER I.
THE STRAIT OF SUNDA AND BATAVIA.
On the 19th of April, 1865, I was fifty miles east of Christmas Island, floating on the good ship “Memnon” toward the Strait of Sunda.
I was going to Batavia, to sail thence to the Spice Islands, which lie east of Celebes, for the purpose of collecting the beautiful shells of those seas.
I had chosen that in preference to any other part of the world, because the first collection of shells from the East that was ever described and figured with sufficient accuracy to be of any scientific value was made by Rumphius, a doctor who lived many years at Amboina, the capital of those islands. His great work, the “Rariteit Kamer,” or Chamber of Curiosities, was published in 1705, more than sixty years before the twelfth edition of the “Systema Naturæ” was issued by Linnæus, “the Father of Natural History,” who referred to the figures in that work to illustrate a part of his own writings. When Holland became a province of France, in 1811, and it was designed to make Paris the centre of science and literature in Europe, it is said that this collection was taken from Leyden to that city, and afterward returned, and that during these two transfers a large proportion of the specimens disappeared; and that, finally, what was left of this valuable collection was scattered through the great museum at Leyden. It was partly to restore Rumphius’s specimens, and partly to bring into our own country such a standard collection, that I was going to search myself for the shells figured in the “Rariteit Kamer,” on the very points and headlands, and in the very bays, where Rumphius’s specimens were found.
As we neared the coast of Java, cocoa-nuts and fragments of sea-washed palms, drifting by, indicated our approach to a land very different at least from the temperate shores we had left behind; and we could in some degree experience Columbus’s pleasure, when he first saw the new branch and its vermilion berries. Strange, indeed, must be this land to which we are coming, for here we see snakes swimming on the water, and occasionally fragments of rock drifting over the sea. New birds also appear, now sailing singly through the sky, and now hovering in flocks over certain places, hoping to satisfy their hungry maws on the small fishes that follow the floating driftwood. Here it must be that the old Dutch sailors fabled could be seen the tree—then unknown—that bore that strange fruit, the double cocoa-nut. They always represented it as rising up from a great depth and spreading out its uppermost leaves on the surface of the sea. It was guarded by a bird, that was not bird but half beast; and when a ship came near, she was always drawn irresistibly toward this spot, and not one of her ill-fated crew ever escaped the beak and formidable talons of this insatiable harpy.
But such wonders unfortunately fade away before the light of advancing knowledge; and the prince of Ceylon, who is said to have given a whole vessel laden with spice for a single specimen, could have satisfied his heart’s fullest desire if he had only known it was not rare on the Seychelles, north of Mauritius.