In Pekáté no vestige of a house is left: twenty-six of the people, who were at Sumbawa at the time, are the whole of the population who have escaped. From the most particular inquiries I have been able to make, there were certainly not fewer than twelve thousand individuals in Tomboro and Pekáté at the time of the eruption, of whom only five or six survive. The trees and herbage of every description, along the whole of the north and west sides of the peninsula, have been completely destroyed, with the exception of a high point of land near the spot where the village of Tomboro stood." [27] Batavian Transactions, vol. viii. Introductory Discourse. [28] See Appendix A. [29] Raynal, vol i. page 293. [30] It is remarkable that the teak tree, which, as far as our information yet extends, is not to be found on the peninsula of Malacca, or on Sumatra or the adjacent islands, should grow in abundance on Java and several of the islands which lie east of it: as on Madúra and its dependent islands, Báli, Sumbáwa, and others. Sumbáwa produces a considerable quantity. The whole of the hills on the north-east part of that island under Bíma are covered with it; but from the constant demand for the timber, the trees are seldom allowed to grow to more than a foot in diameter, except in the forests exclusively appropriated to the use of the sovereign. In Dómpo, which occupies the central division of the same island, the teak cannot be used by any but the sovereign, and the trees are in consequence allowed to attain their full size. The timber is here uncommonly fine, and by the natives considered superior to that of Java; but the forests being surrounded by steep hills, and the population but scanty, it cannot be transported to the sea-coast without great labour and expense. On Celebes the teak tree is only known in a few spots. The principal forest is in the district of Mario; and this does not appear to be indigenous, as the natives assert that the seed from which the forest has grown, was brought from Java about eighty years ago by one of the sovereigns of Tanété. [31] The Dutch, apprehensive of a failure in the usual supply of teak timber, have long been in the habit of forming extensive plantations of this tree; but whether from a sufficient period not having yet elapsed for the trial, or that the plantations are generally made in soils and situations ill calculated for the purpose, experience, as far as it has yet gone, has shown, that the trees which are left to the operations of nature, attain to greater perfection, even in a comparatively barren soil, unfit for any other cultivation, than those which are with great care and trouble reared in a fertile land. Their wood is more firm, more durable, and of a less chalky substance than that of the latter. [32] Page 176, third edit.