it in moving about. At length, however, I found a man who
knew the country, and was more intelligent; and he at once told me that
if I wanted forest I must go to the district of Rembang, which I found
on inquiry was about twenty-five or thirty miles off.

The road is divided into regular stages of ten or twelve miles each,
and, without sending on in advance to have coolies ready, only this
distance can be travelled in a day. At each station there are houses for
the accommodation of passengers, with cooking-house and stables, and six
or eight men always on guard. There is an established system for coolies
at fixed rates, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages all taking
their turn to be subject to coolie service, as well as that of guards at
the station for five days at a time. This arrangement makes travelling
very easy, and was a great convenience for me. I had a pleasant walk of
ten or twelve miles in the morning, and the rest of the day could stroll
about and explore the village and neighbourhood, having a house ready
to occupy without any formalities whatever. In three days I reached
Moera-dua, the first village in Rembang, and finding the country dry and
undulating, with a good sprinkling of forest, I determined to remain a
short time and try the neighbourhood. Just opposite the station was a
small but deep river, and a good bathing-place; and beyond the village
was a fine patch of forest, through which the road passed, overshadowed
by magnificent trees, which partly tempted me to stay; but after a
fortnight I could find no good place for insects, and very few birds
different from the common species of Malacca. I therefore moved on
another stage to Lobo Raman, where the guard-house is situated quite by
itself in the forest, nearly a mile from each of three villages. This
was very agreeable to me, as I could move about without having every
motion watched by crowds of men, women and children, and I had also
a much greater variety of walks to each of the villages and the
plantations around them.

The villages of the Sumatran Malays are somewhat peculiar and very
picturesque. A space of some acres is surrounded with a high fence, and
over this area the houses are thickly strewn without the least attempt
at regularity. Tall cocoa-nut trees grow abundantly between them, and
the ground is bare and smooth with the trampling of many feet. The
houses are raised about six feet on posts, the best being entirely
built of