afforded a number of rare and singular plants, indigenous and exotic, many of which he was the first to observe and describe.
It was at that period the policy of the Dutch to send an annual embassy to the court of Japan, the object of which was to extend and give stability to their commercial connexion with that country. Kæmpfer, who had now been eight months in Batavia, and appears during that period to have made many powerful and useful friends, obtained the signal favour of being appointed physician to the embassy; and one of the ships receiving orders to touch at Siam, the authorities, to enhance the obligation, permitted him to perform the voyage in this vessel, that an opportunity might be afforded him of beholding the curiosities of that country.
He sailed from Batavia on the 7th of May, 1690; and steering through the Thousand Islands, having the lofty mountains of Java and Sumatra in sight during two days, arrived in thirteen days at Puli Timon, a small island on the eastern coast of Malacca. The natives, whom he denominates banditti, were a dark, sickly-looking race, who, owing to their habit of plucking out their beard, a custom likewise prevalent in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, had all the appearance of ugly old women. Their dress consisted of a coarse cummerbund, or girdle, and a hat manufactured from the leaves of the sago-palm. They understood nothing of the use of money; but willingly exchanged their incomparable mangoes, figs, pineapples, and fowls for linen shirts, rice, or iron. On the 6th of June they arrived safely in the mouth of the Meinam, and cast anchor before Siam, where our traveller's passion for botany immediately led him into the woods in search of plants; but as tigers and other wild beasts were here the natural lords of the soil, it was fortunate that his herborizing did not cost him dearer than he intended.
In this country, which has recently been so ably
