THE
GARDENS OF THE SUN.
MALAY DANCING GIRL.
Frontispiece.
THE
GARDENS OF THE SUN:
OR
A NATURALIST’S JOURNAL
ON THE MOUNTAINS AND IN THE FORESTS AND SWAMPS OF
BORNEO
AND THE
SULU ARCHIPELAGO.
By F. W. BURBIDGE,
TRINITY COLLEGE BOTANICAL GARDENS, DUBLIN, AND FORMERLY OF THE ROYAL GARDENS, KEW.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1880.
[All Rights reserved].
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
I Dedicate this Work
TO
MY WIFE,
BECAUSE WHILE I WORKED ABROAD SHE WAITED AT HOME.
MOST OF US KNOW HOW EASY IT IS TO LABOUR—
ALL OF US KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO WAIT.
PREFACE.
This record of a time spent among the less well-known portions of Malaysia may be interesting to those whom the goddess of travel has wooed in vain, as perchance to some of those “birds of passage” to whom the islands and continents of the world are as well known as the church-spires and mile-stones of their own land. In the islands of the Malay archipelago—the Gardens of the Sun—Nature is ever beautiful, and man, although often strikingly primitive, is hospitable to the stranger, and not often vile.
A voyage of a few weeks brings us to these beauty-spots of the Eastern Seas—to an “always-afternoon” kind of climate—since they are blessed with the heat and glory of eternal summer—to a place where winter is unknown—monsoon-swept islands oasis-like basking in a warm and shallow desert of sea. Warmed by perpetual sunshine, deluged by copious rains, and thrilled by electricity, they are really enormous conservatories of beautiful vegetation—great Zoological Gardens inhabited by rare birds and curious animals. In these sunny garden scenes man is the Adam of a modern Eden, primitive in habits and numerically insignificant; he has scarcely begun his battle with things inanimate, or his struggle for existence as it is known to us. At home we have man as in some sort the master of Nature, but in the Bornean forests Nature still reigns supreme. Here with us man wrests his sustenance from her—there she is lavish in the bestowal of gifts unsought.
The immediate future of an island larger in area than Great Britain cannot fail to be of interest to political thinkers, especially to those who belong to the “scientific frontier” school. Malay Government is weaker now than it was even at the time Sir James Brooke received Sarawak, and the aid of our own Government is now being sought in favour of the cession of the whole of Northern Borneo—from Gaya Bay to Sabuco—to a public company! Unaided by England, Borneo seems likely to suffer in two ways—either to be annexed by the Government of Manilla, or else to fall into the hands of the promoters of public companies. The Sulu Archipelago has already thus lost its independence; and the question which now suggests itself is, What will England do with her foster-colony, Borneo the Beautiful?
Borneo offers to the student of nature an ever-interesting field for research and study. The local government is very peculiar and interesting. Every village of any pretensions has its “Orang Kaya,” or head man, and his house is at the service of the passing stranger. In any matter of dispute he may be referred to, and my own experience of these petty rulers was on the whole very satisfactory. I found them honest and just in their advice, although at times a little grasping in their bargains.
The ease with which food is obtained in such a tropical land is of course inimical to any great exertion or progress on the part of the natives. That most generous of all food-giving plants, the Banana, is everywhere naturalised in Borneo up to an altitude of 3000 feet. It fruits all the year, its produce being to that of wheat as 133:1, and to that of the potato as 44:1. With rice and a few esculent roots, all easily grown, it gives a profusion of food at a slight expenditure of labour—labour for the most part performed by the women. The Malays of Borneo are morally far inferior to the inland tribes; and, wherever it is possible to them, live in voluptuous ease.
Borneo is the home of the “Orang-utan,” or “wild man of the woods,” an animal which, with its African relative, the “Gorilla,” has occupied the attention of so many of the first thinkers of our time. Here, in its native forests, this large man-like ape lives in the great natural orchards, swinging itself from bough to bough with its peculiarly long arms, building its platform or nest of leafy branches, and eating its meal of fruit in peace. “Let any naturalist,” says a modern observer, “who is prejudiced against the Darwinian views go to the forests of Borneo. Let him there watch from day to day this strangely human form in all its various phases of existence. Let him see it climb, walk, build its nest, eat, and drink, and fight. Let him see the female suckle her young and carry it astride her hip precisely as do the Coolie women of Hindostan. Let him witness the human-like emotions of affection, satisfaction, pain, and childish rage. Let him see all this, and then he may feel how much more potent has been this lesson than all he has read in pages of abstract ratiocination.” After all, the Orang-utan is a poor creature, with but an outer resemblance to the human species. In intelligence he is not only far below the lowest savage, but even inferior to the horse or the dog. No amount of teaching will make the Orang-utan or any other ape practically useful to man. Do all we can for them in a state of confinement, they are simply big helpless monkeys to the last!
The avifauna of the island is very rich. Its pheasants rival those of China in beauty. The great hornbills abound in the fruit groves, and are giants in comparison with their representatives the toucans of South America. Here the humming-birds of the new world are amply represented by the sun-birds. Mound-building megapodia are common, their earth-works rivalling those of the termites; and the edible nest-making swallow works in its dark cave dwellings to satisfy the epicurean tastes of those Eastern aldermen, the mandarins of the Celestial Empire. One peculiar species of kingfisher always makes its nest in company with that of a colony of wild bees. Its young may be fed on the young larvae, or perchance the company of the bees may be courted for the sake of their protection in the event of the nest being attacked.
Amongst my own introductions to European gardens is a singular species of pitcher plant or nepenthes, the urns of which are armed with two sharp and strong spines (see p. 341). Its pitchers always contain insects of various kinds, and I am convinced that the spines are present to prevent birds and insect-hunting animals such as the tarsier from removing these insects from the urns. The stalk of this nepenthes is swollen quite near to the pitcher in a singular manner, and is there punctured by a peculiar species of ant, but I could never satisfactorily account for their presence, unless it be in search of water.
Beccari, during his travels in Borneo, discovered a singular plant—Myrmecodia—parasitic on low jungle trees. Its economy is most interesting. The young seedlings, when about an inch in height, are punctured or bitten by an ant, an operation which causes the stem to become gouty and eventually hollow; in fact, a natural living hive in which the ants then shelter themselves. This is their own gain, and they in turn rush out to resent any attack which may be made on their living nest. A case analogous to this of mutual protection is recorded of an African species of acacia. The most singular thing in connection with this co-operative affair is that unless the young seedling plants are bitten in due course they are said by Beccari to die. I saw this plant daily for a long period, and often amused myself by attacking it in order to see how invariably the ants rushed out in force to repel the intruder. I also noted many young seedlings both living and dead, but of my own knowledge could scarcely venture so far as to say that the dead ones had succumbed owing to the ants having neglected to bite them!
An account of some of the more remarkable of my discoveries and introductions may be found in the Appendix to this volume, p. 339.
In conclusion, I may be allowed to say that the far interior of Borneo still remains to be explored. It is emphatically a wild land without roads or bridges, and a march right across the island from the north-east to the north-west coast, although a formidable undertaking, would if accomplished reveal much that is at present unknown.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
[EASTWARD, HO!] PAGE
Gibraltar—Port Said—Suez Canal—Kantara—Aden—Life Afloat—Floating Homes 1
CHAPTER II.
Hotels—Singapore—An Eastern Port—A Tropical Island—Chinese Settlers—Chinese Play—Tropical Night—Climate 14
CHAPTER III.
[VISIT TO JAHORE—GUNONG PULOI.]
On the way—Gambling—River-travel—In the forest—Vegetation—A resting-place—Tropical fruits—Breed of dogs—On the summit—Wild animals—Wild men—Sale of women 31
CHAPTER IV.
A Sea-snake—A dreary landing—Native dancing—Orchids at home—Tropical flowers—The jungle leech—A bad dinner—Rough paths—The blow-pipe—Head-hunting—A Murut reception 47
CHAPTER V.
[KINA BALU, OR CHINESE WIDOW MOUNTAIN.]
Journey to Kina Balu—Visit to Pangeran Rau—Agricultural implements—Sea gipsies—Datu of the Badjows—Musa—Fertile plain—River-side gardens—Women gardeners—Fording the Tawaran—Bawang—Good scenery—Si Nilau—Kalawat—Rat-traps—A wet journey—Bungol—Koung village—Native traders—Rice culture—Kiau—Hiring of guides—Ascent of Kina Balu—A curious breakfast—Rare plants en route—Mountain flowers—Large pitcher plants—A cave dwelling—Scarcity of water—Mountain orchids—Cool climate—Slippery descent—Lost in the forest—Return to Kiau—Native produce—Journey to Marie Parie Spur—Return to the coast—Native women of the interior—Hire of native boat—Return to Labuan 77
CHAPTER VI.
Labuan—Inhabitants—Industries—Coal mines—Revenues and acreage—Oil spring—Climate—Rare ferns—Tropical flowering trees—Fruit culture—Birds—Pitcher plants—Snakes—Sun birds—Large spiders—Ants—Salt making—Pratchan—Old gardens—Lizards—Mason wasp—A favourite horse—Annual games on the plain—Church—River travel 114
CHAPTER VII.
Borneo—Wild animals—The Malays—Poetry—Romances—Dewa Indra—Native government—Pile dwellings—Intermarriage—Language—Clothing—Courtship—Marriage—Inland tribes—Land culture—Native villages—Food products—Textile fabrics—Bark cloth—Native women—Climate—Native produce—Kayan weapon—Rivers—Gambling—Opium smoking 139
CHAPTER VIII.
Brunei the capital—Market Chinese traders—Gun foundry—The Istana—Weak government—The Sultan Moumein—Native jewellery—Native smithy—Public executions—Punishment for robbery—Sago factories—Inter-marriage—Morality—Old mission church—Boat journey inland—Murut hospitality—Canoe travel—Forest travel—New aroids—Native insects—Day flying moths—River travel by moonlight—Sago-washing station 161
CHAPTER IX.
Sulu Archipelago—Long drought—Jungle fires—Sandakan—Good water supply—Insects and birds—How an alligator was utilised—A boat excursion—Visit to the shore—A Chinese trader—Chinese hospitality—Slavery—A walk by the river—Manilla hemp—Native tombs—Frangipane, or the “dead man’s flower”—Rough walking—Interesting birds 183
CHAPTER X.
A royal boar-hunt—The Sultan of the Sulus—Sultana and ladies of the Court—Sulu costume and arms—Fine breed of ponies—Rough ground—Pig-sticking—Food for the dogs—A pleasing sight—Invitation to the Istana—Datu Mahomed—The Sulu “Prince of Wales”—Curious saddles—Pony racing—Meimbong stream—Pleasant evening light—Birds—Large bats—Abundance of butterflies—Fine fish—Good angling—The “Hill of Tears”—Sugh, the old capital—Market at Meimbong—Tobacco—Native produce—Chain armour—Chinese settlers 193
CHAPTER XI.
[THE SULTAN’S ISTANA AND THE “HILL OF TEARS.”]
A moonlight ride—A fragrant weed—The Istana—Modern armament—“Gelah”—Royal hospitality—A social servant—The Sultan—State sword or “Barong”—A Sulu dinner—A long audience—Curiosity of the ladies—Departure to the mountain—A newly-made grave—Orchids at home—A treat for our cattle—Rough climbing—Ferns and mosses—The summit—Good views—Old traditions of the mountain—A picnic under cocoanut palms—“Gelah” v. Hennessy—Return to the Istana—Further audience of the Sultan—Former civilisation—Carved wood-work—Old manufactures—Old enemies—Physique of the Sulus—A pearl among the swine—Market-people—Slavery—Language—Land culture—Native food products—Domestic animals—Sea fruit 207
CHAPTER XII.
Exploring rides—A state visit—Culinary business—Arrival of the Sultan and suite—Procession of boats—Armed attendants—A royal salute—Visit to the ship—Use of dogs aboard—Amusements ashore—Eastern singing—A royal interpreter—Dress of the ladies—Influence of the women—An early rising Sultana—Marine amusements—Departure—Journey to Bu’ut Dahau—Hospitality of the mountaineers—Ascent—Fine views from the top—Flowers and insects—A Hadji’s tradition—Siassi Island—A horned steed—Sandakan—Pulo Bahalatolois 223
CHAPTER XIII.
Preparations—“Salaamat jelan” or safe voyage—Contrary winds—A total wreck—A sea bath—Making the best of it—Native visitors from the Bornean shore—Drying stores—Pigeon shooting—Foraging—Football—Tent life—A new boat—A marine visitor—Pulo Tiga—A fish dinner—Shore plants—Big fish—The Tampassuk—“The fatted calf”—Start for Kina Balu—Bare hills—Land culture—Bad roads—Ghinambaur village—Textile fibres—A chance shot—Thrifty natives—Buffalo riding—A friendly chief—Sineroup—Native wealth—Charms—Crossing swollen river—New orchids—Kambatuan—Rokos—Butterflies—Koung Green—Aboriginals from the interior—Pretty weeds—Lemoung’s death—Native ornaments—Native cloth—Bee keeping—How to manage “guides”—“Kurow”—Start for “Kina Balu”—Sleeping rock—Dusun cookery!—New plants—More of the “guide” nuisance 239
Plant collecting—Large Nepenthes—Sociable birds—Mountain climbing—Cold nights—Descent—Safe return to Kiau—Old skulls—Tree ferns—Fine climate—Land culture—Crossing rivers—“Lapayang’s” welcome—Tarippe fruit—“Beuhan”—Pleasant evening at Kambatuan village—Graceful young girls—Bundoo—Little gardens en route—Ghinambaur village—A hard day’s walking—Return to the Tampassuk—Short-tailed buffaloes—Two-horned rhinoceros—Return to Labuan—Smith’s illness—Success of the expedition 278
CHAPTER XV.
Tropical fruits—Culture of—Natural fruit orchards—The Durian—A macédoine of fruits—The Mangosteen—“Prada Prada”—Mango—The Rambutan or “hairy fruit”—Bread fruit—Jack-fruit, or “Nangka”—“Champada”—Jintawan, or Manoongan fruits (Willughbeia spp.)—Tampoe fruit—Red “Bilimbing”—“Mandaroit”—“Rambeneer”—“Mambangan”—“Luing”—“Langsat” or “Duku”—“Rambi”—“Mangalin”—“Jambosa,” or “Rose-apples”—Melons—Oranges—Pomoloes—Custard apples—Cocoa-nut—Wild onion fruit—Banana, or “Pisang” fruit 304
CHAPTER XVI.
Hints on travel—Food supplies—Bathing—Medicines—Modes of travelling—Shelter—Resting-places—Barter—Articles for exchange—Arms in a wild land—Products of the island—Prospects of Borneo 323
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE GARDENS OF THE SUN.
CHAPTER I.
EASTWARD, HO!
Gibraltar—Port Said—Suez Canal—Kantara—Aden—Life Afloat—Floating Homes.
When our ship had nearly reached the mouth of the Mersey, on her outward voyage, the boatswain and his men were busily engaged in lashing everything moveable in its place on deck. “We shall get it to-night,” said that man of the sea; but on the vessel went as smoothly as ever, and everybody was merry at dinner-time, hours after the “Bosun’s” prophecy. We watched the setting sun, and a gorgeous after-glow of purple, grey, and gold. Then came the twilight, and a sense of chilliness. The land on the port-side was lost in a soft grey mist; then it became colder and darker, and we went below. The saloon looked bright and cheerful, with its sparkle of glasses in the swinging racks, and the mellow light of the lamps.
I read for an hour or more, and then “turned in,” heartily glad to think we were having such a smooth and pleasant time, and that the “Bosun’s” prediction had not been verified. I was soon asleep. How long I slept I do not quite remember, but I dreamed that I was falling down a well, and the crash made when I reached the bottom awoke me. I forgot for the moment where I was, but my first impressions were that, Zazel-like, I had been shot out of a cannon, and that I was whirling round chain-shot fashion. Instinctively stretching out my hands, I found myself in my berth, but the ship was plunging and rolling very much, and everything moveable was knocking about in all directions. Another crash, similar to the one which awoke me, told of loose crockery going to destruction in the steward’s pantry.
I spent some time in trying to decide whether the ship was playing at leapfrog, or trying to turn a somersault. A “sea change” put an end to my deliberations. Sleep was impossible, and I was glad when morning came, and I held on to the berth with one hand, and dressed with the other. That man of the sea was right. We had “got” it, and no mistake; and we continued to “get it” until off Cape St. Vincent, when we regained smooth water.
Cape St. Vincent is a rocky bluff, crested with a ruined convent and a lighthouse, the white walls of which gleam out brightly in the sunshine, although we are fully ten miles away. After we have passed it, and look back, it forms a much more picturesque object than when seen directly opposite; and in front of the nearly perpendicular cliffs is a curious cone-shaped rock, and through the narrow passage between this and the mainland, tradition says an American skipper ran his vessel for a wager, and got through safely. The whole coast here is bold and rocky, but not dangerous. Large craft may ride close in under the cliffs.
A few miles further along is Cape Sartenius, a rocky headland, which rises perpendicularly from the sea, and is crowned with a fort and lighthouse; and from this point the rugged coast-line falls away towards Trafalgar Bay and Gibraltar, a distance of nearly two hundred miles. We were fortunate in seeing the red honey-combed rock at Gibraltar in the morning’s sunshine, the pretty little town of St. Roque lying behind across the neutral ground. To the left the cork woods and Algesiraz. Exactly opposite “Gib,” on the African side, is Ceuta, with its lighthouse and fort on the hill, and square flat-topped Moorish houses below; while Apes’ Hill stands up clear and dark against the masses of fleecy white clouds. The straits here are about six miles wide, and it was near this point that the Moors used to cross, Pict and Scot fashion, into Spain in the olden time. Of course, like Mark Twain, we saw the “Queen of Spain’s chair” on the hill behind Gibraltar, and a naturalist friend reminds me that the rock here is the only place in Europe where monkeys and scorpions are naturalised. The wag meant “Rock Scorpions” I suppose, but the monkeys are there all right enough. By the aid of a good glass, we saw patches of cultivated crops on the low coast hills, and whitewashed farm-houses were freely dotted amongst them. Now we were fairly into the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the coast lines began to recede on either side. Here and there, however, over the coast hills we obtained glimpses of the snow-peaked Sierra Nevada mountains standing out clear and cool against the blue sky.
It was about the middle of June, and very hot during the day time, but chilly at night. The sea is of the most emphatic blue when you look down into it, but has a purplish glow towards the horizon. The sunsets are occasionally very beautiful, with their tints of crimson, salmon, grey, vermilion, and gold. It is pleasant at sunrise, after a bracing salt-water bath under the hose-pipe, to watch the silvery dolphin as they follow each other in line and play around the bows of the ship, at times leaping clear out of the water. The velocity of these creatures is wonderful; they gambol around a ship, and keep up alongside without any apparent effort. A few black and white sea-gulls are the only aërial visitors, except that now and then flying fish are seen skimming the surface of the blue water with their glistening wings. In some places they may be seen by the hundred, rising in flocks from the water, to escape their enemies below. They fly for a distance of two or three hundred yards, rising and falling in a sinuous manner; and occasionally they dip into the crest of a wave for a moment, to moisten their wings, which enables them to prolong their flight. Many were washed or flew on board during the night, and were very delicate in flavour. The sailors say they fly at the lights, and thus fall on deck, which may be the fact, as it was only after dark that any were caught in this manner. Some specimens were sixteen inches in length, but about half that size appeared to be the average.
We caught a passing glimpse of Galita and Malta on our way. Both were once little more than barren rocks; indeed, Galita is so still; but Malta has been improved by cultivation, and now yields much of the early vegetable produce brought to the Paris and London markets. Tradition hath it that formerly vessels trading to Malta were obliged to bring a certain quantity of earth with them, so anxious were the Maltese to improve their tiny farms.
Port Said was our first stopping place; and, after a fortnight afloat, we were glad to see the lighthouse, like a yellow speck on the horizon. We went ashore, and saw the town, which stands close to the sea-beach, and by the entrance to the canal, with which it is contemporaneous. Behind, as far as one can see, stretches the arid desert itself. The old Arab town of square, flat-topped houses, is nearly a mile away to the right. The new town consists mainly of shops and hotels, with the exception of the consular residences, the hospital, and post-office.
EGYPTIAN WATER-COOLER.
I visited the hospital, with the young Irish ship’s doctor as a companion, and among the inmates saw an American suffering from fever and chronic rheumatism. In one of the cells, guarded by a couple of Arab sentries, we found a young, fair-haired, blue-eyed Greek sailor, who had murdered an Arab girl through jealousy the night before. I was struck by the gentle, inoffensive expression on his face; but I suppose he did not deserve the pity I felt for him. A public square, planted with trees, shrubs, and flowers, forms an oasis in the midst of the desert of dusty streets, and white-washed or stucco houses. Most of the houses are two-storied, and furnished with cool, shady verandahs; and in some cases they are covered with the green drapery of a large convolvulus, which adds much to the picturesque effect of walls and fences throughout the place. In the gardens, bananas, date-palms, bamboo, and other vegetation common to hothouses at home, here grow in the open air, with no other protection than that afforded by a belt of tall reeds. Nothing is produced here, even the necessary fruits and culinary vegetables being brought from Malta, or the Mediterranean ports. Soil and fresh water for the little gardens has to be procured from Ismalia, fifty miles away.
In the markets we found plenty of ripe grapes, fine pomegranates, water-melons, and great pithy-skinned oranges. Vegetables consisted of lettuce, onions, beet, the Egyptian turnip-rooted kind, peas, okre, and gourds. Most of the stands were attended by lazy Arab women, of various ages, who sat cross-legged among their goods, and kept off the flies with switches of horse-hair. A tight-fitting cap, ornamented with little gold coins, covered their heads, and their figures were enshrouded in great black cloaks, reaching to their heels.
We saw some old Arabs watering the hot and dusty streets with sea-water, which they carried in large skin “bottles,” slung behind them, so that the march of modern progress has not yet obliterated all the old customs and utensils of these singularly primitive people. We took about a hundred tons of coal on board here. This was brought to the side of the vessel in lighters, and carried up sloping planks by some fifty or sixty swarthy fellows, who kept up a droning chant the whole time. They each carried up about a hundred weight at once in a basket; and the whole gang reminded one of a colony of black ants, as they swarmed up one plank in quick succession, and trotted down another, after disposing of their dirty load. Perhaps the Pyramids, and other gigantic architectural erections, were reared by myriads of ant-like workers, similar to these we now saw.
SHE OF THE MARKET.
Two mail steamers entered the Canal before us, and it is a very odd sight to see the masts of the first one gliding away to the left, nothing else being visible but the flat sea of sand as far as the eye can reach. Pilots are necessary for the Canal, and notwithstanding their special knowledge and skill, vessels frequently get aground. Coaling over, we get under way and enter the strip of salt water which connects the Mediterranean with the Gulf of Suez, passing through the flat desert, a distance of about eighty-seven miles. The completion of this undertaking, apart from facilitating European and Eastern commerce, has also, if local report speaks truly, benefited the climate of the district as well; a current of cool air is now attracted along its route, and the precious burden of the rain-clouds has also been brought to this tract of arid sands, which previously were almost entirely destitute of showers. Another benefit to the dwellers on its shores is the fish which travel along this strip of water-way and so are caught close to the doors of those who live or who are employed along its banks. At five mile intervals along the banks are stations for signalling purposes, and as the strip of seaway is not broad enough for two vessels to pass each other, the Canal is widened at each “gare,” so that one vessel can make fast while the other passes. The whole thing is regulated by a simple telegraphic and signalling system. Nearly all these stations have little gardens, but the prettiest of them all in this way is that at the old Arab town and ferry station of Kantara, through which many caravans pass on their way to and from Cairo. Here is a tiny hotel, and several little whitewashed houses with shady verandahs laden with climbing plants of various kinds. One of the houses is sheltered by a row of poplars, and the colour and fragrance of the oleanders were delightful. The Arabs call this flower the “Rose of the Desert,” and certainly at this little oasis it might fairly be said that the desert had been made “to blossom as the rose.”
We reached here at sunset, and the air was deliciously cool and fresh, and a sight of the dark green poplar trees was most cheering and home-like. Crickets chirped in the sand, and the splashing of the fish in the Canal was heard very frequently after we had made fast for the night. The tints on the vegetation and sand-hills by the banks just before sunset are most lovely, and the sunsets themselves very gorgeous as seen through the clear dry air. Two of the firemen had to be placed in irons soon after leaving Port Said, to prevent them from leaping overboard or injuring themselves. They were literally maddened by some villanous spirituous drink which had been smuggled on board during the hurry and bustle of coaling in the morning. Here and there we passed the bodies of dead camels, on which wolfish-looking dogs or vultures regale themselves. Flocks of flamingoes were seen in the distance. As the air becomes clearer after sunrise the distant sand-hills resemble islands in a broad lake or sea, an effect due to mirage; indeed, the semblance of a flat expanse of water lying in the full sunshine near the horizon is so perfect as to deceive all but the experienced. The hills of loose sand close to the banks of the Canal are swept quite smooth by the winds in some places, while here and there the surface is rippled like a snow-ruck, and the foot-prints on these “sands of time” made by the passing Arab are singularly like those made in frozen snow.
At one of the stations an old Arab offered a basket of very fine fish for sale which he had caught in the Canal the night before. We got a view of the Khedive’s Palace and M. F. de Lessep’s residence at Ismalia just before running through the “Bitter Lakes,” and reached Suez before sundown. The passage through the Canal takes about two days, as the rate of progress is necessarily slow to avoid washing down the banks, and there are frequent stoppages.
Suez is a larger town and much older than Port Said, but its inhabitants depend almost entirely on the few residents connected with the Canal and Railway to Alexandria, and the pilgrims who land here on their way to Mecca and Medina, the birthplace and tomb of their Prophet. After leaving Suez the climate becomes hotter every day. The coast-line is backed by barren looking copper-coloured mountains, and the air smells hot and dry, like that of the greenhouse devoted to the cactus family at Kew. Two or three steamers with pilgrims on board for Suez were seen.
ARAB DHOW.
Among the visitors from the coast were great brown locusts, a humming-bird hawk moth, and one or two small birds. A quail flew on board, and flitted about the deck for two or three days. Another little bird, as elegantly shaped as a lark, stayed on board for several days; it was brown in colour, with almost black wing-tips; it had a band of white just above the tail, and this gave the bird a characteristic appearance, especially during its jerky red-cap like flight.
We went into Aden, and I never felt the heat so much anywhere before or since. It is a huge Dutch oven of sunburnt rocks without a sign of vegetation as seen from the harbour. It is astonishing how soon one begins to take a personal interest in a ship on which a long voyage has to be made. The second mate was the skipper of a China trader, and tells me of the palmy days before the Canal was opened, and when freights were £12 a ton. One of the quartermasters was an ex-royal yachtsman, a civil and obliging old fellow, with a sharp eye for grog. One of the stewards has been a photographer, and another is a hairdresser—rather a luxury to have aboard ship. The old Welsh stewardess was a character, with nightly tendencies towards hot rum and water and old superstitious stories of the sea. The captain is a fat, red-whiskered old sea-dog, who knows all about everything, but evidently never enjoyed an introduction to Mr. Lindley Murray in his youth. His politics are peculiar, and his motto appears to be that of the ultra radicals, “Down with everything what’s up.”
Penang was our next stopping-place, and we got ashore for two days, and enjoyed a walk around the town and a ride to the “Falls” and the “Hill.” Two days afterwards we stepped on to the Pile wharf at Tanjong Paggar or the “fenced cape” at Singapore, and our experiences of the tropics really began. The voyage for two days down the Straits of Malacca had been very pleasant, and we thoroughly enjoyed the smooth blue sea and clear sky, flecked now and then by tiny fleets of junks with their mat sails of a soft golden hue, reminding one of cornstacks at home. Bukit-Jugra, Cape Rachardo, and Mount Ophir towering up above the horizon behind the town of Malacca itself, were distinctly seen ere we reached the numerous islets near the entrance to the harbour and roads at Singapore.
A long sea voyage has its pleasures as well as its drawbacks; and in travelling eastward, more especially, it is quite possible, after crossing “the Bay,” to get a smooth voyage all the way. There are times when the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the China Sea lie sleeping in the sunshine, and a steamer runs as smoothly as a canal boat. Of course a yachtsman of the old sea-dog school is disgusted with this sort of fine weather sailing; but it is most pleasant to passengers on board steamships who can lie and read under the cool side of the awning, drinking in the fresh ozonised sea air, untroubled for the nonce by the cares of business or the whirl and bustle of the town.
A curious feeling comes over one on viewing the boundless ocean for the first time on a calm, cloudless day. It makes one feel extremely small to gaze on what appears to be the eternity of sea around, with not a speck or a sail to break the view on all sides. Then when a breeze springs up a sense of freedom animates the breast as the vessel rushes through the water and shakes the milk-white foam from her bows, as though also glad to be free. The pleasure is akin to that of the saddle. The exhilarating motion of the ship stirs one’s blood and sends it coursing through one’s veins, as she “walks the waters like a thing of life,” and the strong pure breeze fans our cheeks and the cool spray comes in our faces like a shower of dew. Well might Ruskin give our English pastime of yachting the first place amongst recreations. Nothing can be more refreshing than to stand on board a tight little vessel when there is, according to the poetry of youthful memory,
“A wet sheet and a flowing sea, and a wind that follows fast.”
In the joy of the moment you do not wonder at the sea-fights, the brave sailors, and the corsairs of old; the men who love the sea and can struggle with it through all its moods and phases, will be brave anywhere. If the sea does not nerve a man to brave actions, nothing else ever will. Life on the sea is most refreshing to the average landsman, and on board ship time flies more pleasantly perhaps than anywhere else, if it be true that “sweet do nothing” is the acme of enjoyment. What an appetite the sea-breezes give one for breakfast, which is perhaps of all meals that least enjoyed by inland residents on shore. Our floating cities are the triumphs of modern civilised ingenuity; and during propitious weather in a warm climate, life afloat possesses for the time a freshness and novelty unobtainable elsewhere.
CHAPTER II.
SINGAPORE.
Hotels—Singapore—An Eastern Port—A Tropical Island—Chinese Settlers—Chinese Play—Tropical Night—Climate.
This port, which is also the seat of the government of the Straits Settlements, has not inaptly been called the “Liverpool of the East,” and the applicability of that title soon becomes evident to the stranger from “home,” who finds himself on the landing-stage at Tanjong Paggar for the first time. Here is a range of warehouses or “godowns” for the storage of goods, and coaling sheds for the supply of the mail and other steamers moored alongside. One is soon glad to get away from the heat, the noise of the steam winch, and the coal-dust; and a gharry or cab having been procured, the dusky Jehu springs to his seat on the shaft, from which “coign of vantage” he uses both whip and voice in urging on at a gallop a plucky little pony, scarcely larger than a donkey, and most probably bred either in Sumatra or Pegu. You meet other little ponies in other little gharries coming full tilt down the road to the wharf, a string of buffalo-carts, or occasionally a neat little private carriage, and you soon become aware of the fact that Singapura, as it is still called, of the Malays is both hot and dusty. On you go, and the stuffy little gharry, even if it has no windows, soon becomes as hot as an oven, and the perspiration streams from every pore. By the time you reach the hotels the chances are that your shirt and collar are in the state best described as “pulpy;” and if you are of a sanguine temperament, your face may be said to resemble “the rising sun.” Of course you have kept your eyes open as you came along past the rough hedges on the right clothed with red lantanas, the neat police-station on the bank to the left, with those beautiful crimson and buff-flowered hibiscus bushes before the door. Then the rows of Chinese houses and shops, an elaborate Hindoo temple or two of white stone, and then street after street of whitewashed red tile roofed shops, until you reach the square, where you meet your agent, or to the hotels, nearly all of which are clustered around the tall spire of the cathedral, which you will have seen as the ship steamed slowly into harbour. The chances are you will have been recommended to one or other of the hotels by some knowing friend.
The Hotel de l’Europe is the principal one; but at the time I arrived in Singapore the chef-de-cuisine had such a bad name that I was recommended elsewhere. One is sure to be comfortable at any of the first-class houses at prices varying from two to five dollars daily, or less by monthly arrangement. For this sum one may secure a more or less comfortable bedroom or suite simply whitewashed, the floor covered with yellow rattan matting, which is both cool and clean. The walls, as a rule, do not boast of anything great in the way of pictorial embellishment; at night, however, lively little insect-eating lizards disport themselves thereon; and then, too, the hum of the hungry mosquito is heard. In the morning you rise soon after gun-fire (5 A.M.). It is daylight about 6 A.M.; and after partaking of a cup of tea or coffee, and the inevitable two bits of toast, you have a walk. Everybody nearly seems astir. While dressing, the chances are you will hear a gentle tap at the door, or hearing it opened very cautiously, you turn suddenly, and are startled by a dusky apparition in an enormous white turban. It is an itinerant Kling, or Hindoo Figaro, who seeing you are one of the new arrivals by yesterday’s mail, would like to shave you, or cut your hair, at a charge of half a dollar.
Strolling outside into the main thoroughfares you see a strange motley crowd. The markets are full to overflowing with edibles of all kinds; meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit lie about in glorious profusion. Here a heap of fresh fish of the most vivid colours, there a pile of yellow pine-apples or bright scarlet chilies, oranges, pomoloes, mangosteen and rambutan, Chinese long beans, fresh green lettuces and young onions, tomatoes, and the hundred and one elements of native cookery, which are perfectly unintelligible to any but native eyes. Chinese coolies coming in from the interior of the island laden with fruit and vegetables, or other commodities. Sleek fat-faced celestials in black jackets, loose white trousers, and white European felt hats, taking their morning’s stroll, and in every doorway gaunt-featured Chinese artizans of the tailor and shoemaker type sit or stand enjoying the cool fresh air and their morning’s whiff of tobacco at the same time. The Chinese predominate, but you will find dusky spider-limbed Klings and the more compact little brown Malays fairly represented. You will notice gharries coming into town laden with Chinese traders, and other vehicles bring in the European storekeepers, agents, clerks, &c. You return about eight o’clock, and have a bath, and then dress for breakfast.
As you sit in the verandah or open basement awaiting the gong for breakfast being struck, various itinerant traders, generally Klings or Chinese, try to tempt you with their wares, for which they ask about five times as much as they are worth, or could be bought for in London. Japanese and Chinese fans, slippers, cabinets, lacquer ware, and carved ivory goods, all of second or third rate value, form their stock in trade in general, while some offer gold brocade worked for slippers or smoking-caps, crape handkerchiefs and shawls, or Indian embroidery, and even socks and white handkerchiefs of cheap European make.
Of course, to a new arrival, everything is strange, and not the least perplexing is the Babel of language on all hands. English, Dutch, German, Chinese, Javanese, Hindustani, Spanish, Portuguese, and Malay, the latter by far the most general—the lingua franca which all use in common. At last, bang! bang!! bang!!! goes the gong, and breakfast is ready exactly at 9 A.M. There is no ceremony. A little regiment,—an awkward squad rather,—of Chinese “boys” hand the dishes in turn. As a rule, everything is well cooked, and there is variety enough for everybody. Beef-steaks and mutton-chops, one or two well-made curries and rice, eggs and bacon, cold ham, boiled eggs, salads, vegetables, and plenty of fresh fruit. Coffee or tea is not so much in favour here in the East as at home, bottled Bass, claret, or Norwegian beer, being preferred instead. After a long morning’s walk, however, scarcely any beverage is so grateful as an accompaniment to the post-prandial cigar as is a cup of freshly-roasted coffee. Breakfast over, the real business of the day commences. All the large stores and godowns are opened at 8.30 or 9.0 A.M., and from 10 until 12.30 everyone is alert and busy. Gharries are whisking about in all directions. The fattest and sleekest and richest of Chinese merchants arrive in their more or less imposing carriages, boats and sampans are going to or returning from the shipping in the roads, buffalo carts ply between the godowns in town and those at the wharf, the sun pours down its heat and light from the zenith, and everybody seems intent on making their hay while it shines.
All the principal stores and shops are either in “the Square” or its vicinity, and here you can procure home comforts of nearly every description, together with the latest books and home papers. You will procure the latest news at Little’s Store, and will see many things there to interest you. Sale & Co.’s, and Katz’s Stores, are also well worth a visit, and few of the Chinese shops will compare well with that of the late Hon. C. Whampoa, C.M.G., who was a most influential trader in the place. The “Square” is an oblong plot of turf planted with various tropical trees, and one of these, although fast going to decay, is well worthy of notice, being completely enshrouded with rare orchids of various kinds. This stands immediately opposite the Singapore Dispensary, and owes its interesting appearance to Mr. Jamie, who first planted it with orchids some years ago. Amongst other plants Aerides suavissimum is especially luxuriant, completely wreathing some of the principal branches with its glossy green leaves, and many seedlings of this species have germinated and are now promising little plants. Vandas, Phalænopsis grandiflora, and P. amabilis also grow and flower well here in close proximity to the dusty streets. In Singaporean gardens the rarest of moth orchids are planted in cocoa-nut shells and hung from the verandahs, or placed on the mango or orange trees on the lawn, where they soon establish themselves. How many English orchid amateurs would wish for such a genial clime.
A morning in the “Square” gives one a tolerably clear insight into the enterprise and trade of Singapore. You hear a good deal about the price of sago or gutta and rice, or about the chartering of steamers or sailing craft, or the freight on home or export goods. You are sure to meet two or three captains of trading steamers. Captain Linguard, perhaps, after one of his trips to the Coti river away on the south-east of Borneo, and then you will hear something of the rubber-market, or of the pirates, of whom, perhaps, few men know more than this energetic “Rajah Laut,” or “Sea King,” as he is called by the natives.
Another maritime celebrity is Captain Ross, a genial sailor, who owns the mail steamer “Cleator,” which runs between Singapore, Labuan, and Brunei, on the north-west Bornean coast. Captain Ross is well acquainted with the principal places in the whole Malayan Archipelago; and few residents have an equal colloquial knowledge of their languages. He has been attacked by pirates more than once in the old days, and is quite a nautical authority in every way. That tall, dark young fellow yonder, with the heavy moustache, is Captain Cowie, who ran the gauntlet of the Spanish gun-boats so successfully during the Sulu war, carrying rice, powder, and arms for the Sultan’s people; and here one also meets “old sea dogs” of nearly every nationality, but more especially English and Dutch.
One must of course look in at Emmerson’s for tiffin, and a glance at the home papers and telegrams. Tiffin is much like breakfast, only nearly all the dishes are cold. The curries here are excellent; and a well-made salad of fresh green vegetables is a treat, when the temperature is 92° in the shade. The Raffles Institution is well worthy of a visit—an interesting museum of native curiosities and natural history specimens having recently been formed; and there is here an excellent library of books, on nearly all subjects. A collection of economic products is in course of formation, and if well carried out, will add much to the interest of the place. The Botanical Gardens are situated at Tanglin, a distance of about three miles from the town of Singapore; and as the roads are smooth and level, it is a very pleasant journey, either in the morning or evening. One night each week the military band performs in the garden; and then a good many of the residents ride or drive out to “eat the air,” and hear the music before dinner. Good collections of orchids, palms, and economic plants, are here kept up, and the place forms an agreeable promenade morning and evening. In addition to the plants, a small collection of animals and birds, for the most part natives of the Archipelago, may be seen here. The island itself is tolerably flat, the elevated portions being in the form of low hills, or “bukits,” the highest, Bukit Timah, being about 400 feet above sea level. Many of the rare plants, formerly found here, have died out since the destruction of the old forest for cultivation. Wild pigs are plentiful; but the tigers do not often repeat the predatory visits of twenty or thirty years ago, when two or three hundred Chinamen were devoured every year. They now very rarely cross the “Old Straits,” a channel about half a mile wide, which separates the island from the mainland of Jahore.
In the Singapore Times, however, for Feb. 1, 1879, the following paragraph appeared, which shows that the brutes have not quite lost their old-established man-eating desires:—
“Tigers, it would appear, are approaching Singapore town unpleasantly close. On the 29th January a Chinaman was taken away by one on a plantation only about four miles from town; and unpleasant rumours are afloat that some have lately been seen in Sirangoon and Changhie.”
Much fruit is grown; and there are cocoa-nut, gambir, pepper, indigo and gamboge plantations on a small scale. Vegetable crops here, as in San Francisco, are a monopoly of the thrifty Chinese gardeners. The trade in economic products of the soil of the neighbouring islands is an important one, and, ere long, when cultivation extends more fully into Jahore and Perak, this will be much increased. Some of the planters from Ceylon have already commenced extensive clearing operations in Jahore; and if these succeed, the rest is but a question of time. A few rare and interesting plants yet linger in the jungle, notably, the curious pitcher plant (Nepenthes Rafflesiana), which, singularly enough, is one of the first plants to spring up after a jungle fire. Gleichenia dichotoma clothes some of the hill-sides here as freely as the common brake-fern at home.
One of the most singular of native plants, however, is that known as Amorphophallus campanulatus, a relative of the “Lords and Ladies” of our English woods; but this tropical species is of Titanic dimensions, producing a lurid spathe, nearly two feet in circumference, and exhaling the most fetid and repulsive of odours.
In rambling about the island one comes across fertile little gardens and groves of mangoes, mangosteen, and other fruit trees, the tenants being generally Chinamen. The bye-streets of the town present some novel sights to a stranger, being tenanted for the most part by Chinese artizans and shopkeepers, the workshops being generally quite open to the street. Blacksmiths, tin-workers, tailors and shoemakers, carpenters, coopers, and basket-makers here ply their callings, and turn out excellent work, although some of the tools used are exceedingly clumsy in appearance from our own point of view.
Passing down some of the streets beneath the shade of the piazzas, one meets with general stores of every description, each with its little stall right outside the door close to the path. Here you can purchase almost everything; tools, nails and screws, needles, pencils, cotton, cutlery, ammunition, old Tower muskets—indeed nearly everything in the way of hardware goods, whether Chinese or European. The European goods are such as are especially made for this market, and the prices are surprisingly low.
It is curious to observe how some industrial products are universally used here to the exclusion of others. For example, “Bryant & May’s” matches, so common at home, are here supplanted by a neatly made “Tändstickor,” ten little boxes of which are made up into a packet, which sells for as low as six cents, although ten cents is always asked of strangers. In many Chinese and Kling shops European tinned provisions and patent medicines may be obtained at a very slight advance on home prices, as these petty traders watch the sales of old ships’ stores very closely, and are thus enabled to purchase very cheaply.
The Chinese compete with all comers in cheap labour; and their innate capacity for imitation enables them to do so very often with advantage in the case of manufactures. If you can only give a Chinese workman a pattern or sample of the goods you require—whether boots, clothing, cabinet work, or jewellery, he may be trusted to imitate the same even to a fault. They are most industrious, having apparently no regular hours of labour, but often toiling from early morning until far into the night for a scanty pittance; but no matter how small their earnings, they generally contrive to save something. Indeed it is difficult to say whether ’tis their industry or their thrift which most deserves commendation. Of course they have their faults as a people, and most serious some of them are; and wherever they are admitted as emigrants, a strong hand is needed to keep them in order.
For opening up new trading enterprises or colonies in the East their aid is invaluable, as they are most frugal, and possess a peculiar habit of making the best of circumstances. In Sarawak, and also in the British colony of Labuan, the money derived from the opium and spirit farms form a main feature in the revenue, so that eastern colonies, in favouring Chinese emigration, add to their revenue by their expenditure as well as by their labour. Many, by thrift and frugality, rise to positions of affluence, and then it is curious to see how thoroughly they fall into the ways of the class to which they reach. This makes a Chinese colony so prosperous as a rule; for if a man has money he is sure to spend it either in trade, or in a fine house, garden, servants, horses and carriages, and other luxuries. As a rule they deal with their own class, but they take to European luxuries very kindly. I was asked out to dine several times at the houses of wealthy Chinese whilst in the East, and was at first rather disappointed at the thorough European character of the repast. Clean cloth, knives and forks of course; and every course might have been prepared in Pall Mall, if we except the curries; and it is but natural that the curries of the East are inimitable elsewhere. You get most delicately prepared pastry, and ten to one, roast beef and plum pudding, which are all the world over understood to be our national dishes.
A gentleman told me that once when in Paris, just after the war, he was conversing with a friend near the Tuileries, when a wicked-eyed young gamin overhearing his bad French with an English accent, observed, “Ah, M’sieu rost-bif, God-dam,” as he rapidly vanished round the corner. Many of the rich merchants speak English well; if not, then Malay is the medium of conversation. And the wherewithal to wash down your food is not forgotten: indeed, many of the rich “babas” give excellent champagne breakfasts, and “Bass” and good Bordeaux are as common as at European meals. However addicted to “samshu” and “shandu,”—the baleful narcotic immortalised by De Quincey,—a Chinaman may be privately, you will find him courteous, and eagerly apprehensive as to the comfort and enjoyment of his guests on all occasions when he entertains Europeans.
Sometimes you meet with a surprise at a Chinese dinner—a surprise especially prepared for your benefit. I was present at one where we had small dishes of rice and condiments set before us, with “chop sticks” in lieu of knife and fork. Now a native to the manner born will use his two chop sticks as cleverly as Mr. G. W. Moore handles his bones; and as he leans over his dish you see a constant stream of food running up to his mouth, while with your chop sticks awkwardly held you simply demonstrate what “eating porridge with a knitting pin” really means. Well, dish followed dish, and we began to think the whole thing “awfully slow,” when the host arose and requested us to accompany him to the “dining-room.”
Sure enough we found ourselves in a large and well lit interior. There was a dinner-table laid in European style, the silver and glass irreproachable, and floral decorations rather tastefully arranged graced the board. Of course there was a good deal of laughter as the neat Chinese “boys” handed round the sherry and bitters as we stood in groups; and a few minutes afterwards the gong was beaten for dinner in quite a homely fashion. A jolly old Spanish priest was present, and our long-tailed host did not omit to ask him to say grace, which he solemnly did, first in English, standing the while, and then we were all surprised as the rubicund-cheeked friar rolled out a Chinese prayer interlarded with choice maxims from Confucius, and all in the Hokien dialect of Chinese. The whole thing was much enjoyed. We had soup oxtail and “birds’ nest,” the latter extremely good, but perhaps rather too sweet for European liking; fish of several kinds, beef and mutton cooked in various ways, also pork cutlets excellently cooked, as indeed only Chinese cooks can prepare them; pastry, cheese, and such fruits for dessert as no money could procure from Covent Garden. Fat juicy mangoes, delicate mangosteen, rambutan, bananas, and other kinds, never eaten in perfection anywhere but in the tropics—the gardens of the sun.
A “wyong” or Chinese play had been organised by our host, one portion of his house being fitted up as a private theatre, and to this we adjourned after dinner. The performers were a celebrated troupe just arrived from China, and very clever they were, especially in pantomime. Of course we understood not a word of what was spoken; and yet so expressive were the actions that the plot and motive of the play was perfectly comprehended even in detail. The music of shrieking two-stringed violins, and the rattle of gongs and tom-toms which accompanied them, however, might fairly be added to Mr. Sothern’s list of things which “no fellah can understand.” The plot was of an undutiful daughter of poor parents who was beloved of a youth of her own age and station. A rich mandarin, however, loves and marries her. Her young lover is the most dutiful of sons, and a good spirit helps him on; while at the same time a bad one causes the mandarin heavy losses by sea and land. The undutiful daughter has her parents driven from her husband’s gates, where they had come to beg, while her former lover succours them, and they ultimately die, blessing him. Eventually the mandarin is degraded, and the dutiful youth is elevated to his place for some service he has rendered to one of the emperor’s favourite ministers. He then makes a speech, telling how good and clever he has been, and ultimately marries the tiny-footed daughter of the minister who has befriended him. Nor does the play finish until his “poor, but honest parents” and the audience are convinced by ocular proof that a son and heir has been born of the union, a piece of good fortune for which the rich but wicked mandarin before him had hoped in vain. The character of the youth was excellently played throughout by a young Chinese lady from Hong Kong, and I do not remember to have seen a male part acted much better by a female actress anywhere. So that the Lottie Venns and Kate Vaughans of our own stage must look to their laurels, as ere long they may possibly have to compete with the “cheap Chinese labour” of the Eastern mimes.
“KAYU KUTOH.”
It was late that night as we drove back to our hotel, and such a night as one can see only in the tropics, where the moonlight is bright enough to read by, and streams down like a gloriously brilliant bridal veil over sweet-scented blossoms wet with dew, and the most elegant of palm-trees, over the gorgeous floral treasures of eastern gardens, and over the homes of thousands of dusky brides. The sounds heard during the otherwise still hours of evening or night are peculiar, the clucking sound of a lizard in the tree overhead is quite bird-like, you hear some frog-like croaking in the wet ditch beside the road, the subdued humming of distant tomtoms reaches you from the hut of a Hindoo Syce, and the almost mournful cadences of a Javanese prayer chanted by a party of labourers in a garden-house or field-hut reach you on the cool breeze. Then comes the boom of the “Kayu Kutoh,”[1] or wooden gong on which the Malay “mata mata,” literally “man with eyes,” or watchman, beats the hour at one of the outlying police-stations. Fires are not at all uncommon, and then you are roused out of a sound sleep by a couple of shots from the signal battery, which shake the whole place. As you lean from your window enjoying just the last sweet whiff ere turning in for the night you may, perchance, hear the silence broken by snatches of song familiar to your ears—the songsters being a party of rowdy sailors returning to the ship after a “wet night” on shore. I am sadly afraid that the low grog-shops monopolise much of “Jack’s” time and money when ashore, notwithstanding that there is here an excellent “Sailor’s Home,” furnished with many conveniences, and supplying the comforts of an hotel at a cheap rate. Towards morning the chattering of sparrows and the shouting of rival roosters are among the most familiar of sounds which remind one of home.
The society of Singapore will compare favourably with that of any British Colony, and for genial hospitality its residents cannot well be surpassed. As in India, new comers are expected to call upon the residents first. In my own case I brought letters of introduction to some of the older inhabitants, and I must here acknowledge how handsomely those cheques were honoured by them. One scarcely knows how valuable genial hospitality really is at home, but far away it is pleasant to find how thoroughly English—British, one ought to say—is the welcome extended to strangers. Government House is the Court, of course, and it is needless to say, that all courtesies essential are there extended to both residents and others. Of course, in a community formed of many nationalities, and of people whose trade and other interests are liable to clash with those of their neighbours, there are sure to be little murmurings and bickerings, together with petty jealousies of various kinds. This is so, more or less, everywhere, but in the Colonies there are few, if any, old titled families to balance the commercial interest. One may see some bonny English faces in the carriages which are here driven around the Esplanade just as along the “Lady’s Mile” at home; or one evening a week are gathered around the band-stand at the gardens. The climate, however, is not well suited to the development of the rosy cheeks we see at home; the peach-like bloom too soon gives place to the soft purity of the lily, and it often becomes necessary for the wife and children to return to a cooler climate, in order to regain somewhat of the health and strength of which a lovely but debilitating climate has robbed them for a time. Here, as in India, this is a serious drawback to many residents. Here, too, there are no hill stations sufficiently near, or, as yet, adapted to serve as Sanatoriums. Now that Jahore is being opened up, however, it is to be hoped that a few bungalows may be erected on Gunong Puloi, on the summit of which the air is comparatively cool and bracing, much more so than on Penang Hill, and it may be readily reached from Singapore in two days. The cost of living here, even in proportion to the large salaries received, is far in excess of that at home, and the mode of life itself is different. Here, one must have a large house, and if there is a family, five or six servants at least are needed. The wages paid to these appear small when compared with the cost of English servants, but at least three times as many are required. The master must have his “boy,” the mistress her “ayah,” then the cook, water-carrier, grooms, gardener, must be provided, to say nothing of nursery attendance. Native provisions are tolerably cheap, but many things essential must be imported from home at an advanced rate. Furniture is dear, and pianos, and many other necessities, to say nothing of luxuries, must also be brought from the old country, and freight, if not commission, has to be added to the cost. The very nature of the currency used adds to other expenses. Many things purchasable at home for a shilling, here cost a dollar, at the least a rupee or two shillings, and the result of all this is that with an annual income of five hundred pounds in England, one must think twice ere a jump is made at what appears a tempting bait, namely, “a thousand a year” in the East.
The progress and importance of Singapore, commercially and politically, have never ceased to increase since 1819, when the British flag was first raised on the island by Sir Stamford Baffles.
[1] This last instrument closely resembles the “teponaztli,” an instrument still in use by the Indians in the Cordilleras of Mexico, the deep thudding sound of which may be heard a distance of several miles. [↑]
CHAPTER III.
VISIT TO JAHORE—GUNONG PULOI.
On the way—Gambling—River-travel—In the Forest—Vegetation—A Resting-place—Tropical Fruits—Breed of Dogs—On the summit—Wild Animals—Wild Men—Sale of Women.
This mountain lies about twenty-five miles north-west of the native town of Jahore, and is a trifle over 2,000 feet in height. To reach it from Singapore, one must take post-horses or the coach which runs daily to Krangi, a police-station on the margin of the “Old Strait,” and thence little steam ferry-boats carry one on to Jahore, from which place the mountain is reached partly in boats viâ the Scudai river, and partly on foot through the forest.
I had agreed to visit the Puloi mountain in company with the government botanist, and leaving Singapore early, we reached Jahore about 3 P.M., after several little stoppages on the way. The ride from Singapore to Krangi was a very pleasant one to me, fresh as I was from the “old country.” The roads are remarkably smooth, and of a bright red colour, their margins fringed with orchards of tropical fruits or rows of betel-nut palms. Here and there are patches of sugar-cane, tapioca, or indigo, little plots of great-leaved bananas, while at intervals one catches passing glimpses of neat white bungalows nestling amid tall cocoa-nut groves. Arriving at Krangi, hot and dusty, we rested some time in a clean bungalow or rest-house, built for the convenience of travellers by the Government. The native police were very attentive, and we took our luncheon here and strolled around the station, and saw abundant evidence of the wild pigs, which are said to be very plentiful. While we waited, the Maharajah drove up in a neat little carriage drawn by a pair of ponies. This was just before his visit to England, and we obtained a good view of him. He is a fine manly fellow, with a bushy moustache, and was dressed in white trousers and jacket, with a white sun-hat, and wore a coloured “sarong” around his waist. We informed him of our intended visit to the mountain, and he promised us that Mr. Hole, his secretary, should furnish us with guides and boatmen.
We had arranged with a Chinese sampan man to ferry ourselves and baggage over, but just as we were about starting one of the little steam ferry-boats came over, and leaving “Johnnie” to bring on our things and a Chinese “boy” in charge, we crossed in the steamboat. We took up our quarters with Mr. Boultbee, with whom we were to stay the night. Jahore itself we found to be a straggling place built along the margin of the strait, and consisting of the Istana and a mosque, together with a few whitewashed houses roofed with red tiles, and native palm-thatched cottages. The best of the tiled houses are occupied by Chinese shopkeepers, the principal wares being rice, fruit, fish, coopery, boxes, baskets, and miscellaneous stores. The principal industry of the place is the timber trade. Extensive steam saw-mills, fitted with good machinery, are here worked by the Maharajah, a good many natives being employed in the trade, while the timber finds a market in Singapore, where a depôt exists for business purposes. A railway was projected to the forest near Gunong Puloi some years ago, and several miles of wooden tramways were actually laid down, but the work is now suspended. Were such a roadway completed, it would do much to open up a fertile country especially rich in fine timber, rattans, and other jungle produce. The culture of gambier (Uncaria Gambir, Roxb.), pepper and other products now cultivated by the Chinese settlers would also be facilitated. As it is, the timber is cut as near to the streams as is possible, and is then dragged by buffaloes through the jungle and floated down to the town, several logs being lashed together so as to form rafts, on which a man stands to steer it clear of snags and other obstacles.
Gambling is one of the curses of this place, and is publicly carried on in some large buildings near the saw-mills. As the Maharajah derives a percentage from the tables, gambling is not likely to be suppressed here, as it has been at Singapore. Mr. Boultbee’s house, where we stayed, is a large and comfortable one of wood, and it stands on an eminence at the north-east end of the town. From the verandah a beautiful view of the old strait is obtained, reminding one of Windermere, only that the vegetation is more luxuriant, brightened as it is by a tropic sun. We walked in the garden and forest behind at sunrise, when every flower and leaf was bathed in dew, and were much pleased with the vegetation. The elk’s-horn fern (Platycerium biforme) grew on the stems of several of the trees, and we saw it high up in the branches of the forest trees behind the house. Nepenthes ampullaria, and the noblest of all ferns, Dipteris Horsfieldii, were also abundant in the jungle quite close to the sea-beach, and tall gleichenias clambered up the bushes to a height of at least twenty feet.
Birds and butterflies were alike plentiful in the jungle, and some of the latter were very gorgeous in colour. After our morning walk we looked over the saw-mills, and then returned with the manager to breakfast. We afterwards visited Mr. Hole at the Istana, and found that he had already obtained guides and boatmen, so that we at once had our baggage transferred to the boats, and prepared to start on our journey. Some delay arose, however, owing to the man having to purchase stores, and so it was after four o’clock before we bade Mr. Hole adieu on the steps of the Istana jetty and got fairly off. All our heavy baggage was stowed in a native boat, manned by four Malays, while we ourselves and our stores occupied a Chinese sampan. Our craft was pulled, or rather pushed, by its owner, a stalwart celestial; and as he had never been up the Scudai river before, we had an old Malay sitting on the prow to act as pilot, the stream being very narrow in places, with numerous snags and shoals. Notwithstanding this precaution, however, we were aground twice, and the boat heeled over in the current rather uncomfortably. “Johnnie” had to plunge out into the mud of this alligator’s paradise to push our craft into deep water again. These were trifling discomforts, however, not worth a thought amid much that was novel and interesting. We ate our dinners in the boat just at dusk, and enjoyed the cool breeze which swept over the water as we glided up stream.
The silence of the night was unbroken, save by the regular dip of the oars; and as darkness increased, the tiny lamps of the fire-flies became visible here and there among the vegetation on the banks. As we glided onwards their numbers increased, until we came upon them in thousands, evidently attracted by some particular kind of low tree, around which they flashed simultaneously, their scintillating brilliancy being far beyond what I could have imagined to be possible. During my whole sojourn in the East I never saw them again in anything like such numbers. The moon arose about eight o’clock, revealing more distinctly the gradual narrowing of the river, the vegetation of which appeared to be very luxuriant, towering far above our heads. We could recognise the tufted leaves and tall stems of a slender-growing pandan, standing out clear and dark against the sky, and here and there the tall dead trunk of a giant tree added to the weird beauty of a scene, in which the lack of accurate knowledge left much to the imagination.
Our solitary Chinese boatman dipped his oars with the same easy swing as at starting; and about nine o’clock he finished a stiff pull of nine or ten miles by running our boat into the little creek at Kanka Kaladi, he having kept ahead of the Malays, who paddled the other boat, all the way. On our arrival, all the Chinese who live here were abed; so we hauled our craft up to a boat-house at the head of the creek, and got all our things into the loft overhead, and having spread our rugs, and lighted our lamp, we turned in for the night. Before we fell asleep some of the people, who had been disturbed by our arrival, came to have a look at us, and did their best to keep us awake by talking most of the night.
We awoke the next morning just before sunrise, and soon prepared our breakfast of soup and biscuit. We had a stroll around the village, which was entirely occupied by Chinese settlers. The houses were of wood, thatched with palm-leaves, and most of them were surrounded with fruit-trees and cocoa-nut palms. We tried to hire coolies, to carry some of our luggage on to the next village, Kanka Ah Tong, where we were to rest for the night, starting for the summit to-morrow. Unfortunately, the head man was away at Jahore; and some coolies, who expressed their willingness to accompany us, demanded a sum equivalent to five shillings per day for their services, so we decided to do without them; indeed, the Malays we had with us protested against this extortion on the part of the Chinese settlers, and said they would endeavour to carry all themselves.
We pulled out of the creek, and proceeded further up the river, finally landing at a place where there is an excellent road, leading through the forest to Kanka Ah Tong. Here we landed all our things; and our men were fortunate to secure a couple of Javanese woodcutters, who were fishing, and who were willing to carry part of our gear for a fair payment. We rested a little in a hut beside the road, in which were two men suffering from fever, and another, who had dysentery. We gave them medicine, and pushed onwards. Monkeys were very plentiful on the tall trees beside our path; and we saw several grey squirrels, and a few birds, including a curious shrike, and a barbet, which I had never seen before. The trees around us were very tall, and in many cases festooned with rattans, and other climbing-plants. Flowers were not plentiful; and although we made several détours in the forest, nothing of interest was seen.
It was very hot in the middle of the day. Our thermometer stood at 93° in the shade; and nearly all the way our path lay in the open, the sun being very hot overhead. After the first few miles we came to several open plots of land, under cultivation, gambier and pepper being the principal crops. We stayed at one place, where the raw gambier, or “terre japonica,” was being prepared in a low shed. There were several low brick fire-places, over which shallow iron pans were placed; and in these the leaves and young stems are boiled. The product, when finished, looks like wet red clay, and is packed in coarse bags, and sent to Singapore, where it realises about five dollars per picul of 133 lbs. Gambier is a very exhausting crop, literally ruining the land on which it is grown.
The Chinese whom we found here were very much interested and surprised at our visit, and gave us a supply of cocoa-nuts, oranges, and papaw fruit from their garden. The latter fruit are as large as a small Cadiz melon, with delicate red flesh, when perfectly ripe. They are not much esteemed; but I thought these very nice, having a flavour resembling that of apricots. The colourless milk of the young cocoa-nuts, fortified by just a soupçon of brandy, tasted really delicious, after our tramp under a hot sun. These thrifty Chinese had a fine flourishing plantation of bananas, but no ripe fruit; and clumps of yellow sugar-cane here and there attracted the attention of our followers, who helped themselves to the natural “sugar-sticks,” without any compunction whatever.
Refreshed by a short rest, and a cooling draught, we pushed onwards, and reached Kanka Ah Tong about three o’clock. We sought out the old Chinese headman, and through him obtained the loan of a new house, just erected in the centre of the village, so that we were soon established in quarters, and the “boy” then began to cook our evening meal. We were of course soon surrounded by a crowd of villagers; and a paraffin cooking apparatus, which the “boy” had in working order before the door, interested them very much.
I noticed an excellent breed of black and white dogs at this village, in build not unlike a fox-terrier, but larger. These people evidently desired to keep the breed pure; for I noticed that all the dogs in the place were the same. A clear stream ran past the front of our house, and we were glad to get a bath before dinner. In this stream were at least two species of little fish, the largest rarely exceeding three inches in length, being beautifully spotted with dark brown on their sides. We felt deliciously cool after bathing, and ate our dinner comfortably, on seats we extemporised just outside our door.
After a smoke, in the cool of the evening, we prepared our sleeping gear, and turned in for the night. We were up at sunrise, and bathed in the little stream, while my friend’s servant and our men prepared breakfast. We left some of our less needful gear in charge of the headman, and then shouldering our guns, we set out for the mountain, a good ten mile walk, over bad roads, and the last three or four miles is stiff climbing most of the way. Altogether it took us about six hours to accomplish, as we started at about seven o’clock in the morning, and reached the hut at the top a little after one P.M.
The first mile or two the path lies through gambier patches; and at one of the clearings we flushed a couple of fire-back pheasants, but we were too far off to get a shot at them. Their plumage shone resplendently in the morning sunlight, as they rose with the “whir-r-r,” so familiar to sportsmen nearer home. A tolerably level jungle path succeeds the gambier patches for two or three miles further, and then the path commences, leading up the mountain-side.
Our first stopping place was at some distance up the base of the rise, where a bit of folded paper in a split stick directed us to the “Lady Jervoise Falls;” and, as we stood quietly, the sound of the falling water fell on our ears from the left-hand side of the path. We soon plunged down the slope, and reached them, but were rather disappointed, as all the water visible was a brook rushing down a rocky gully, and falling a distance of five or six feet over into a water-worn basin below. The water was clear and cool, and we took advantage of it to secure a bath in the shade of the tall trees overhead. The rocks were beautifully draped with ferns and mosses; and a small species of anæctochilus grew here and there on the mossy rocks. Its leaves were of a rich velvety-green colour, netted with golden veins.
We sat here, and rested awhile, the cool splash of the water sounding pleasantly as it fell into the spreading limpid pool at our feet. Here, for the first time, I made the acquaintance of the jungle leech, a most energetic thing, which neglects no opportunity of taking its sanguinary toll from the passing traveller. Several of them fixed themselves on our legs, the first notice of their unwelcome presence being the oozing of our blood through our white trowsers. Their first bite is rarely felt; and very often, as I afterwards found, it is only by their gorged bodies feeling cold to the skin, that their presence becomes known.
The road from the falls to the summit is in places very steep, and the muscles of one’s legs feel it ere the end of the journey is reached. Many of those who read of jungle travel at home will be sure to imagine it very pleasant to explore a tropical forest, accompanied by a posse of native guides and carriers—with gun on shoulder, and luxuriant vegetation on all sides, and an occasional shot at a big monkey or a beautiful bird overhead. So of a truth it is, but in common with all other pleasures it has its drawbacks. After three or four hours hard walking, varied by a rest now and then, and a few stumbles, we reached the summit, and we luckily were rewarded by a most beautiful view. The atmosphere was clear, and in all directions a vast billowy sea of jungle stretched below us—foam-like flecks of white cloud being visible here and there on the top of the low coast hills.
We found the little hut on the summit rather out of repair, but a little labour in strengthening the principal supports of the roof, and the addition of a little palm-leaf thatch, made it more comfortable. We enjoyed a magnificent sunset, and lit our lamps just at dusk, nor were we loath to make a hearty meal of warm soup, rice and tea, which had been prepared while we looked around our camping ground. After a smoke and a chat we wrapped our rugs around us and were soon asleep on the side benches of sticks covered with freshly-cut palm-leaves. We were awoke during the night by the rain dripping through the roof, but managed to keep ourselves dry by suspending our waterproof sheets overhead. We awoke at daybreak, but could see nothing but a mass of snow-white clouds below us on all sides. After breakfast we started on a collecting tour down the mountain side, and soon struck a deep gully, through which a streamlet washed over the water-worn stones and pebbles.
Here we found one or two very interesting aroids (Schismatoglottis), and ferns were abundant, notably two or three species of lindsayas, their bold fronds being of a rich green colour, shot with steel-blue. Dipteris Horsfieldii clothed the rocky declivities of the gorge here and there, and a large-urned variety of Nepenthes ampullaria was strikingly luxuriant, growing along the edges of wet mossy rocks. Tiny plants only three or four inches in height and half buried in wet moss, decayed leaves, and other forest débris, bore eight or ten pitchers four inches in height and three inches in diameter. N. Rafflesiana, an allied species, we saw clambering up the thick undergrowth to a height of twenty or thirty feet, but the pitchers were not larger than ordinarily are produced by the plant when grown in our hothouses at home. A large branching species of gleichenia grows luxuriantly near the top of this mountain, and seems to replace G. dichotoma, which is so common in Singapore and Pulo Penang. Orchids were sparingly represented by a cœlogyne, and one or two other genera, but nothing of interest was observable. A form of our own Pteris aquilina grew luxuriantly around the hut where the forest had been cleared. A dracæna, with green undulate foliage, almost grassy in its tenuity, and the variegated Cissus porphyrophyllus were plentiful, and a red-veined echites covered mossy trunks beside the stream.
We returned from our collecting about 5 o’clock, tired and wet through—a very common thing indeed in a tropical forest, so that we were glad to strip to the skin and have a bath, followed by a rub dry with coarse towels, and dry clothes. Our dinner of tinned soup and boiled beef was very acceptable, and our cook made a very appetising curry of dried fish and a few chilies collected from bushes which grew in the clearing around our hut, seeds having been sown either designedly or accidentally by former visitors. A cup of tea and a cigar were deliciously soothing after the rough falls and scrambling of the day. We were disappointed with the place as a collecting ground, and resolved to return to the richer forest of the lower slopes near Kanka Ah Tong on the morrow. Our guides gave us an account of this mountain, and assured us that tigers were not uncommon, and that the Chinamen were frequently carried off by them when working in clearings near the forest. Wild pigs, monkeys, and deer, are plentiful. The Argus and fire-back pheasant are found here, and alligators of enormous size are reported as frequenting the rivers further inland.
After dinner we made up a large fire outside the hut, dragging all the fallen trunks in the vicinity to it, for we scarcely relished the idea of a “man-eater” lurking in the neighbourhood, who might wish to vary his diet. These burned brightly all through the night, although at times it rained heavily, and served for cooking purposes in the morning. We descended about eight o’clock, staying here and there to collect plants and flowers on the way. We reached the “Falls” about 10 o’clock, and I looked around for plants, while my friend bathed, and the men rested themselves awhile. “Shall you not bathe?” he asked me. I replied, “I’ll just wash my face and hands presently, and let that suffice until we reach Ah Tong.” We were just about to return to the path when a pretty fern I had not before observed attracted my attention, growing on a bit of jutting rock overhanging the Falls. I borrowed a chopper from one of the men, and clambered up the rocks, but to reach it I had to stride across the stream just where it falls over the boulders. I had secured my prize and was turning to leap back when slip! bump! splash! I went, plants, chopper, and all, into the water-worn basin below. When I regained the surface I was washed down again like a cork by the weight of water pouring down from above, but the next time I struck out for the side and crawled out like a half-drowned rat. My friend and our Malays had a hearty laugh over my misadventure, and I was fortunately not injured in any way. I took off my clothes and wrung them as near dry as possible and then put them on again, and it is astonishing what an excellent substitute wet clothes so treated are when dry ones are not procurable, especially if they can be dipped in sea water and again wrung dry. We walked on rapidly, staying here and there in open places where the vegetation was especially luxuriant to collect such plants as interested us. About 1 o’clock we reached Kanka Ah Tong, and I took the opportunity of at once having another bath—not an accidental one this time—and of getting into dry clothes. I also took a dose of quinine in a glass of brandy-and-water, and felt no ill effects from my accident and long walk in wet clothing.
We stayed here for the night, and the next day we returned to Jahore, and crossing the straits reached Singapore about 6 o’clock. In returning down the Scudai river we saw a slender habited pandanus bearing its crimson fruit in clusters among its long glaucus leaves, and in places on the margins of the stream the beautiful red-sheathed areca palm was very beautiful. Although this journey was a singularly unproductive one so far as the discovery of new plants of horticultural or botanical interest were concerned, yet it had taught me much in other ways, and gave me an insight into the habits and customs of the Malays, whose language I had commenced to learn as soon as I landed in Singapore for the first time.
It is unfortunate that this Puloi mountain is not more readily accessible, seeing that at its summit the air is deliciously fresh and cool, and beautiful views are obtainable. A good road thither, and a bungalow or two, are all that are needed in order to make this a valuable sanatorium for residents in Singapore, who are worse off in this respect than the Penang people, who have a cool health station, with bungalows, &c., on the “Hill,” which is only a pleasant pony-ride from the town.
Apart from the Malay and Chinese inhabitants of Jahore, there are tribes of wild men or Jakuns, who are believed to be the descendants of the aboriginal population. These reside in the interior of the country, some of the tribes even construct their rude dwellings in the trees, and wherever land culture is by them adopted it is of the most rude and primitive description. As a rule, their life is nomadic. Dr. Maclay visited these people in 1875, and the following are some of his observations respecting them:—[1]
“These people are thoroughly disinclined to improvement of any kind in their mode of life, intellectually or otherwise, although it is not occasioned by want of opportunity nor from want of brain.
“3. That these tribes are gradually becoming extinct not only the Malays, but also they themselves are fully aware.
“This process of extinction is due mainly to the following causes:—
- “a. The constant advance into the jungle of the Malay and Chinese population displaces the original occupiers of the soil, who retire into greater solitude.
- “b. Owing to frequent intermarriages between the Malays and the ‘utan’ women, the latter race is becoming intermixed into the former, and this mixed race is fast increasing.
“In spite of the almost foregone conclusion with which I set out upon my journey, and after severely criticising upon my return the observations I made, I cannot doubt the fact of the existence of an aboriginal non-Malayan population. Furthermore, previous experience and intimate knowledge of the Papuan race lead me to the conviction that this aboriginal population is not only not of Malay origin, but probably related to the Papuans. Here and there I came across individuals whom I could not consider otherwise than as retrogrades to the main aboriginal type. In most of these cases the hair, though not absolutely identical with that of the pure Papuan type, resembled in texture and in growth that of the Papua-Malay (mixed race) of the west coast of New Guinea, who are by no means inconsiderable in number. In these individual cases the hair was quite different from the curled hair of the other orang-utans.
ORANG UTAN OR WILD MEN OF JAHORE.
(Male and Female)
To face page 44.
“My chief reasons for my decision on this point, are deduced from the existence of these retrograde instances from the present to the aboriginal type: the fact that the orang-utans are not easily distinguishable from the Malays inhabiting the interior of Jahore, does not diminish this decision, because these Malays gradually by intermarriages have partly inherited the orang-utan type. This intermarriage has been in practice for centuries, and is likely to have been occasioned by the flight into the interior of those of the Coast-Malays, who preferred retirement in the jungle to embracing the doctrines of Islam at the time of the Mahomedan conquest in these parts. To such causes are mainly attributable the variations in the type, and the diversity in the skull formations which I met with in my journey. In size the “orang-utan” are strikingly diminutive. The men rarely exceed four feet eight inches in height, whilst I came across many instances of women, mothers of several children, whose stature was about four feet two inches. Some allowance in these cases must be made consequent on the early marriages, and the defective nourishment at all times.
“Some of the ‘orang-utan’ whilst preserving their traditional habits and mode of existence, continue to dwell in the neighbourhood of the Malay population, selling to them the best-looking and strongest of their daughters. It is rare for the ‘orang-utan’ to change to Islamism or to adopt the Malay habits of life. In these cases their aboriginal language has yielded to the Malay and become entirely forgotten as if it had never existed. Such are the conclusions arrived at after wandering in Jahore, which I traversed from the Straits of Malacca to the China Sea. In the study of these people I felt as if I were commencing the perusal of an interesting old work, of whose semi-effaced pages some were missing.”[2]
[1] “Journal of Eastern Asia.” July, 1875. Trübner & Co. [↑]
[2] It is curious to find that in Borneo, and elsewhere in the Malayan islands, the name “orang-utan” (literally “wild man,” or, “man of the woods,”) is applied not only to the large red monkey, as with us, but also to the aboriginal inhabitants of the interior. The Muruts are frequently spoken of as “orang-utan,” not only by the Malays, but also by the Kadyans, a tribe of aboriginals converted to the Mahomedan faith. [↑]
CHAPTER IV.
RIVER AND FOREST TRAVEL.
A Sea-snake—A dreary landing—Native dancing—Orchids at home—Tropical flowers—The jungle leech—A bad dinner—Rough paths—The blow-pipe—Head-hunting—A Murut reception.
Setting forth for the first time in a new country, of which but little is generally known, is always exciting work, and as a rule things turn out to be very different to what one had imagined they would be. I had pictured to myself landing in Borneo beneath a hot sun, and at one of the trading stations; but, on the contrary, it was a dark stormy night when I reached its shores amid a perfect deluge of cold rain; the thunder and lightning was more impressive than I ever saw it before or since, and the place where I landed was an obscure little village of scarcely a dozen palm-leaf huts, and up a river nearly twenty miles from the coast. It came about in this way. The Hon. W. H. Treacher, of Labuan, very kindly undertook to introduce me to the Bornean Kadyans and Muruts—the last a head-hunting tribe—who had settlements near the head of the Lawas and Meropok rivers a little to the northward of the capital. We crossed in a small open boat pulled by eight Brunei men with paddles, which is here the usual and best way of making short sea or river journeys. We started from the fishmarket pier, Labuan, about 9 P.M. on September 7th, and soon after turned into our rugs beneath the awning and slept until morning. We awoke about daybreak, and found ourselves some miles distant from the mouth of the river; but the heavy swell we had had all night had now subsided, and the men were making headway fast. About 7.30 they stopped pulling suddenly, and pointed to a large sea-snake lying full length on the surface of the water in the sun. It was about eight feet in length, and of a blue-black colour, barred with rich golden-yellow, the belly being dull white. Mr. Treacher fired at it with a shot-gun, striking it about the centre of its body; and we could see quite plainly where the shot had ripped the skin. As it lay quite motionless after the shot for several seconds, we imagined it to be dead, but on the men paddling the boat towards it it dived quite suddenly; and as the water was clear and still, we could distinguish it at a great depth below the surface. A week or two before, during my voyage from Singapore to Labuan, we had noticed a good many of these snakes on the surface of the sea, but none so large as the one seen here. The natives say it is a very dangerous kind, and some strange tales are told of their hiding themselves in boats and huts near the shore. About ten o’clock we entered the mouth of the Lawas, the well-wooded banks of which formed a beautiful foreground to the picturesque mountains behind, which rise higher and higher right away into the interior. We soon reached the first cluster of huts on the right bank, and it is here that one of the Sultan’s relatives, Pangeran Bazar, resides. His house is built on nebong piles over the water, from which you climb up a rude ladder on to a spacious platform, on which are half-a-dozen or more brass swivel guns of native manufacture. This platform is roofed over, and an immense wooden drum hangs over the entrance. This is formed of a hollow tree trunk, over one end of which a deer or goat skin is stretched lightly by means of a rattan ring and wooden wedges. It is beaten in the evening after the old Pangeran has read from the Koran, and sometimes on the arrival of strangers. Beyond the platform is a large public hall, wherein strangers may rest, and where the natives meet to hear the Koran read, or to talk.
The Pangeran’s private residence is behind, and differs but little from the other half-dozen palm-leaf houses around it, being merely a superior sort of shed, with mats in place of doors. Duties to the amount of ten per cent. are collected from the natives who bring gutta, rice, or other produce down the river; but by many this tax is evaded, as they drop down the river on a dark night in a prahu, and creep out along the coast, lying up some creek until a favourable breeze enables them to hoist sail for Labuan. I have stayed several times at this place, and always found this river chief obliging and hospitable, but a chronic deafness on his part makes a conversation with him anything but easy. He read from the Koran most evenings when I was there, the choruses or responses being chanted—I ought to say yelled—by five or six wicked young Malay boys, who amused themselves by laughing and talking, except just when their vocal powers were needed.
Two or three hundred yards further up the river is the residence of Pangeran Tanga, and here we went ashore to eat our breakfast of cold fowl and rice, eggs and fruit, followed by coffee and a weed. We bought a dozen new-laid eggs here, also some freshly-plucked bananas, and a splendid durian fruit, nearly as large as a child’s head. We noticed a half-finished prahu, or native boat, under one of the sheds, the timbers of which were well modelled, being fastened together with stout wooden pegs. After our men had cooked their rice and fish, we again started up the river for Meringit, a Kadyan settlement at the head of the Meropok branch; but owing to the strong current coming down, we did not reach the place until after dark, and, as before remarked, in a drenching thunder-storm. It was so dark that our men could not find the proper landing-place, and having ourselves just left a fairly lighted boat, we could not see a yard ahead in the blinding rain, and so we were soon drenched as we floundered along up to our knees in the soft mud of the river bank. At last two boys came down from the houses in answer to the shouts of our boatmen, and under their guidance we reached dry quarters after a few stumbles over logs and through the long grass. Our first care was to throw off our wet things and get on dry ones, after a rub with a dry towel, and we then ate our dinner, surrounded by most of the swarthy-skinned villagers, who flocked in to look at us. Afterwards it cleared up a bit, and hearing music in a neighbouring house, we adjourned thereto, and found a few of the young men and women enjoying themselves. Their instruments consisted of a native-made violin on a European model, a curious kind of native banjo made of a single joint of a large bamboo, a triangle, or its music rather, being represented by two or three steel hatchet heads, which were laid across laths on the floor, and beaten in time with a bit of iron. The music so produced was of a rather melancholy description, and one or two of the girls and boys danced a little, a mat being spread for the purpose; but their dancing is merely shuffling about in a more or less slow and stately manner, a singular effect being produced by the graceful way in which the arms are waved about in all directions. This was particularly noticeable in the case of one of the performers, who waved a handkerchief about during the dance, changing it from one hand to the other, until eventually it vanished from sight altogether; still the arms waved, and the fingers, in their ever slow changing movement, resembled tentaculæ groping for their prey as they were slowly waved through the air in every possible direction, presumably in quest of the lost article, the ultimate recovery of which terminated the dance. The only light in the apartment was the lurid flickering of a dammar torch, and its reflections on the faces and slightly-draped forms of the performers and lookers-on produced a weird effect, which was intensified by the silence of all present.
The next day “Bongsur,” a well-known bird-hunter of the district, and a party of natives, undertook to guide us to the forest we wished to explore, and we set off up one of the largest creeks in a canoe, followed by two or three others containing our men and guides. After paddling about a mile we landed, and after walking through several clearings in the hot sun, the primæval forest was at length reached, where it was much cooler and more pleasant, the sun’s rays being screened from us by the masses of leaves, epiphytes, and flowers overhead. After mountain climbing, and the wonders of the sea, perhaps nothing suggests one’s own littleness more forcibly than a walk through the old forests which exist in tropical lowlands. There is a comparative dearth of undergrowth,—but a hundred feet or more overhead the birds, insects, and flowers enjoy the bright light and warmth denied to all below. The monkeys and birds too find their favourite fruits aloft, and fling the husks below at your feet.
Nothing can possibly be of more interest to lovers of exotic plants generally, than to be able to form some idea of their native homes, so far as description can possibly supply the place of travel. The earth’s surface is like the sea, inasmuch as it is pretty nearly the same all the world over, but in countries where the mean temperature is thirty or forty degrees higher than in England, the clothing of the earth, so far as represented by vegetation, is of a luxuriance we can scarcely imagine, and the variety caused by the addition of such distinct types as tall palms, bananas, grasses, or bamboos and tree ferns to the more ordinary kinds of tree beauty, and the further clothing of these with epiphytes and parasites of the most singular or beautiful description, makes up a scene of immense interest.
Epiphytal orchids are essentially heat-lovers—like palms they are children of the sun. One may often travel a long way in the islands where these plants are most abundant without catching a glimpse of them; and this is especially true of Phalænopsis grandiflora, which is of all orchids perhaps the least obtrusive in its native habitats. This trait is, however, the unobtrusiveness of high birth, they do not care to touch the ground, but rather prefer a sphere of their own high up in the trees overhead. The plants have a charming freedom of aspect, as thus seen naturally high up in mid-air, screened from the sun by a leafy canopy, deluged with rains for half the year or more at least, and fanned by the cool sea-breezes or monsoons, which doubtless exercise some potent influence on their health—an influence which we can but rarely apply to them artificially, and the greatly modified conditions under which we must perforce cultivate them may not render this one so desirable as it sometimes appears to be abroad.
GREATER MOTH ORCHID (PHALÆNOPSIS) AT HOME.
To face page 52.
In the lowland forests near the equator a peculiar phase of vegetation is not unfrequently seen. Trees one hundred feet to two hundred feet in height tower upwards on all sides; and one walks in the shade—diffused light is perhaps the more correct expression—the tree trunks being the pillars of Nature’s cathedral, and the leafy branches high up above represent the roof. All the vegetation you see around you on earth, rocks or fallen trunks, is represented by a few ferns, lindsayas, with bright steel-blue fronds a yard high, broad-leaved aroids, or ginger-worts; but epiphytes of all kinds seem totally absent: and the truth is, that, like lovable “Tom Bowling,” of Dibdin’s minstrelsy, they, too, have “gone aloft.” Above you is a world of light and air and sunshine which birds, insects, and flowers alike enjoy. You feel very small and helpless as you try to catch a glimpse of the plants and flowers so high above you, and almost envy the long-armed red monkeys that swing themselves so easily from bough to bough. The monkey, however, has a rival in the human natives of these forest wilds, and it would be extremely puzzling to find a tree so thick, or tall, or otherwise so difficult to climb, that the lithe and dusky native would fail to reach its summit. The chances are that he will literally walk up a slender tree in the neighbourhood with the aid of hands and feet, and then find a route to the one you wish him to explore by way of the interlaced branches so high above you. If any sufficiently stout lianas are dangling near, he ascends hand-over-hand in a way that would delight the most accomplished gymnast; and if the tree so stood that the ascent could only be accomplished by the direct way of its own gigantic trunk, then the chances are that a stair of bamboo pegs would enable the ingenious savage to effect his object of scouring the branches, and sending the epiphytes in showers to your feet. Nor does he neglect to glean such other jungle produce as comes in his way, such as gutta or indiarubber, camphor, dammar, or forest fruits for food or medicine.
This is in the forest primæval, but near clearings, or on the skirts of the forest near rivers, which let in the light and air, the phalænopsis and other epiphytes are less ambitious, and they may then be found in positions but little above the more plebeian terrestrial kinds of vegetation. This is also the case when, as sometimes happens, they are found on the trees which fringe little islands; and then not only do the plants receive a good deal of sunshine as it streams through the leafy twigs of the branches to which they cling, but it is also reflected back again from the glistening sea. The intense light in which they thus exist, added to the fervent heat and the deluge of rain which falls during six or seven months of the year, accounts for the enormous leaf and root growth made by these plants in their native habitats. The flowering of the plants is not so extraordinary, indeed rather disappointing, after the results which may be seen in English gardens. It is not so much the paucity of flowers produced, however, as their early destruction caused by the “unbidden guests” the orchids are made to entertain.
High up overhead the most lovely orchids hold their court in the sunshine: here they are really “at home” to their winged visitors. Now and then, however, you come across a newly-fallen tree—a very monarch of the woods—which has succumbed to old age and rude weather at last, and has sunk to the earth from which it sprang a seedling generations ago; its branches laden with everything inanimate, which had made a home in its branches. Some of these ruined trunks are perfect gardens of beauty, wreathed with graceful climbing plants, and gay with flowers and foliage. The fall of a large tree, and its smaller dependents, lets in the sun, and so the epiphytes do not suffer much for a time; and one may thus observe them in all their beauty.
Here, right in the collar of the tree, is a plant of the grammatophyllum orchid, big enough to fill a Pickford’s van, and just now opening its golden-brown spotted flowers on stout spikes two yards long. There, on that topmost branch, is a mass of the moth orchid, or phalænopsis, bearing a hundred snowy flowers at least; and in such healthy vigour is it, that lovers of orchids at home—supposing it could be flashed direct to “Stevens’s” in its present state—would outbid each other for such a glorious prize, until the hammer would fall at a price near on a hundred guineas, as it has done before for exceptional specimens of these lovely flowers.
There, gleaming in the sunlight, like a scarlet jewel, beneath those great leathery aroid leaves, is a cluster of tubular æschynanthus flowers; and here is another wee orchid, a tiny pink-blossomed cirrhopetalum, whose flowers and leaves scarcely rise above the bright carpet of velvety moss among which it grows. But what is that attractive gleam of gold and green swaying to and fro in the sunshine? Ah! that is a beauty of another kind! And a native, to whom it is pointed out, ejaculates, “Chalaka! ular Tuan!”—a wicked snake, sir; and we are content to move on, and leave him alone in his glory. We tramp on for an hour longer, without even the glimpse of a flower being visible, except here and there a few fragments on the ground, the remnant spolia of the flower world which exists on the roof of this grand cathedral of trees.
Half an hour further, and the increasing numbers of ferns and selaginella mosses suggest the presence of water in the neighbourhood, while the patches of graceful seedling calami or rattan palms increase at every step, the stones and trunks become moss-covered, and then at last the “sound of many waters” breaks on our ears with a cool and welcome noise, and a few minutes later we have “struck” the stream, as it rushes and sparkles amongst mossy and water-worn boulders down an open and sunny ravine. Some of the larger rocks are covered with a palm-like fern (Polypodium bifurcatum); and filmy ferns, of the most delicate form and texture, abound on the dripping stones.
As we sit down on the rocks, a small flock of gigantic hornbills “saw the air” with their great wings far above us, making a noise almost like a locomotive engine in their flight. Butterflies come with wobbling motion down the sunny clearing, formed by the shallow stream; and, as we are intent on the cold fowl and coffee, which forms our breakfast, the sanguinary stains on our white trousers prove that the wily jungle-leech has not been unmindful of his morning meal. How this little slimy monster loves to gorge himself with gore! The wonder, however, is how they exist when men are absent from the jungle they infest, as often happens. I suspect that human blood forms simply an accidental part of their supply. I know they exact all they can from the water buffaloes; and perhaps even the astute monkey is made to pay toll by these blood-suckers as often as may be. I have often watched them, when aroused by footsteps, as attached to a stick, or stone, or leaf, they wave their bodies about, or walk towards you with a caterpillar-like motion, in quest of happier hunting-grounds. A squeeze of wet tobacco juice is the best plan of dislodging them from your skin; for if pulled off, however deftly it be done, there is a chance of a bit of their sucker apparatus remaining in the wound, which will often cause it to become inflamed, and to fester in a troublesome manner.
We suffered a good deal from mosquitoes during the night; indeed sleep was nearly impossible, and in very shaded parts of the forest to-day the little pests fixed on our hands and faces with a persistency that was very annoying. We saw very few birds. A gorgeously attired bee-eater was secured by Mr. Treacher as we paddled up the creek; and “Bongsur,” who used an old Tower musket as a fowling-piece, secured a tiny spotted owl and one or two other small birds common to this district. We distinctly heard the whoops and yells of the Muruts, who were out pig-hunting, as we came along, but did not fall in with them. Just as we crossed the stream one of the men picked up a fruit of one of the several varieties of durian, which are here indigenous. It was about the size of a cricket-ball, and only contained two of its chestnut-like, pulp-covered seeds. The seeds were very large in proportion to the quantity of pulp, but the flavour was very delicious.
We had a long walk back to the creek where we had left our canoes, and reached the village about three o’clock, just before the commencement of a heavy shower. As it cleared up a little about five o’clock we took our guns and had a stroll across the padi fields behind the houses, returning to dinner about sunset. I shall not soon forget that dinner. Mr. Treacher had brought his Chinese “boy” who had cooked the previous day. My “boy” was a Madras Telinga to whom, of course, the lard or pork fat which the Chinese use in cooking is an abomination, so that my ingenious fellow, as it was his turn to prepare dinner, made us a fowl curry, using rancid cocoa-nut lamp oil in which to cook the fowl. We were rather hungry, and tried to get the stuff down, but had to give it up as a bad job. The nasty taste was most persistent, however; and for several days coffee, biscuit, rice, and even fresh fruit, seemed to have somewhat of the offensive cocoa-nut oil flavour about it. I remonstrated with my “boy” about the matter, with the usual result. “Yes, sah, that China boy bad man, sah; he tell me oil very good for curry, sah!” I have no doubt, but that the “China boy” enjoyed the joke with “a smile that was childlike and bland,” and doubtless he related the story to his pretty Malay wife on his return, with many “Ah yahs” and inward chuckling. We made shift with biscuit and coffee, and a smoke destroyed the bad taste for the time being.
This was the evening preceding the commencement of Ramadan, the “fast month” observed by all Mahomedans, and there was a great burning of gunpowder in the village. Muskets and small cannon were being discharged all over the place in honour of the event. Salutes of this kind, and the festive firing of shot-guns, however harmless it may seem in print, is in reality sometimes a little alarming. The powder used in charging may possibly be bad in quality; but as a great noise is thought to be the thing, any defect in its quality is pretty well made up for by the quantity used. I am not a very nervous person, but I once or twice felt just a little anxious as the natives amused themselves by firing a charge of five or six inches of powder from a seven-and-sixpenny German gun. I once saw some Sulus firing a salute from some old dismounted brass guns which were lashed on the floor of the wharf at Sandakan. They coolly sat down beside the ordnance, waved a bit of rope-yarn until the smouldering fire at one end brightened up into a glowing spark, and then plunged it into the touch-hole; nor did they seem in the least disconcerted as the guns sprang a yard into the air dragging up the nebong planks with them, the whole returning with a crash by reason of their elasticity.
In the morning, after breakfast, Mr. Treacher returned down the river, but could not cross to Labuan until next day, as a heavy sea was running with much wind and rain, so he had to put back to Pulo Sirra until morning. After his departure I had a consultation with “Bongsur” about the country, and eventually decided to shift my quarters from his father’s house to that of his brother, from which the forests and hills of the district could be more readily reached. A party of natives and one or two Muruts who had come to the Kadyan’s village to trade, soon got all my traps stowed into the canoes, and half an hour’s pull brought us to the clearing in which my future head-quarters were situated. I found here half-a-dozen palm-leaf houses built on piles six feet high, a notched tree trunk serving as a ladder by which to enter. The largest house was forty or fifty yards long by eighteen or twenty feet wide, and being nearly new, it was clean and in good condition. It was occupied by “Bongsur’s” brother, a lithe and intelligent young fellow named “Moumein,” and three or four other families.
Within, it was simply one large room open to the roof, and divided in half by the central path, communicating with doors at either end. On the right were the hearths for cooking, water-jars, bamboos, baskets, and other simple tools or utensils, the left-hand side being covered with the sleeping-mats of the separate families. Two or three mosquito nets hung over the mats, and at the head of each hung the parong, spear, musket, or other arms of the men, other spears, shields, blowpipes, &c., being laid across the timbers overhead. The floor was of open lattice-work, or rather parallel nebong laths an inch apart, so that perfect ventilation is obtained; and these houses are always cool. The owner was not at home, but his wife brought a board and desired “Bongsur” to partition off one of the corner compartments for me, which was soon done; and getting up the boxes, hammock-sleeping gear, &c., the place soon assumed a more comfortable appearance.
As it was a beautiful clear afternoon I left my “boy” to prepare dinner, and started off to the forest with half-a-dozen of the native boys who had followed from the village. I shot a pretty scarlet-breasted trogan with beautifully pencilled wings, in a large fig tree near the houses. We had a rather rough walk through long grass, in which ugly concealed logs were plentiful; and the only bridges across the streams were formed of a single tree-trunk, often a very slender one not perfectly straight, so that when a particular part of it was reached in one’s journey across, it had a treacherous knack of turning round and landing one in muddy water up to the neck. The natives are used to such slender makeshifts for bridges, and, being barefoot, are as sure-footed as goats.
We followed one little stream for about two miles, and reached a rocky hill about five hundred feet high, where rhododendrons (R. javanicum) were flowering freely. Hoyas and various orchids were in bloom on the lowest trees; and it was on bare tree-trunks on this hill that I saw the Veitchian pitcher-plant (Nepenthes Veitchii) wild for the first time. It has a singular habit of clasping the trunks on which it is epiphytal with its leaves, and many which bear pitchers have the blade of the leaf much reduced. Four other pitcher-plants grew on this hill, namely, N. gracilis, N. hirsuta, N. Rafflesiana, and the large-urned variety of the last named, known as “glaberrima.” A dendrobium bearing clusters of milk-white flowers was common, as also were bolbophyllums and several greenish-flowered cœlogynes.
The ground in some places was matted with a very pretty terrestrial orchid (Bromheadia Finlaysoniana) which has leafy stems two to three feet in height, terminated by a zig-zag flattened spike of white-petalled flowers as large as those of the “Spotted Indian Crocus” (Pleione maculata), and having a blotch of lemon-yellow on the lip and some bright amethystine veins or streaks. We loaded the men with roots and specimens, and then returned to the houses just before nightfall. It was during the wet season, and after dark each evening the mosquitoes were most ravenous. As a remedy for this annoyance the women lighted fires beneath the house, on which cocoa-nut husks were placed and made to smoulder gradually. This certainly kept the little pests at bay, but the smoke brought tears to one’s eyes, and was almost as bad to bear as the mosquito bites.
The wild forest fruits were now plentiful in this district, and, as a natural consequence, birds and monkeys were abundant also, for they migrate to different places as the fruits begin to ripen. The bird-hunters were busy, and rarely a day passed but I was gladdened with the sight of some bird or other animal that was novel to me. Argus, Bulwer, and Fireback pheasants and other large ground birds were caught in snares or springes, while hornbills, owls, eagles, or hawks, and large birds generally were killed with shot, or very often small gravel discharged from an old Tower musket. The smallest birds, especially the brilliant little sweets or sunbirds, were killed with small arrows from the blow-pipe or “sumpitan,” in the use of which some of the Muruts and Kadyans are especially expert. Even large game was formerly obtained in this way, poisoned arrows being used, in which case the harmless-looking blow-pipe becomes one of the most subtle and deadly of weapons. The slightest puncture with one of these poisoned darts is as certain to terminate fatally as is the bite of the cobra; and this, added to the possibility of the arrow being propelled on its journey with lightning-like speed, without the least sound being heard, will give an idea of its deadly power in the skilful hands of savages, to whose ambition the death of an enemy and the possession of his bleached skull for the decoration of their dwellings on feast days, was the all-important feature of their social existence.
I have seen a Murut strike fish after fish with unerring certainty with arrows from a sumpitan, even at more than a foot below the surface of the stream; a much more difficult thing to do than one might suppose, since allowance has to be made for the deviation from a right line which the arrow takes on touching the water. The springes in which pheasants are caught are set in artificial fences half a mile or more in length, and are simply nooses of rattan, although rarely thin brass wire is used. A bent sapling is attached to the noose in such a manner that when the bird runs against a twig in passing through the opening in the fence it becomes disengaged, and flying upwards, draws the noose tightly around the creature’s neck.
A device similar in principle, but much more dangerous, is used by the Muruts for capturing the wild pigs. In this case a stout spear of bamboo is made to pass through guiding loops of rattan attached to trees or stakes, so that by the aid of a stout sapling drawn back to its fullest tension it can be hurled right through the body of any passing animal, which unconsciously disengages the apparatus by pressing against or treading on a branch across its track. These pig-sticking contrivances are very dangerous to strangers, and even the Muruts themselves are sometimes injured by them.
One of the Lawas Muruts showed me where the bamboo spear belonging to one of these pig or deer-traps had been driven right through his leg near the knee. His bronzed features underwent the most extraordinary and suggestive of contortions as he explained how it had taken the strength of five or six men to hold him against a tree while others tugged at the bamboo shaft until they succeeded in withdrawing it from the injured limb. In some districts these pig-traps are very numerous, and one has to be continually on the look-out for them. I visited the Lawas district several times, and had good opportunities of seeing the Muruts, and noting many of their peculiarities. Their houses are similar to those of the Dusun, but instead of living in separate houses, one enormous house is built sufficiently large to accommodate from twenty to fifty families. These houses vary from thirty to one hundred yards in length, and, like those of the Kadyans, are built on piles. As the different tribes are continually at variance with each other, and knowing each other’s affection for crania, they congregate in one large dwelling so as to be better prepared for resistance in case of a sudden attack. These people, and the Kayans who live in the vicinity of the Baram river, and one or two other tribes of the aboriginal Borneans, still continue the practice of head-hunting, although the custom is now fast dying out here, as it has in the case of the Dyaks of Sarawak, and other places further south. Only a few years back a youth was not allowed to marry until he had taken the head of an enemy, and if any ill-luck or death occurred in the tribe these head-hunting raids were indulged in at once to appease the malignant spirits which were believed to have been the cause; or if a chief’s favourite wife or child died, he at once took to head-hunting in a bloodthirsty spirit of revenge.
The desire to shed blood seems inherent in all savage natures, and is adhered to tenaciously even after civilisation has reached them, and so it happens that human heads or skulls are considered the most valuable property of these wild Borneans, just as the Sioux and other Indians of North America still attach a peculiar value to the scalp locks of their foes. Even although head-hunting is gradually becoming a thing of the past in Borneo, still so highly are the old skulls valued even by the now peaceable tribes who have not taken a head for years, that they can rarely be induced to part with them, no matter how much may be offered in exchange. In several Murut houses I visited near the Lawas large baskets full of human crania were preserved as trophies of the prowess of the tribe.
It is very rare that anything like general open fighting now takes place between the native tribes, as was formerly the case, when a party of fighting men would, after marching at night only through the forests for days together, steal up to the house of their foes just before daylight and endeavour to set fire to it, after which the place was surrounded and the men killed as they attempted to escape, the women and children being made prisoners and carried off as additions to the wealth of the victors. Sometimes, however, the besieged were too wary for their foes, and either boldly rushed out and drove them off with loss, or formed ambuscades, into which they unwittingly fell and were annihilated, or perhaps a few would break through and escape to tell the tale. In this way a good many heads and slaves were obtained, but at present the additions to the baskets are more rare, and principally obtained by stealthy murders rather than in warfare. The Muruts and other aboriginals are great believers in omens, and whether on head-hunting or pig-killing expeditions they pay great regard to the cries of birds and animals; and if they meet an alligator or a snake, they at once return and wait for a more propitious season.
In travelling with these natives as guides, their careful attention to omens becomes exceedingly trying to one’s temper, as they will stop immediately if the omens seen or heard be not good ones, and if anything more than ordinary duties are required of them it is astonishing how soon a bad omen will put an end to all further progress for the day. One place where I stayed for several weeks was within half a mile of a large Murut house, and their gongs could be heard very plainly sometimes all night when they were feasting and drinking a peculiar spirit, which is made of rice and tampoe fruit mixed with water and strained off for use after fermentation. These feasts seemed to be held on the occasion of any good fortune befalling the tribe, such as success in hunting pigs or deer. One night they were gong-beating and shouting louder than usual. I asked the native in whose house I slept the reason of this, and he told me that they had been out head-hunting for a fortnight, but had failed to pounce upon any Murut of another tribe; so to end the suspense they had seized one of their own slaves, who had in some way offended them, and had made a scapegoat of him. I visited this house some days afterwards, and smoked a “roko” with the “Orang Capella,” or chief, while three of his lusty followers kept up an incessant din on five gongs which were suspended in the centre of the public apartment. I asked to see his collection of heads, and after a good deal of talking, a few dry old examples were brought; but after we left I was told that they had many more, including the one so recently taken, but that they were afraid to let the fact be known. This tribe had good reasons for secrecy in the matter, since one man had been hung at Labuan for a head-hunting murder a year or two previous to my visit, and another would have suffered the same fate had he not died in jail. They had actually crossed over to the English colony to look out for heads, and ascending a little river on the western side, had shot a man who was coming down in a canoe. The shot, an old nail, struck the shaft of the paddle, and passing through, entered the man’s body, after which they made off, but were captured by the Government and tried for the murder. This identical paddle was one of the first things I saw when I paid my respects to His Excellency the Governor of Labuan, and when the story was narrated to me it did not sound very cheering, seeing that I expected to live among these tribes for some months at least. However, I could never hear of a white man being killed, except by the pirates from Tawi Tawi and Sulu, with one exception, which was of a man who is supposed to have been poisoned by his native mistress. St. John mentions one tribe, however, who are peculiarly addicted to poisoning anyone who may be disliked by them. The nature of the poison used is not exactly known, but it is very generally supposed to be a peculiarly irritating fibre or spiculæ derived from some species of bamboo, the effect of which is to cause a chronic state of sickness and depression, followed by death. Whatever it may be, it is a mechanical rather than a chemical irritant. When one travels in such a lovely island, however, as Borneo undoubtedly is, it is extremely difficult to believe half the tales told of the native tribes, and altogether the proportionate number of robberies and murders is not more than takes place in the most enlightened centre of civilisation in the world. The total population of the island is supposed to be from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000, and when we consider that all these unchristianised natives (excepting those in Sarawak and the Dutch territory) live together with no law—nothing in fact but their own sense of right and wrong, and public opinion to keep them in order—the wonder is that, even according to our own standard, crime is so seldom heard of.
The Kadyans are a tribe of peaceable and well-disposed aboriginals, who, living along the coast near to the capital, have mixed a good deal with the Malays and speak their language. It is not uncommon, however, to find the older and more intelligent men of this tribe well acquainted with several dialects of the interior, such as Murut, Dusun, and the Brunei dialect, used by the common natives of the capital. They are mostly Mahomedans, and so are more respected by their Malay rulers than are other of the aboriginals. They form thrifty little colonies on most of the rivers near Brunei, and many have settled in Labuan, where they cultivate their rice fields, and occasionally bring fruit or fish to the markets. They are for the most part a clean and healthy race, and form a great contrast with their neighbours who live in a more irregular manner, and are often troubled with skin diseases, this being in a measure owing to the want of cleanliness and of a regular diet. There cannot be any doubt but that Islam is a great blessing to many Eastern races, especially so far as cleanliness and temperance are concerned.
The Kadyans are very quick in selecting rich bits of forest and in raising fine crops of rice, which forms the main portion of their food. Rice and fish from the river or sea, fruits from their gardens or the forest, and a few simple vegetables are all the food they require. They also collect gutta and caoutchouc, camphor and rattans, from the forest, and the sale of these in Labuan, or to the Chinese traders who visit the coast, enables them to obtain cloth, muskets and ammunition, tobacco, and any other little necessaries or luxuries of Chinese or European manufacture which they may require. Although less active than the Muruts, yet there are some fine men among them, and their women, as a class, are perhaps the most refined and intelligent of all the aboriginals, some, when young, being singularly attractive. The boys are also bright fellows, with a keener sense of humour than is common in other tribes. They live a free and easy life, contented and happy, and I could not help contrasting the peace and plenty enjoyed by these people with the squalor and misery in which the poor of civilised lands are often plunged. Here, in these sunny wilds, an all-bounteous Nature, with a minimum of labour, supplies their every want, and it would be difficult to find another country where man is more truly the “monarch of all he surveys”—more truly independent on his fellow-man than here in Borneo. Although these people are nominally Mahomedans, still their women enjoy the greatest freedom and are never secluded, as is the custom of the Malays of the coast, indeed, many Kadyan houses consist of one very large room only, there being no private apartment of any kind. This is a rather singular trait of these people, since even the Muruts and the Dusan have one side of their houses partitioned off so as to allow of a separate private room for each family, the other half being open from end to end and free to guests or strangers. The Kadyans take but one wife, and are apparently good husbands and affectionate parents; large families, however, are exceptional. This question of increase of population in the island is one I could not profess to explain. Here is a rich and fertile island larger than Great Britain and Ireland, with an entire population scarcely exceeding that of London. In the old times inter-tribal warfare may have operated as a check, and even now whole villages are sometimes carried off by epidemics, such as cholera or small-pox, yet when we consider that there are practically none of the checks on marriage itself as with us, and the readiness with which food is obtainable in plenty, the easy and natural way, indeed, in which these people live, it is a puzzle that they seem scarcely able to hold their own.
In the case of the North American Indians or the Maories of New Zealand, there is the competition of the white races, but here they are not crowded out by a stronger type, nevertheless, the population is supposed to be less than was formerly the case. If a Kadyan youth wishes to marry, he has only to select a site for his house, and clear the ground around it for a garden. He may take an unoccupied plot anywhere, and there is no ground-rent to pay, it is freehold so soon as he has in a manner “staked his claim,” by cutting down the brush and burning the trees, in which the other “lads of the village” will assist him. The ground is cleared towards the end of the dry season, and with the commencement of the first rains a few seeds of Indian corn, cucumbers, betel pepper, &c., are sown, and yams, kaladi, sweet potatoes, together with cocoa-nuts, and banana suckers from his father’s or a friend’s garden, are planted. Then timbers, rattans, and nipa leaves for thatch are obtained, and, with the assistance of his friends, a good roomy house will spring up, if not quite mushroom-like in a night, at the least in a week or ten days. A dollar or two, or the jungle produce he could collect in less than a month, will enable him to obtain the few articles of furniture, cooking utensils, &c., which he requires, together with a new “sarong” or two for himself and his bride. And she, the dusky beauty, will have made a few neatly worked palm-leaf sleeping mats and other needful trifles, and doubtless looks forward to her wedding with as much pleasure as her fairer sister of the West. The actual ceremony of marriage is here very simple. A payment has to be made by the bridegroom to his father-in-law, and this varies in proportion to the charms or other good marketable qualities of the girl—an ordinary girl being worth as much as a good buffalo, or say, £4; as much as £20, however, is sometimes demanded for the “belle of the village,” but in addition to the first cost such beauties are apt to give their husbands a good deal of trouble afterwards, unless, indeed, they be of Cato-like temperament. Marriages may be dissolved for the merest trifles by either party, but if by the woman herself, part of the money or goods paid to her parents is refunded. In the case of the Mahomedans, a woman retains all her real and personal property after divorcement. A native, in whose house I stayed several weeks, told me that his wife had been married to another Kadyan before he married her. “And did her husband die?” I enquired. “Oh, no,” he answered. “Then why did she leave him?” “She did not like him,” was the rejoinder. And such cases of mutual separation are far from uncommon.
These people, unlike the Muruts of the Limbang, had plenty of rice and other food, the produce of their padi fields and gardens. In some parts of the island it is extremely difficult to purchase food of any kind, the natives possessing only barely enough for their own wants. Here, however, one could obtain fowls, eggs, rice, and vegetables in abundance. The prices may be interesting. For excellent fowls, from fivepence to eightpence was charged; eggs fivepence per dozen; vegetables enough for two or three days’ supply for twopence; while lodging, fire-wood, and plenty of jungle fruit in season, may be had for nothing. Dollars and cents were current here, but cloth, especially grey shirting and a stout black fabric, were also readily received in exchange at a slight advance on Labuan prices. The men here were willing to act either as guides or carriers for tenpence to a shilling per diem.
When I returned to the house at night from the forest, I generally found a liberal share of the jungle fruit which had been brought home by the men laid on my mats; and after dinner my own men and the villagers would drop in for a chat by the light of a flickering dammar torch. Twenty or thirty dusky figures smoking or eating betel-nut had a curious effect in the badly lighted hut.
All through the fast month these people never eat or drink anything between sunrise and sunset, but they make up for this between sunset and sunrise, the women being busy cooking rice and fish nearly all night. At the end of the month, too, a great feast was held, at which all in the village and neighbourhood met and smoked the “roko” of peace, all old feuds and wrongs being for the nonce forgiven or forgotten. Everyone came dressed in their best head-cloths and sarongs, being armed with their war parangs, and altogether forming an animated and brightly coloured assemblage. This feast was held at night, and for several days previous the women had been busy bringing in fire-wood and cleaning rice. On the day on which this gathering was held the culinary operations were on an extended scale, and, at the appointed meal time, great heaps of rice, vegetables, fish, and fruit, were piled on fresh banana leaves right down the centre of the house. A dignified green-coated old hadji graced the repast with his presence, and he was pleased to kill the fowl for my own dinner, according to native rite, and evidently liked being noticed as a traveller, for his dark eyes sparkled with pleasure when I asked him of his voyage to Mecca. He complained very much of the insults, losses, and hardships, to which pilgrims were exposed, but his appetite was evidently as good as ever, since the clearance of rice and fish he made around him at dinner was something startling to see.
These people had but few domesticated animals. The Muruts had plenty of dirty, half-starved black pigs running about the jungle near their house, and a few goats. They had also a peculiar race of small, brown dogs, resembling terriers, which are very useful in pig hunting. The Kadyans had cats wonderfully like our own, but with abnormal tails. Poultry are represented only by cocks and hens. Some of the wild birds of the forests are domesticated as pets, the most common being Java and little red sparrows; a beautiful little green ground pigeon; paroquets of two kinds, one very small like a love-bird, the other having two long blue attenuated feathers in its tail. Mino birds are not unfrequently tamed, and they may be taught to speak words or phrases quite readily. Some of the larger hornbills, the “rhinoceros” variety especially, are also tamed, and are most amusing creatures. There was one in a house where I stayed a week or two, and a more voracious bird I never saw. At night it would perch itself on a stick below the house and croak for hours together, but with daylight in the morning it would enter the house to beg for food, and the quantities it could consume during the day were surprisingly large. Everything edible seemed equally welcome—rice, fruit, vegetables, and even the entire bodies of small birds which my boy had been skinning as specimens were gulped down with apparent relish. Any trifles thrown towards it were sure of being caught in its great bill, and then thrown again in the air and caught previous to their being swallowed.
The Kadyans have an ingenious way of capturing the little green or puni pigeons (Chalcophaps indica) with a bamboo call, by which their soft cooing notes are exactly imitated. These birds are gregarious, and just before breeding-time they arrive in large quantities.
“The call is formed of two pieces of bamboo, a slender tube, a short piece 3″—4″ in diameter, and a connecting piece of wood. In the short piece is a hole similar to the embouchure of a flute; and the lower end of the blow-tube is fitted to this in such a manner that, on blowing, a soft, low, flute-like ‘cooing’ is easily producible; and this can be readily modulated so as to be heard either at a long distance or near at hand. This instrument is figured in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1879, Part II., p. 346. The native, who has taken up his position in the forest or jungle where these little birds are found, blows very softly at first; but if there be no answering call from the birds he blows louder and louder, thus increasing the radius of sound. If there really be any pigeons of this kind within hearing, they are sure to answer; and then the hunter blows softer and softer until they are enticed into the ‘wigwam’ of leafy branches which he has erected in order to conceal himself from sight. The door or entrance to these ‘wigwams’ is partially closed by a screen of palm (Nipa fruticans) leaves. This is elevated a little to allow the pigeons to enter, after which it is allowed to fall, portcullis-like, entirely, so as to close the entrance; and the bird is then easily secured. Above the entrance two holes are made, so that the hunter can look out without being seen. These huts are formed of a few poles or sticks, rudely thatched with twigs and palm-leaves, and vary from four to six feet in height.
“This pigeon is migratory, and arrives in Labuan and on the opposite Bornean coast with the change of the monsoon, about April. Many hundreds are then caught by means of this ‘dakut,’ or ‘bamboo call,’ and are offered for sale by their captors for a cent or two each. They are also kept by the natives as domestic pets, along with young hornbills, the ‘Mino’ bird or ‘Grackle,’ a small species of paroquet, and Java sparrows.”
At this season little huts are built in the forest, and the hunter, ensconced within, blows his call, and they will actually run inside the hut, where they are caught. The Kadyans and their Murut neighbours collect a good deal of gutta and caoutchouc in the surrounding forests, which is afterwards manufactured into lumps or balls, and taken over to Labuan for sale. The gutta is obtained from four or five kinds of large forest trees, belonging to the genus isonandra, by felling the trees and girdling or ringing their bark at intervals of every two feet, the milky juice or sap being caught in vessels fashioned of leaves or cocoa-nut shells. The crude sap is hardened into slabs or bricks by boiling, and is generally adulterated with twenty per cent. of scraped bark—indeed, the Chinese traders who purchase the gutta from the collectors, would refuse the pure article in favour of that adulterated with bark, and to which its red colour is mainly due.
Caoutchouc or rubber is in the N.W. districts of Borneo the produce of three species of climbing plants, known to the natives as “Manoongan,” “Manoongan putih,” and “Manoongan manga.” Their stems are fifty to one hundred feet in length, and rarely more than six inches in diameter, the bark corrugated, and of a grey or reddish-brown colour; leaves oblong, and of a glossy green colour; the flowers are borne in axillary clusters, and are succeeded by yellow fruits, the size of an orange, and containing seeds as large as beans, each enclosed in a section of apricot-coloured fruit. These fruits are of a delicious flavour, and are highly valued by the natives. Here, again, the stems are cut down to facilitate the collection of the creamy sap, which is afterwards coagulated into rough balls by the addition of nipa salt.
It is most deplorable to see the fallen gutta trees lying about in all directions in the forest, and the rubber-yielding willughbeias are also gradually, but none the less surely, being exterminated by the collectors here in Borneo, as, indeed, throughout the other islands and on the Peninsula, where they also abound.
It was formerly thought that gutta was the produce of one particular species of tree—Isonandra gutta—but that from the Lawas district is formed of the mixed sap of at least five species, the juice of ficus and one or two species of artocarpeæ being not unfrequently used in addition as adulterants. The Bornean “gutta soosoo,” or rubber, again, is the mixed sap of three species of willughbeias, and here, again, the milk of two or three other plants is added surreptitiously to augment the quantity collected. The gutta trees are a long time in attaining to maturity, and are not easy to propagate, except by seeds. The willughbeias, on the other hand, grow quickly, and may be easily and rapidly increased by vegetative as well as by seminal modes of propagation, hence the latter are more especially deserving of the attention of our Government in India, where they might reasonably be expected to thrive.
No doubt there are yet many thousands of tons of these products existing in Bornean woods, but as the trees are killed by the collectors without a thought of replacement, the supply will recede further and further from the markets, and so prices must of necessity rise as the supply fails, or as the collection of it becomes more laborious.
The demand for caoutchouc from Borneo is a very recent one, yet in many districts the supply is practically exhausted. In Assam, Java, and also in Australia, rubber is supplied by Ficus elastica, which is cultivated for the purpose. There are many milk-yielding species of ficus in the Bornean forests which might possibly afford a supply in remunerative quantities as the result of careful experiments. The Malayan representatives of the bread-fruit family also deserve examination, as excellent rubber is yielded by Castilloa elastica, a South-American plant of this order.
CHAPTER V.
KINA BALU, OR CHINESE WIDOW MOUNTAIN.
Journey to Kina Balu—Visit to Pangeran Rau—Agricultural implements—Sea Gipsies—Datu of the Badjows—Musa—Fertile plain—River-side gardens—Women gardeners—Fording the Tawaran—Bawang—Good scenery—Si Nilau—Kalawat—Rat-traps—A wet journey—Bungol—Koung village—Native traders—Rice culture—Kiau—Hiring of guides—Ascent of Kina Balu—A curious breakfast—Rare plants en route—Mountain flowers—Large pitcher plants—A cave dwelling—Scarcity of water—Mountain orchids—Cool climate—Slippery descent—Lost in the forest—Return to Kiau—Native produce—Journey to Marie Parie Spur—Return to the coast—Native women of the interior—Hire of native boat—Return to Labuan.
On the 29th of November, just as the dry season was commencing in Labuan, Mr. Peter Veitch (who had a few days before joined me after his travels in Australia and the Fiji Islands) and myself started off on a journey to Kina Balu, which we intended to reach by way of the Tawaran river. We had with us twenty-six men and two bird-hunters, so that we formed a rather imposing party of thirty, all told. The men were armed with native parangs or swords; some had krisses, and eight or ten carried muskets with which we had provided them. We embarked our men, stores, and travelling gear on board a little coast-steamer bound for Sulu, and the following morning we arrived at Pulo Gaya, and the captain lowered another boat in addition to the one we had brought with us, and put us all safely ashore near Gantisan in Gaya Bay. We waited here at a Roman Catholic Catechist’s Station for some time, and I ascended to the summit of the grass-covered hills northwards. These are forest-covered below, the nebong palm being very abundant, and attaining large dimensions.
The hill-tops above, which look so smooth and green when seen from the sea, are found to be clad with coarse “lallang” grass a yard high, among which the men who accompanied me pointed out several deer lairs. Fresh green tufts of Cheilanthes tenuifolia grew in the crevices of the decomposed sandstone, and among the clumps of nebong palm; a singular fern, Schizæa digitata, was very plentiful.
Returning, we re-arranged our baggage, and sending our boat round to Pangeran Rau’s place at Kalombini, by sea, we and the majority of the men started over the ridge of the wooded hill on foot. It was a stiff climb in the hot sun, the path being both steep and rough. In descending to the plain on the other side we shot three large swallows and a crimson and blue-painted barbet; we were also fortunate in finding a pretty pink-flowered zingiberad in bloom. The flat plain into which we descended was partly cultivated, and the rice especially looked strong and healthy. Fine buffaloes were also grazing here.
We reached Pangeran Rau’s house at three o’clock, and had the usual bichari or talk, arm-chairs and mats being at once brought into the head-house on our arrival. Some of the women were busy pounding the rice to separate it from the husk; and one or two ran away shrieking at our approach—it was simply affectation, and not fright. We found the Pangeran rather reserved, but hospitably inclined. He was a gray-haired old fellow of over sixty, and spoke but little, asked no questions, and spent most of his time sitting cross-legged on a mat drinking tea, chewing limed “sirra” leaf and betel, or smoking long cigarettes of tobacco rolled in nipa leaf, all being brought to him from time to time by little Malay boys. The head-house was soon filled with men from the other houses, who flocked in to see us and to hear the news from Labuan of our followers. We rested a little, and then walked out to obtain a bath before dinner. Some natives directed us to a spring about half a mile off across the plain, which here, near the houses, is of sand covered with coarse sedges and scrub. We passed two or three palm-leaf cottages on our way; and here I noticed the first implement of agriculture I saw in Borneo. It was a wooden harrow; and a native seeing me interested in it, pointed to a rude iron-shod plough which hung in a large mango tree near one of the huts.
A good many of the people who live here are Badjows or “sea gipsies,” so called from their habit of wandering about from place to place in boats, in which they seem more thoroughly at home than in the wretched huts they now and then build on shore. They are essentially lazy, and will not walk a yard if they can get a buffalo or anything having four legs to carry them. We saw two Badjow boys going to the spring for water, and they both rode on a buffalo calf, which seemed used to its mischievous load. We returned to dinner at dusk, and managed to get a good night’s rest here, as the houses were cool, being built over the water, and the mosquitoes were not nearly so bloodthirsty as usual.
Our boat did not come round until nearly ten the following morning. We had been up since sunrise, and had our breakfast; so, when our craft appeared, we borrowed a boat and a couple of men from the Pangeran, and left for the Badjow village on the Menkabong. We reached that place about noon in a drenching shower, and our guides assured us that further progress that day was impossible. We therefore had our things brought up into the head-house and soon made ourselves comfortable. We had brought two dozen fine pomoloes with us from Labuan, and the ripe ones were now really excellent in flavour; and we thoroughly enjoyed this delicious fruit for dessert after a frugal luncheon of bread and dried fish. About four o’clock the rain ceased, and the sun shone beautifully, so we took our guns, and went ashore for an hour to shoot. We secured a few pigeons and other birds, returning to dinner at sunset. Mr. Veitch lost his watch among the long grass, but was fortunate enough to find it on retracing his steps.
We arose at day-break the following morning, and started off, reaching the market-place on the Tamparulie plain about seven o’clock. A large market of fruit, fish, vegetables, rice, and other native produce, was being held, and on landing we met with the Datu in whose village we had remained last night. We told him the object of our presence in his territory, and found him agreeable, although not nearly so dignified as Pangeran Rau. He sent off one of his men to fetch us some fruit, and he soon returned with a basket of fine langsat, in return for which we gave him a couple of pomoloes, and we afterwards smoked a cigar together while our men unloaded the boats. We tried to hire two or three men from him; but as he was very extortionate in his demands as to payment for them and a buffalo-sledge which we wished to load with rice for our men, we cut the matter short by refusing his assistance at any price. We sent back the Pangeran’s boat, and giving our men as much rice each as they could carry, we returned the rest to the other boat and left two men in charge until our return. I am inclined to think his greed was excited by seeing the cloth and goods we had as the men unloaded the boat.
We now found out the value of the man “Musa,” whom we had engaged to superintend our men. He was an old man, but still powerful and active, and he possessed the secret of persuasion to the utmost degree. Under his direction the men were all loaded equally, and to their individual satisfaction, and we set off towards Tamparulie. We saw a pretty white-flowered cucurbit growing over bushes here and there, and bearing spindle-shaped fruits of a scarlet colour and about two inches long. Here and there also the red-berried spikes of an amorphophallus were seen among the tall grass. I and Veitch shouldered our guns, and pushed on across a low grassy plain inhabited for the time by a few black water buffaloes, and then came a long march in single file across a series of wet rice or padi fields, the paths through which were scarcely a foot broad, very uneven, and being of pure clay, the last night’s rain had made them as slippery as wet soap. We who had only our guns to carry found it rather hard work floundering about on the greasy tracks; but the men were in good spirits, and a march of about two hours brought us to the Tawaran, close to the village of Tamparulie which stands on its banks.
The plain we had just traversed was well cultivated, and very fertile, rice, bananas, cocoa-nut trees, and other vegetation being most luxuriant. Buffaloes were employed to draw the rude ploughs through the rich, moist earth. We saw immense flocks of white “padi birds,” and here and there a crane, majestically stalking among the crops. At our halting-place the river is very shallow, its high banks being fringed with groves of cocoa-nuts and bananas; and in one or two places I noted neatly-fenced and well-kept gardens descending nearly to the water’s edge. In these were sweet potatoes, cucumbers, maize, and “kaladi,” or Caladium esculentum. The women seemed to be the principal cultivators of these little plots, and we could see them at work among the garden crops here and there as we passed along.
Here we noticed a lovely palm for the first time—a caryota—having dark green plumose foliage, the pinnæ abruptly jagged, and notched along its margins. As we partook of our luncheon, an intelligent old native came along, and sent our men to his garden, which he pointed out to us, for some green cocoa-nuts, so that we obtained a delicious draught, which we found very refreshing after our hot walk. He was very talkative, and begged a little brandy; and he also gladly accepted the seeds of a fine pomolo (Citrus decumana), to plant in his garden. We did not cross the stream here, but plunged on beside the river, following a narrow, muddy buffalo track, which in places resembled a tunnel, being completely embowered with tall grasses, bound together with large convolvuli and other creeping and climbing plants.
A heavy walk of a couple of hours brought us to the first group of Dusun houses, which stood on a bit of rising ground close beside the stream, being surrounded by a grove of cocoa-nut palms and other fruit-trees. We stayed here to rest our followers, and while waiting shot several birds on the surrounding trees. Let not the gentle reader blame us for wanton destruction! There was “method in our madness;” we did not “kill for sport,” but only for the advancement of learning, or for food.
About half a mile beyond we came to a fording-place in the stream, and descending the slippery clay banks, we crossed the river, which in places reached up to our waists; and in one place the current was rather too strong to be pleasant. Beaching the other side, our way lay along an abandoned bed of the stream for some distance. The old shingly bed was in some places quite thickly covered with Celosia argentea, forming compact little bushes, two feet high, every branchlet terminated by a rose-tipped spike of silvery bracts, forming, as seen here, a very pretty object.
We reached the Dusan village of Bawang (bawang, in the Dusun dialect = river) about four o’clock, after fording a creek up to our necks, and indeed we were both tired and hungry. We took refuge in a house, which stood on the bank, quite close to the river, and our men soon had several fires ablaze on the pebbly beach below. We pulled off our wet things, and enjoyed a bath in the bubbling stream, and then a nice rub, dry and clean clothes, made us quite comfortable by dinner time. “Bongsur,” one of the bird hunters, brought in two or three very pretty birds here; and Mr. Veitch added a black, red-bellied squirrel (“basing”) to our collection.
We slept the sleep of the weary; and the following morning pushed on up the slope beyond the village. The shady jungle through which we passed ere we began to ascend was thickly carpeted with selaginellas, S. Wallichii being especially luxuriant. S. caulescens drooped from the moist rocks here and there very gracefully. We found the climbing rather arduous work, and but for the shade of the overhanging bamboo, which grows here plentifully, we should have fared worse.
On reaching the crest of the hill, an altitude of say 800 feet, we got along better. At this height we found our first nepenthes, a pretty green-pitchered form, swollen below, and having a broad, flattened red rim to its mouth (N. Phyllamphora). We rested an hour on the top, but could procure no water, excepting a few drops from the cut end of a climbing plant, which the natives call “kalobit,” and of which they sometimes form rough cordage, by rending it into long strips. The juice of this plant is intensely bitter; but the water which distilled itself slowly from the cut end was quite pure and tasteless.
We ascended about 1500 feet to-day, and the views from the summit of the range between Bawang and Si Nilau were very satisfying, all the intervening country to the sea being plainly visible, as well as the whole coast-line, as far as Gaya Bay. We walked along quicker than usual, for the sky became very black, and it was evident that we should soon have a drenching shower. Our guides had forgotten the way to Si Nilau, and so there was nothing for it but to push on, in the hopes of meeting with a shelter by the way.
At length we suddenly came upon the site of a deserted village, and took shelter in a hut—a little better in repair than the rest—while from the trees near both langsat fruit and cocoa-nuts were procurable. Here we waited until the rain abated, when we took up our quarters in the house of a Dusun man, near the site of the old village, which had, as we afterwards heard, been deserted on account of the death of the headman.
We had previously met our Dusun landlord about two miles from this village, in some patches of rice and gourds, but he had been too frightened to answer our inquiries as to the route, and rushed down the hill just as the first few drops—big, heavy, solitary drops—fell from the black rain-clouds over head. Fortunately, I had struck the right road a few yards further on, and followed it up, when in turning a rocky corner, where two roads merged into one, I came across the man again face to face. He was so surprised at my sudden reappearance, that he fairly shook with terror, and he rushed down the rocky ledge, which served as a path around the hill-top, with the speed of a startled deer. I had yelled after him to stop, but he ran all the faster; and when afterwards we entered his house, our men had a little trouble to reassure him that we meant him no harm.
PLAN OF A DUSUN COTTAGE, N.W. BORNEO.
We soon put the old boy at his ease, however; and then a fowl for our dinner was caught and killed. For this and the fruit we had stolen we paid him a fathom and a half of grey shirting, with which he was very pleased. His house was a very neat one, having a large public room in front, with a stove, hearth, or fire-place opposite the door, and two little sleeping rooms behind. Like all Dusun houses the floor was elevated four feet from the ground, level on piles, so that the pigs and fowls had shelter beneath. The side walls and floors were of bamboo, beaten or pressed out flat, like boards, and being of a clear, yellow colour, they had a warm and comfortable appearance as the fire glowed on the hearth, above which was a rack for the storage of fire-wood, or on which clothes could be dried.
After dinner we lit our lamp, and made ourselves as cosy as possible over our post-prandial cigar, after which we were not loath to turn in. Up by daybreak, and snatching our morning meal, we were soon en route for Kalawat Peak, and thence we descended to Kalawat village by a rocky mountain-path, fringed with bamboos, large ginger-worts, and ferns of various kinds.
A strong growing species of bauhinia was very showy here, overrunning the branches of bushes and low trees beside the path, and bearing its pale, yellow flowers in large clusters very profusely. As seen at a distance it has a pleasing effect in the landscape—a rare thing with Bornean flowers; and a nearer sight of it is suggestive of our native woodbine.
Selaginellas were plentiful near the streams, and near the crest of the Peak (alt. 2000 feet) we saw a dainty little bertolonia, rarely exceeding two inches in height, having pearly-spotted leaves, and terminal clusters of rosy-pink flowers. A stately habited nephrodium, with gracefully arching light-green fronds, nearly a yard long, a zingiberad, with richly barred foliage (Alpinia sp.), two or three species of gleichenia, and now and then an inconspicuous epiphyte, orchid, or fern occurred, to add variety to our route.
We were puzzled to-day by seeing horizontal bamboo-stems fixed in the trees over our path, but we eventually discovered that they were intended to serve as bridges or paths to rats or other animals, traps being set to catch those who were unwary enough to avail themselves of the convenient crossing.
BAMBOO RAT-TRAP, USED BY DUSUN, N.W. BORNEO.
a a, Pegs connected by rattan for setting the trap; b, catch, anything touching this liberates the pegs, and the bamboo forces c tightly down on d, thus securing any animal that has touched b.
A curious custom of the Dusun is to entrap and eat the common field rats, wild cats, &c., of the country. Beside all the little paths through the forest, near Kina Balu, wooden rat-traps (see Fig.) are set in the herbage through which the animals have made their tracks. A form of this trap, slightly modified, is hung on the branches of trees for the capture of squirrels and other fruit-eating rodents. I asked Kurow how long the Dusun had eaten rats? His reply was that, “Once upon a time,” a horde of rats, far more than ever followed the ‘Pied Piper,’ I should judge by his adjectives, came and ate up all the rice and kaladi. A conference was held by the then reigning chief in the head house, and his advice was of the stern, practical kind. “Talking is of no use,” said he; “the rats have eaten all our rice: we have no other food left to us; ergo, we must eat up the rats!” “And so it was, and is to this day,” said Kurow; but I fancied I could see a sly twinkle in his bright eyes—just the same merry twinkle one expects to see in anyone’s face, after having related a palpably improbable story with all due solemnity!
We pass several very pretty little rills, at which drinking or washing was facilitated by spouts, made of the leaf-stalk of the sago palm, and placed so as to conduct the cool sparkling water on a level with one’s face. Flourishing rice and kaladi fields became more plentiful; and the tree ferns, which we had first sighted after leaving Si Nilau, now became more numerous. Just ere we reached Kalawat, we noticed some splendid specimens in the jungle; and now and then even out in the clearings their great crowns of fresh green plumose fronds being fully exposed to the sun, and in some cases borne aloft on slender black trunks, 20 feet or more in height. At the village of Kalawat the houses are in one place backed by an immense grove of these feathery plumed tall tree ferns, above which the white stemmed betel-nut palm towers aloft, its dark green foliage and pendent clusters of bright orange fruit standing out clear and bright against the cool blue sky.
At Kalawat we rested awhile. The straggling dwellings were built on piles over the muddy ground, and a few ill-fed black pigs were rooting up turf in all directions in quest of food. Here, for the first time, along this route, we were pleased to see tame bees hived in sections of hollow tree trunks, about two feet in length, the top and bottom being stopped up, and a hole burnt in the centre as an entrance for the busy workers. In one or two cases separate little huts were erected especially for the bees, but as a rule the hives were placed on a board beneath the overhanging eaves of the houses. The kind of bee kept is very small, much smaller than that common in England, and I was struck at the peculiar manner in which they wriggled their bodies simultaneously as they congregated in groups on the hive near the entrance. These tame bees, as well as their wild brethren, who nest in the tall forest trees, make but little honey in proportion to that of our northern kinds, and are especially kept for the wax they yield, this being used occasionally by the natives in the form of rude candles, and it is also an article of export from Borneo.
Being in advance of our followers we waited here an hour. It is a singular trait of the Borneans to show no curiosity when strangers pass through their villages. We sat here on a rock for some considerable time, and yet, not even the children came out to look at us. Two men sitting outside on a verandah, basket-making, and an old woman, were all the inhabitants we saw, but doubtless many a pair of bright eyes watched us secretly through the cracks of the bamboo houses. As it came on to rain, however, we entered one of the houses, in which were seven or eight young men and several women. We tried to get some fruit here, but the langsat were not ripe, and cocoa-nuts were scarce owing to the flowering stems being cut off and the exuding sap collected in a bamboo vessel to be made into toddy, a drink of which the hill villagers are very fond. At last a couple of young nuts were forthcoming, and a dash of brandy in each gave us a most refreshing draught. As the rain ceased, we decided to proceed to Bungol, the next village along our route. To this one of our guides, Pangeran Raman of Labuan,—an artful old sweep—loudly objected, urging that the Tawaran would be flooded—that we should not reach Bungol at all that night, as it would be dark long ere we could do so—adding, that there was no intervening resting-place. I was used to these excuses, and determined to go on, to which Mr. Veitch also agreed. Our guides, who had come here from Si Nilau, refused to go further, nor would any of the Kalawat people go to Bungol with us as guides, but at last one of them pointed out the right road for us to take, and I and Mr. Veitch set out along the rocky path alone. We rested on the hill above the village, and then Pangeran Raman and our two servants, or “boys,” joined us, and said the men refused to come on. This did not deter us, and we plunged down the hill-path and through one or two clearings, in which sweet potatoes, maize, and tobacco grew luxuriantly. Then down a greasy clay path, embowered with bamboos, tall canes and jungle, until at last the Tawaran was reached in the valley below, rushing and boiling among the smooth boulders in its bed.
We sat on the banks of the stream to rest. Here a pretty little palm about a yard high formed strong tufts and patches, its roots being laved by the stream below. Its pinnate leaves were graceful, and had a distinct grassy appearance. Draping trees close by the river we also found a species of vanilla in bloom. It had large waxy flowers of a creamy white colour, the lip having a five-lobed hairy crest of a dark purple-brown colour. As many as twenty buds were counted in a cluster, but the flowers expanded one at a time. We crossed the river, which nowhere exceeded our knees in height, and pushed on up the next hill. The mist was gathering thick and white in the valleys, and it began to rain in torrents. In a very few minutes the path up the hill-side became a brook, and the rain beat in our faces so that we could scarcely see our way. Added to this inconvenience was the thought that we might not be in the right track, and of this our worthy “guide,” Pangeran Raman, could tell us nothing. He was a very good fair-weather traveller, and the biggest man in our party when all was well around a good camp fire! At a pinch, when most wanted, he was perfectly useless—indeed, in the way. I am afraid I did not pity him as he stood shivering in the cold, and begging piteously of us to return to a miserable little hut beside the river for the night. This was out of the question, as we had not a dry thread on us and no food, so I pushed up the hill to reconnoitre. Just at the top I met a Dusun man who had come from Bungol, and who was going to Kalawat, and when Mr. Veitch and the old Pangeran came up, we induced the native to return with us to Bungol. We now felt more at ease, and splashed down the hill-side merrily, and after crossing the Tawaran four times, in one place nearly to our necks, we reached the cocoanut-crested hill on which the village of Bungol stands. Our “boys” had lagged behind and only reached the houses just before night-fall, having been mainly guided by the accidental discharge of our guns, which we had let off in order to dry them soon after our arrival. Our guide had brought us to his own house, and we soon had a good fire, and took off our wet clothes, after which we sat by the fire clad in native sarongs which our host lent us. We soon wrung out our clothes, and hung them on a beam over the blazing fire to dry, and then came the question of dinner. At last we procured a fowl and a bowl of rice, and my Chinese “boy,” Kimjeck, who was a good cook, soon had these on the fire.
After it was dark we heard shouting, and soon after six of our men who carried the food, clothes, and sleeping gear came in, being afraid, as they said, that we should want food. We were soon all as jolly as sandboys. The fowl was cut up and boiled with a tin of julienne soup and three or four chilies, and this and a nice white bowl of steaming rice formed a dish which to us, tired and hungry as we were, seemed “fit for a king.” A cup of chocolate and a cigar followed by way of dessert, and all our troubles for the time being vanished in smoke! We paid our guide a fathom of grey shirting, and gave him a looking-glass for our night’s lodging. The fowl and a couple of cocoanuts also were paid for with a fathom of shirting, and everybody was thus easily satisfied.
Having only a sleeping-rug each, we found it rather chilly, and I could not sleep well. I rose about 11 o’clock, however, and made up a good fire, and then lay down beside it and slept well until daybreak. We had breakfasted in the morning and were outside ready to start, when our laggards of yesterday came in, and they looked sheepish and crestfallen when they found that we were really about to start on and had not intended to have awaited their coming. Two Dusun men now accompanied us as guides, and after crossing the Tawaran several times, we mounted the hill to the left, crossing the ridge and descending towards Koung. The way to the village was down rocky gutters seemingly worn by heavy rains, and the hill-side paths in the kaladi gardens were very bad to traverse, and we were thoroughly tired out ere we reached the grassy flat on which Koung is built, indeed, this was the most toilsome day’s work we had hitherto had, although, perhaps, our long tramp yesterday had something to do with its being so.
We found the Koung people peaceably inclined, although we did not forget that it was here that Mr. Low and St. John had some difficulty with the natives the first time they came this way. We slept well, and in the morning after breakfast we retraced our steps by the river to examine a scarlet flower which we had seen from the opposite bank yesterday. It turned out to be Bauhinia Kochiana, or an allied species. Mr. Veitch shot a fine white-headed hawk, which was on the look out for a breakfast of fresh fish from the river. We also secured several other birds we had not before seen. The red-fruited Rubus rosæfolius was very pretty here among the rocks, and we observed one or two orchids of interest on the trees overhanging the stream. The river is very pretty as it passes the village, and as the water comes from the hills above, it is deliciously clear and cool, quite a luxury, in fact, either for drinking or bathing. We enjoyed our morning ramble, and on returning to the house wherein we had slept we found all the men ready to start for Kiau. On our crossing the ford at the end of the village we met a large party of natives laden with baskets of tobacco and a little beeswax, going on a trading expedition. There were some women among them, who, of course, carried the heaviest loads. Several of the men were tattooed on the breast and arms, and all were armed with brass-handled parongs and slender-shafted spears. They showed no surprise at seeing us, and passed on apparently unconcerned as to our object. Our way now lay up the valley, first on the right and then on the left of the river, but there was no great difficulty in crossing, the water being rarely as high as the hips. We passed huts here and there, and irrigated patches of rice. Maize and sweet potatoes grew around the houses, and almost all had a clump of big-leaved bananas near the door. The rice land was irrigated by a ditch cut from the river, a little dam being made so as to direct the water into it as required. We noticed several fish-traps set in the river to-day. These are made of a bamboo stem six feet long, split lengthwise and made into a long basket-like shape with rattans, so that it is wide at top and narrow at the other end. In order to set them effectively, an oblique dam of stones and earth is made so as to direct a large body of water through an aperture, and in this the basket is placed. A fish once washed into it has no chance of escape, and large quantities are caught at times, especially after the river is freshened by rains. Occasionally we saw men or women working on the rice-land, and I was very much struck at the care taken in planting and cultivating the crop, not a weed being anywhere visible in the rice-patches. The planting was extremely regular, each tuft or stool being about eight inches from its neighbours, so that all obtained their due amount of earth, light, and air, a lesson indeed for some of our own cultivators of cereals here at home.
We passed immense clumps of bamboo, the feathery wands rising in masses to a height of fifty or sixty feet. From one of these clumps our men secured some of the young crowns, which are white and tender, and by no means despisable as a vegetable when boiled with salt. At Bawang I had noticed them eating boiled fern-tops with their rice, and on asking for a little I was surprised at its delicate spinach-like flavour. We met a boy at one of the crossings with a basket of fine langsat fruit, some of which we purchased, giving him a Chinese looking-glass in exchange.
At length, crossing the river for the last time, we rested in the shade of a huge sandstone rock for a luncheon of cold rice and fruit. Our path then lay to the left through low jungle, and on one or two of the old remaining trees we noticed masses of Grammatophyllum speciosum with stems eight feet in length—each plant a good cartload, and evidently in the most luxuriant health, with foliage fresh and green, although fully exposed to the hot sun. Cœlogynes were plentiful on the lower trees and rocks by the river. One sandstone boulder was entirely covered with Davallia ciliata, and some fine tall grasses grew among the pebbles of the old river bed. The rocks bordering the river are of sandstone, and yet at Koung and along our route to-day we continually met with boulders of granite sometimes in the present river bed, sometimes on the old dry bed, and sometimes, as on the green Koung, immense pieces, a hundred tons weight, lie isolated on the plain. Half an hour’s walk from our resting-place by the river brought us to the clearings and the hill or dry rice-fields of the Kiau villagers. The crop was ripening fast, and the whole hill-side, as well as the one opposite beyond the river, looked very flourishing. Here and there were green patches of kaladi, and around the field-huts of bamboo, cucumbers clustered, and sweet potatoes, maize, and occasionally bananas, looked prosperous. We followed a narrow footpath through the rice, which was kept from injury by a little fence of bamboo, and in places the earth was prevented from washing down by a few large stones laid in line. We reached the village about two o’clock, the journey from Koung having taken us about five hours. The people here did seem to feel more interest than ordinary, and we soon had a tolerably good audience around us. One by one our followers came in, and we soon availed ourselves of the comfort of a rub over with a towel and dry clothes, after which we arranged the various plants collected during the day, and continued our journals. “Bongsur” brought in a fine brown owl and a pretty scarlet bird with black wing-tips, neither of which we had seen before. For dinner we had boiled fowl and rice, followed by coffee and a cigarette of native tobacco wrapped in maize-husk. We lay on our mats and rugs at one end of the large public room, all our men being cooking and jabbering away to their hearts’ content, the Babel of sounds, partly Malay and partly Dusun, being deafening. Tobacco was brought in for sale soon after our arrival, and one man brought a fowl, but as he asked double its value we refused to buy it.
PLAN OF LARGE DUSUN HOUSE AT KIAU, N.W. BORNEO.
The greatest interest was shown in all we did, more especially by the boys and young girls who crowded on the pathway just in front of where we lay. When we extinguished our lamp and turned into our blankets they soon became quiet, the people of the house retiring to their private apartments, and the others to their houses in the village. It was a wet night, and we felt chilly, but slept well. Our first task after breakfast in the morning was to overhaul all our stores, arranging those we wanted on the mountain so that they could be easily carried, and packing the rest so that they could be left with safety. Our stock of rice was so low that we were rather alarmed, but “Musa” assured us that he should be able to buy some in the village. After re-arranging all our things, we took our guns and walked over the hill. We saw very few birds, nor were the plants we discovered of any particular interest, with the exception of a large white-flowered arundina, having a rich amethyst-coloured lip. We saw some immense ginger-worts, having leafy stems ten or twelve feet in height; also large ferns of the angiopteris type, while Mikania volubilis overran the bushes along our route.
Returning to the house, we engaged Boloung and Kurow, the acting head men of the village, and six of their followers, to take us up the mountain on the morrow. “Musa” and Pangeran Raman did most of the bargaining on our side, and at length concluded the matter by paying over the amount of cloth and brass wire as agreed. Next morning we selected sixteen of our men and started for the mountain. In a rich bit of shady forest on the other side of the Kiau ridge we found the evergreen Calanthe macroloba, bearing spikes of white flowers much larger individually than those of C. veratrifolia. A foliage plant marked with silvery blotches above and crimson beneath was also collected. Our road was a rough and tiring one of sloping hill-side paths very wet and slippery, and in places blocked by fallen trees. About one o’clock we reached a rushing stream, and our guides brought us to a large overhanging rock, where they said we must pass the night. It now began to rain heavily, so we at once told the men to cut sticks and palm-leaves to lay on the ground where we were to sleep, and over which we could spread our waterproof sheets and rugs. This was soon done, and meanwhile our “boys” prepared luncheon. We were disgusted at stopping thus early in the day, and wished our guides to proceed when the rain abated, which however they determinedly refused to do. To make the best of a bad bargain, I and Mr. Veitch explored the forest above our camp, where we found a pretty aroid with white blotched leaves, and another marbled with silvery grey; also a variegated plant resembling an anæctochilus, but which Professor Reichenbach tells me is the Cystorchis variegata of Blume. This plant I had previously gathered in another locality further south; indeed, it seems pretty generally distributed along the north-west coast. Specimens of two or three delicate filmy ferns were found near the streams; and at our camping-place, which we named the “Sleeping Rock,” the pretty little Adiantum diaphanum was plentiful, and living plants were brought to England from this habitat.
About seven o’clock next morning we started on our upward journey. It was hot work at first, but we could feel it perceptibly get cooler after the first two or three thousand feet. At about four thousand feet mosses are very plentiful, the finest species gathered being Dawsonia superba, which fringed the path, but nowhere in great plenty. A new white-flowered species of burmannia was also gathered, and small-flowered orchids were seen. In one place a shower of small scarlet rhododendron flowers covered the ground at our feet, the plant being epiphytal in the trees overhead. It was very misty, and the moss which covered every rotten stick, and the vegetation generally, was dripping with moisture, and every sapling we grasped in climbing upwards was the means of shaking a shower-bath on us from the trees above. At about five thousand feet a dead and broken pitcher of Nepenthes Lowi lying in the path led to the discovery of the plant itself scrambling among the mossy branches overhead, its singular flagon-shaped ascidia hanging from the point of every leaf. It is a vigorous-habited plant, with bright green leathery leaves, the petioles of which clasp the stem in a peculiar manner. The only plants we saw were epiphytal on mossy trunks and branches, and we searched for young plants diligently, but without success. All the pitchers hitherto seen are cauline ones, and as the plant has never yet been seen in a young state, it is an open question as to whether the radical pitchers differ in shape or size, as is the case with most other species. As we ascended higher, epiphytal orchids, especially erias, dendrochilia, and cœlogynes became more plentiful, and we came upon a large-flowered rhododendron, bearing rich orange flowers two inches in diameter, and twenty flowers in a cluster! It grew on a dangerous declivity, and not one of our lazy men would venture to get it for us. Such a prize, however, was too lovely to forego, and after a wet scramble among the surrounding bushes, I secured it in good condition. Two or three other species were seen in flower, but none equal to it in its golden beauty. Casuarina trees became common, and higher up these were joined by two or three species of gleichenias, and a distinct form of dipteris. Phyllocladus also appeared, and a glaucus-leaved dianella (D. javanica). Here also were two of the most distinct of all rhododendrons, R. ericifolium and R. stenophyllum. On open spaces among rocks and sedges, the giant Nepenthes Rajah began to appear, the plants being of all sizes, and in the most luxuriant health and beauty. The soil in which they grew was a stiff yellow loam, surfaced with sandstone-grit, and around the larger plants a good deal of rich humus and leaf débris had collected. The long red-pitchered N. Edwardsiana was seen in two places. This plant, like N. Lowii, is epiphytal in its perfect state, and is of a slender rambling habit. Highest of all in the great nepenthes zone came N. villosa, a beautiful plant, having rounded pitchers of the softest pink colour, with a crimson frilled orifice, similar to that of N. Edwardsiana. All thoughts of fatigue and discomfort vanished as we gazed on these living wonders of the Bornean Andes! Here, on this cloud-girt mountain side, were vegetable treasures which Imperial Kew had longed for in vain. Discovered by Mr. Low in 1851, dried specimens had been transmitted by him to Europe, and Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker had described and illustrated them in the Transactions of the Linnæan Society, but all attempts to introduce them alive into European gardens had failed. To see these plants in all their health and vigour was a sensation I shall never forget—one of those which we experience but rarely in a whole lifetime!
We reached the cave (altitude 9,000 feet) about three o’clock, wet and hungry, but far from unhappy. Our first care was to light a fire, which was not at all easy to do, since everything was dripping wet. We secured a bit of dry wood at last, however, and by whittling thin shavings from it with a knife, we managed to start a good fire, and some of the men were directed to cut firewood; but so paralysed were they by the wet and cold, that it was with the greatest difficulty that we could persuade them to do this. Poor old “Musa” cut some wood and made a floor to the cave, after which some brushwood and leaves formed a substitute for a mattress. The next difficulty was to obtain water, since the men we had sent to search for it returned empty handed, having failed to find any. As a last resort I had to undertake this duty myself, and, descending the hill-side, I found a tiny pool in a gully, from which I procured a little in our cook-pots. It was not near enough, however; and in wandering in search of more, I came upon a patch of the large nepenthes, from the old pitchers of which I was able to augment my supply by carefully pouring off the rain water from a rather liberal under stratum of flies, ants, and other insect débris. Our guides slept under a rock a little further on and higher up the mountain side, and they found a stream from which good water was procured by our men in the morning and during our stay here.
It commenced to rain heavily at nightfall, and we found it very cold, although we kept a good fire burning nearly all night, one of the results being that we were nearly blinded by the smoke, there being a draught towards an opening at the hinder part of the cave. The wet dripped from the roof all night, and the walls were also wet and slimy; indeed our quarters were neither extensive nor luxurious; still we made the best of them, and, after all, were rather sorry to leave them at last. We arose at daybreak to collect plants and roots, in the which we were tolerably successful; and before night we had secured all our collections in baskets and bundles ready for the men to carry down. It was very cool and misty in the morning, but about noon it became clearer, and it was hot indeed, the rocks and old trunks reeked in the sunshine. A slender-growing species of calamus was very common in the low forest below the cave, and it supplied “rattans” of excellent quality for tying up our plants. At least three showy species of cœlogyne grow on the rocks and mossy banks here, at 9,000 feet elevation; and a dainty little plant with reddish pseudo-bulbs in clusters, each bearing a single spathulate dark green leaf, is common. This last has erect spikes of pure white flowers and buds, reminding one of the lily of the valley in cool, fresh purity, an effect partly due to its column being of a soft green tint, like a speck in the interior of the blossom. The cœlogynes are very distinct and beautiful as seen here blooming among the coarse sedges and shrubs. One has white flowers with a blotch of gold on the lip, eight or ten of its waxy flowers being borne on an erect scape. Another has yellow sepals and petals, and a white lip corrugated with brown warts. Another, not so showy, has a nodding spike of white and brown flowers.
We ascended about 9,000 feet, and were delighted with the charming views obtainable during clear weather. The whole upper portion of the mountain along the south and south-eastern slopes is nearly devoid of vegetation, except where there are streams and rather sheltered gullies up which the stunted trees and a few other plants struggle up near to the summit. On the north-western side the rocks rise very precipitous; and here vegetation fails to gain foothold. Looking upwards in the early sunlight, we had clear views of the shelving granite slopes, on which are numerous shallow channels down which streams of water pour during misty and rainy weather. When we gained the top of the great spur the morning after our arrival at the cave, we were delighted at the immense panorama which lay at our feet as we looked back. Looking away south-west we beheld the coast-line from the mouth of what our guides said was the Tampassuk river right down to Gaya Bay and Pulo Tiga, which was distinctly visible, the many-mouthed Menkabong river glistening like a silver net quite close to the coast-line.
Looking south-east over a billowy sea of silvery clouds we saw a gigantic range of mountains, and from this the conical peak of Tilong rises through strata after strata of cloud, or stands out on a clear blue background of pure sky, according to the state of the atmosphere. This claims our interest as the beacon of a land unknown; and this magnificent peak, Tilong, is by repute as high, or even higher, than Kina Balu itself. Altogether we spent three days on the sides of Kina Balu collecting plants, flowers, and seeds; and after a life on the plains and among the coast mountains—hills compared with this grisly giant—we found the climate most deliciously cool and invigorating. Rain generally commenced about 3 P.M., and continued until eight, the remainder of the night being clear, bright if moonlight, and cool—so cool, indeed, as to make a good camp fire and woollen shirts two or three-fold and blankets very desirable. The mornings were generally misty, every leaf and branch dripping with the rain and heavy dews common here at night, especially during the wet season. About noon the sun was warm, and the temperature at 9,000 feet rises to 75° if the day is fine and dry.
As I have elsewhere said, our Malay followers suffered much from what to them was bitter cold; indeed they seemed perfectly helpless, with scarcely energy to make a fire and cook their food. They have no notion of actively bestirring themselves in order to keep warm. Our food supply, too,—that is, the rice—ran short, and so the men were reduced to live on kaladi and sweet potatoes roasted in the embers and eaten with a little salt. Our Dusan guides also complained of the cold, and tried to hurry us in our descent; indeed at last they would wait no longer, and they slipped away, leaving us to reach their village alone as best we could. We were fully determined not to be defeated in our object, however, and keeping ahead of our own men we descended leisurely so as to gather plants by the way, until all had as much as they could possibly carry down. I carried my servant’s load in order that he might carry a lot of rare specimens which I had secured for him in a handkerchief. The descent after the rain of the night before was difficult and dangerous, and we had a good many falls. Once I fell down a steep place a depth of about twenty feet, among shrubs and creepers, which saved me from serious injury. Mr. Veitch and myself, my “boy,” and a solitary Labuan man, went on a-head of our main party, and just at nightfall discovered that we had lost our way. The right path lay across a clearing down which we turned instead of pushing across and striking the path beyond.