Potatoes are grown higher up the mountains in abundance, and are very good.

We had a sheep killed every other day, and ate our mutton with much appetite in the cool climate, which rendered a fire always agreeable.
Although one-half the European residents in Delli are continually ill from fever, and the Portuguese have occupied the place for three centuries, no one has yet built a house on these fine hills, which, if a tolerable road were made, would be only an hour's ride from the town; and almost equally good situations might be found on a lower level at half an hour's distance.

The fact that potatoes and wheat of excellent quality are grown in abundance at from 3,000 to 3,500 feet elevation, shows what the climate and soil are capable of if properly cultivated.
From one to two thousand feet high, coffee would thrive; and there are hundreds of square miles of country over which all the varied products which require climates between those of coffee and wheat would flourish; but no attempt has yet been made to form a single mile of road, or a single acre of plantation! There must be something very unusual in the climate of Timor to permit wheat being grown at so moderate an elevation.

The grain is of excellent quality, the bread made from it being equal to any I have ever tasted, and it is universally acknowledged to be unsurpassed by any made from imported European or American flour.

The fact that the natives have (quite of their own accord) taken to cultivating such foreign articles as wheat and potatoes, which they bring in small quantities on the backs of ponies by the most horrible mountain tracks, and sell very cheaply at the seaside, sufficiently indicates what might be done if good roads were made, and if the people were taught, encouraged, and protected.
Sheep also do well on the mountains; and a breed of hardy ponies in much repute all over the Archipelago, runs half-wild, so that it appears as if this island, so barren-looking and devoid of the usual features of tropical vegetation, were yet especially adapted to supply a variety of products essential to Europeans, which the other islands will not produce, and which they accordingly import from the other side of the globe.
On the 24th of February my friend Mr.Geach left Timor, having finally reported that no minerals worth working were to be found.