tations
supply many esculent herbs, fruits, and roots; but the coconut, although
reared as a curiosity, is abortive in these inland regions, and its place
is supplied by the buah kras (Juglans camirium), of which they also make
their torches. Excellent tobacco is grown there, also cotton and indigo,
the small leafed kind. They get some silk from Palembang, and rear a
little themselves. The communication is more frequent with the north-west
shore than with the eastern, and of late, since the English have been
settled at Pulo Chinco, they prefer going there for opium to the more
tedious (though less distant) journey by which they formerly sought it at
Moco-moco.

GOLD.

In their cockpits the gold-scales are frequent, and I have seen
considerable quantities weighed out by the losers. This metal, I am
informed, they get in their own country, although they studiously evaded
all inquiries on the subject.

GUNPOWDER.

They make gunpowder, and it is a common sport among the young boys to
fire it out of bamboos. In order to increase its strength, in their
opinion, they mingle it with pepper-dust.

LEPERS.

In a small recess on the margin of the lake, overhung with very rugged
cliffs and accessible only by water, I saw one of those receptacles of
misery to which the leprous and others afflicted with diseases supposed
to be contagious are banished. I landed much against the remonstrances of
my conductors, who would not quit the boat. There were in all seven of
these unfortunate people basking on the beach and warming the wretched
remains of their bodies in the sun. They were fed at stated periods by
the joint contribution of the neighbouring villages, and I was given to
understand that any attempt to quit this horrid exile was punished with
death.

PECULIAR PLANTS.

I had little time for botanizing; but I found there many plants unknown
to the lowlands. Among them were a species of prune, the water-hemlock,
and the strawberry. This last was like that species which grows in our
woods; but it was insipid. I brought the roots with me to Fort
Marlborough, where it lingered a year or two after fruiting and gradually
died.* I found there also a beautiful kind of the Hedychium coronarium,
now ranked among the kaempferias. It was of a pale orange, and had a most
grateful odour. The girls wear it in their hair, and its beautiful head
of lily flowers is used in the silent language of love, to the practice
of which, during your s