About half a mile from the house was a fine mountain stream, running swiftly over a bed of rocks and pebbles, and beyond this was a hill covered with fine forest. By carefully picking my way I could wade across this river without getting much above my knees, although I would sometimes slip off a rock and go into a hole up to my waist, and about twice a week I went across it in order to explore the forest. Unfortunately there were no paths here of any extent, and it did not prove very productive either in insects or birds. To add to my difficulties I had stupidly left my only pair of strong hoots on board the steamer, and my others were by this time all dropping to pieces, so that I was obliged to walk about barefooted, and in constant fear of hurting my feet, and causing a wound which might lay me up for weeks, as had happened in Borneo, Are, and Dorey. Although there were numerous plantations of maize and plantains, there were no new clearings; and as without these it is almost impossible to find many of the best kinds of insects, I determined to make one myself, and with much difficulty engaged two men to clear a patch of forest, from which I hoped to obtain many fine beetles before I left.
During the whole of my stay, however, insects never became plentiful. My clearing produced me a few fine, longicorns and Buprestidae, different from any I had before seen, together with several of the Amboyna species, but by no means so numerous or, so beautiful as I had found in that small island. For example, Icollected only 210 different kinds of beetles during my two months' stay at Bourn, while in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857, I found more than 300 species: One of the finest insects found at Bouru was a large Cerambyx, of a deep shining chestnut colour, and with very long antennae. It varied greatly in size, the largest specimens being three inches long, while the smallest were only an inch, the antenna varying from one and a half to five inches.
One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big snake. He was walking through some high grass, and stepped on something which he took for a small fallen tree, but it felt cold and yielding to his feet, and far to the right and left there was a waving and rustling of the herbage. He jumped back in affright and prepared to shoot, but could not get a good vies of the creature, and it passed away, he said, like a tree being dragged along through the grass. As he lead several times already shot large snakes, which he declared were all as nothing compared with this, I am inclined to believe it must really have been a monster. Such creatures are rather plentiful here, for a man living close by showed me on his thigh the marks where he bad been seized by one close to his house. It was big enough to take the man's thigh in its mouth, and he would probably have been killed and devoured by it had not his cries brought out his neighbours, who destroyed it with their choppers. As far as I could make out it was about twenty feet long, but Ali's was probably much larger.
It sometimes amuses me to observe how, a few days after I have taken possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end of this platform, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito curtain, and partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf was arranged my small stock of crockery and hardware: Boxes were ranged against the thatch walls, and hanging shelves, to preserve my collections from ants while drying, were suspended both without and within the house. On my table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers, and pins, with insect and bird labels, all of which were unsolved mysteries to the native mind.
