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SUMATRA.
(NOVEMBER 1861 to JANUARY 1862.) The mail steamer from Batavia to Singapore took me to Muntok (or as on English maps, "Minto"), the chief town and port of Banca.

Here I stayed a day or two, until I could obtain a boat to take me across the straits, and up the river to Palembang.

A few walks into the country showed me that it was very hilly, and full of granitic and laterite rocks, with a dry and stunted forest vegetation; and I could find very few insects.
A good-sized open sailing-boat took me across to the mouth of the Palembang river where, at a fishing village, a rowing-boat was hired to take me up to Palembang--a distance of nearly a hundred miles by water.
Except when the wind was strong and favourable we could only proceed with the tide, and the banks of the river were generally flooded Nipa-swamps, so that the hours we were obliged to lay at anchor passed very heavily.

Reaching Palembang on the 8th of November, I was lodged by the Doctor, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction, and endeavoured to ascertain where I could find a good locality for collecting.