St. Landry democrat., 1881-09-03
A HIDEOUS TOLL.GATHERER.

In the wear 1857, I was mate of the
ship Ellen Bird, then making her third
voyage It was in the palmv days OF
the sandal-wood and beeswaX trade,
and we were at the Island of Timor, an
,chored at Delhi haven. taking in
cargo.
Sandal wood, so valuable because of
its enduring perfume for the manufac-
ture OF fancy work-boxes, desks and
cabinets, could, at that time, be OBJ
tanned in considerable quantities in Ii
NOR. 1t grows there as q small timber
tree among the mountains of the interl-
or. The natives are hired to take it to
the harbor in small logs, carried on the
shoulders of two or three men walking
together, or upon the backs of their
tanned ponies.
While slowly taking in this part Of
our cargo, log by log, |, as mate of the
vessel, was dispatched on trip inland,
to hasten the collection of beeswax.
Three of the seamen accompanied me.
Some twenty natives of the island also
went with us to take up the wild bees
nests, and these were to be paid in
goods at the vessel for all the wax they
might gather.
For over week we slept in two bam-
boo huts set up on posts, with matched
roofs, at place the natives called the
Dardees, twenty or twenty-five miles
back from Delhi.
Dardee is the Timorese name for a
very curious tree, the roots of which
rise out of the ground in a tangled,
complicated pyramid to the height of
sixty. and even eighty, feet. 1t is at
the top of this vast mass that the real
trunk of the tree begins, branching out
above in q top almost as thick and ex-
tensive as the root. Often these wide
spread and thickly-woven dardee roots
inclose an open space at their center,
where ono may stand directly beneath
the great trunk overhead. These root
systems are not unfrequently thirty,
forty and even fifty feet in diameter,
exhibiting a singularly-grotesque,
gnarled appearance; and where a forest
of them stand moderately close togeth-
.er, they present to the eye most be-
wildering maze.
But the forests of Timor are, as
rule, by no means dense. Open plats,
full of rank. coarse grass and flowers,
alternate with the groves of larger
trees; aud the whole country round
about the huts, where we spent our
nights, was one great natural apiary.
The huts, in fact, were built by bee
hunters, who each year visit the district
to get honey and wax.
Much as has been said and written
concerning bees, ] think the reader will
vet find something novel in a brief de-
scription of the wild bees of Timor, and
the old method by which the natives
capture them. These bees (the apis
dorsGta) do not, like the wild bees of
America and other countries, build their
nests in hollow trees. or clefts in the
crags. I was astonished to see hanging
to the lower side of some stout branch,
far up in the tops of the loftiest trees, a
great cone of honey-comb, often four
feet in diameter by five feet in length.
These combs are SO piled and covered
in as to resist the weather completely,
and are cemented to the branch with
thick, glutinous stump of very tough
and compact wax. / estimated the
weight of some of these large combs at
three hundred pounds.
During the week we were in the for
est. we took, / should think, nearly five
hundred of these hore cones. The
honey, save what we could eat with our
food, was of no use to us, and / have
little doubt that thirty or forty thousand
pounds Of honey were destroyed by us
in that one week; for the wax was all
that we cared to take. .ss
The first time [ saw the natives take
bees nest, thought their method Of
doing it as curious as the nest itself