furniture
carried up and pretty comfortably arranged. A rough bamboo bedstead was
soon constructed, and a table made of boards which I had brought with
me, fixed under the window. Two bamboo chairs, an easy cane chair, and
hanging shelves suspended with insulating oil cups, so as to be safe
from ants, completed my furnishing arrangements.

In the afternoon succeeding my arrival, the Secretary accompanied me
to visit the Sultan. We were kept waiting a few minutes in an outer
gate-house, and then ushered to the door of a rude, half-fortified
whitewashed house. A small table and three chairs were placed in a large
outer corridor, and an old dirty-faced man with grey hair and a grimy
beard, dressed in a speckled blue cotton jacket and loose red trousers,
came forward, shook hands, and asked me to be coated. After a quarter
of an hour's conversation on my pursuits, in which his Majesty seemed to
take great interest, tea and cakes-of rather better quality than usual
on such occasions-were brought in. I thanked him for the house, and
offered to show him my collections, which he promised to come and look
at. He then asked me to teach him to take views-to make maps-to get him
a small gun from England, and a milch-goat from Bengal; all of which
requests I evaded as skilfully as I was able, and we parted very good
friends. He seemed a sensible old man, and lamented the small population
of the island, which he assured me was rich in many valuable minerals,
including gold; but there were not people enough to look after them
and work them. I described to him the great rush of population on the
discovery of the Australian gold mines, and the huge nuggets found
there, with which he was much interested, and exclaimed, "Oh? if we had
but people like that, my country would be quite as rich."

The morning after I had got into my new house, I sent my boys out to
shoot, and went myself to explore the road to the coal mines. In less
than half a mile it entered the virgin forest, at a place where some
magnificent trees formed a kind of natural avenue. The first part was
flat and swampy, but it soon rose a little, and ran alongside the fine
stream which passed behind my house, and which here rushed and gurgled
over a rocky or pebbly bed, sometimes leaving wide sandbanks on its
margins, and at other places flowing between high banks crowned with
a varied and magnificent forest vegetation. After about two miles, the
valley narrowed, and the roa