Morality at Delli is at as low an ebb as in the far interior of Brazil, and crimes are connived at which would entail infamy and criminal prosecution in Europe. While I was there it was generally asserted and believed in the place, that two officers had poisoned the husbands of women with whom they were carrying on intrigues, and with whom they immediately cohabited on the death of their rivals. Yet no one ever thought for a moment of showing disapprobation of the crime, or even of considering it a crime at all, the husbands in question being low half-castes, who of course ought to make way for the pleasures of their superiors.
Judging from what I saw myself and by the descriptions of Mr. Geach, the indigenous vegetation of Timor is poor and monotonous. The lower ranges of the hills are everywhere covered with scrubby Eucalypti, which only occasionally grow into lofty forest trees. Mingled with these in smaller quantities are acacias and the fragrant sandalwood, while the higher mountains, which rise to about six or seven thousand feet, are either covered with coarse grass or are altogether barren. In the lower grounds are a variety of weedy bushes, and open waste places are covered everywhere with a nettle-like wild mint. Here is found the beautiful crown lily, Gloriosa superba, winding among the bushes, and displaying its magnificent blossoms in great profusion. A wild vine also occurs, bearing great irregular bunches of hairy grapes of a coarse but very luscious flavour. In some of the valleys where the vegetation is richer, thorny shrubs and climbers are so abundant as to make the thickets quite impenetrable.
The soil seems very poor, consisting chiefly of decomposing clayey shales; and the bare earth and rock is almost everywhere visible. The drought of the hot season is so severe that most of the streams dry up in the plains before they reach the sea; everything becomes burned up, and the leaves of the larger trees fall as completely as in our winter. On the mountains from two to four thousand feet elevation there is a much moister atmosphere, so that potatoes and other European products can be grown all the year round. Besides ponies, almost the only exports of Timor are sandalwood and beeswax. The sandalwood (Santalum sp.) is the produce of a small tree, which grows sparingly in the mountains of Timor and many of the other islands in the far East. The wood is of a fine yellow colour, and possesses a well-known delightful fragrance which is wonderfully permanent. It is brought down to Delli in small logs, and is chiefly exported to China, where it is largely used to burn in the temples, and in the houses of the wealthy.
The beeswax is a still more important and valuable product, formed by the wild bees (Apis dorsata), which build huge honeycombs, suspended in the open air from the underside of the lofty branches of the highest trees. These are of a semicircular form, and often three or four feet in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees' nest, and a very interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees' combs. The tree was straight and smooth-barked and without a branch, until at seventy or eighty feet from the ground it gave out the limb which the bees had chosen for their home. As the men were evidently looking after the bees, I waited to watch their operations. One of them first produced a long piece of wood apparently the stem of a small tree or creeper, which he had brought with him, and began splitting it through in several directions, which showed that it was very tough and stringy. He then wrapped it in palm-leaves, which were secured by twisting a slender creeper round them. He then fastened his cloth tightly round his loins, and producing another cloth wrapped it around his head, neck, and body, and tied it firmly around his neck, leaving his face, arms, and legs completely bare. Slung to his girdle he carried a long thin coil of cord; and while he had been making these preparations, one of his companions had cut a strong creeper or bush-rope eight or ten yards long, to one end of which the wood-torch was fastened, and lighted at the bottom, emitting a steady stream of smoke. Just above the torch a chopping-knife was fastened by a short cord.
The bee-hunter now took hold of the bush-rope just above the torch and passed the other end around the trunk of the tree, holding one end in each hand. Jerking it up the tree a little above his head he set his foot against the trunk, and leaning back began walking up it. It was wonderful to see the skill with which he took advantage of the slightest irregularities of the bark or obliquity of the stem to aid his ascent, jerking the stiff creeper a few feet higher when he had found a firm hold for his bare foot. It almost made me giddy to look at him as he rapidly got up—thirty, forty, fifty feet above the ground; and I kept wondering how he could possibly mount the next few feet of straight smooth trunk. Still, however, he kept on with as much coolness and apparent certainty as if he were going up a ladder, until he got within ten or fifteen feet of the bees. Then he stopped a moment, and took care to swing the torch (which hung just at his feet) a little towards these dangerous insects, so as to send up the stream of smoke between him and them. Still going on, in a minute more he brought himself under the limb, and, in a manner quite unintelligible to me, seeing that both hands were occupied in supporting himself by the creeper, managed to get upon it.
By this time the bees began to be alarmed, and formed a dense buzzing swarm just over him, but he brought the torch up closer to him, and coolly brushed away those that settled on his arms or legs. Then stretching himself along the limb, he crept towards the nearest comb and swung the torch just under it. The moment the smoke touched it, its colour changed in a most curious manner from black to white, the myriads of bees that had covered it flying off and forming a dense cloud above and around. The man then lay at full length along the limb, and brushed off the remaining bees with his hand, and then drawing his knife cut off the comb at one slice close to the tree, and attaching the thin cord to it, let it down to his companions below. He was all this time enveloped in a crowd of angry bees, and how he bore their stings so coolly, and went on with his work at that giddy height so deliberately, was more than I could understand. The bees were evidently not stupified by the smoke or driven away far by it, and it was impossible that the small stream from the torch could protect his whole body when at work. There were three other combs on the same tree, and all were successively taken, and furnished the whole party with a luscious feast of honey and young bees, as well as a valuable lot of wax.
After two of the combs had been let down, the bees became rather numerous below, flying about wildly and stinging viciously. Several got about me, and I was soon stung, and had to run away, beating them off with my net and capturing them for specimens. Several of them followed me for at least half a mile, getting into my hair and persecuting me most pertinaciously, so that I was more astonished than ever at the immunity of the natives. I am inclined to think that slow and deliberate motion, and no attempt at escape, are perhaps the best safeguards. A bee settling on a passive native probably behaves as it would on a tree or other inanimate substance, which it does not attempt to sting. Still they must often suffer, but they are used to the pain and learn to bear it impassively, as without doing so no man could be a bee-hunter.
CHAPTER XIV. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE TIMOR GROUP.
IF we look at a map of the Archipelago, nothing seems more unlikely than that the closely connected chain of islands from Java to Timor should differ materially in their natural productions. There are, it is true, certain differences of climate and of physical geography, but these do not correspond with the division the naturalist is obliged to make. Between the two ends of the chain there is a great contrast of climate, the west being exceedingly moist and leaving only a short and irregular dry season, the east being as dry and parched up, and having but a short wet season. This change, however, occurs about the middle of Java, the eastern portion of that island having as strongly marked seasons as Lombock and Timor. There is also a difference in physical geography; but this occurs at the eastern termination of the chain where the volcanoes which are the marked feature of Java, Bali, Lombock, Sumbawa, and Flores, turn northwards through Gunong Api to Banda, leaving Timor with only one volcanic peak near its centre, while the main portion of the island consists of old sedimentary rocks. Neither of these physical differences corresponds with the remarkable change in natural productions which occurs at the Straits of Lombock, separating the island of that name from Bali, and which is at once so large in amount and of so fundamental a character, as to form an important feature in the zoological geography of our globe.