Our
Porters Had Followed Us After A Rest, Bringing Only Their Rice To
Cook, And Luckily We Did Not Require The Baggage They Left Behind
Them.
In the morning I caught a few butterflies and beetles, and
my friend got a few land-shells; and we then descended, bringing
with us some specimens of the ferns and pitcher-plants of Padang-
batu.
The place where we had first encamped at the foot of the mountain
being very gloomy, we chose another in a kind of swamp near a
stream overgrown with Zingiberaceous plants, in which a clearing
was easily made. Here our men built two little huts without
sides that would just shelter us from the rain; we lived in
them for a week, shooting and insect-hunting, and roaming about
the forests at the foot of the mountain. This was the country of
the great Argus pheasant, and we continually heard its cry. On
asking the old Malay to try and shoot one for me, he told me that
although he had been for twenty years shooting birds in these
forests he had never yet shot one, and had never even seen one
except after it had been caught. The bird is so exceedingly shy
and wary, and runs along the ground in the densest parts of the
forest so quickly, that it is impossible to get near it; and its
sober colours and rich eye-like spots, which are so ornamental
when seen in a museum, must harmonize well with the dead leaves
among which it dwells, and render it very inconspicuous. All the
specimens sold in Malacca are caught in snares, and my informant,
though he had shot none, had snared plenty.
The tiger and rhinoceros are still found here, and a few years
ago elephants abounded, but they have lately all disappeared. We
found some heaps of dung, which seemed to be that of elephants,
and some tracks of the rhinoceros, but saw none of the animals.
However, we kept a fire up all night in case any of these
creatures should visit us, and two of our men declared that they
did one day see a rhinoceros. When our rice was finished, and our
boxes full of specimens, we returned to Ayer-Panas, and a few
days afterwards went on to Malacca, and thence to Singapore.
Mount Ophir has quite a reputation for fever, and all our friends
were astonished at our recklessness in staying so long at its
foot; but none of us suffered in the least, and I shall ever
look back with pleasure to my trip as being my first
introduction to mountain scenery in the Eastern tropics.
The meagreness and brevity of the sketch I have here given of my
visit to Singapore and the Malay Peninsula is due to my having
trusted chiefly to some private letters and a notebook, which
were lost; and to a paper on Malacca and Mount Ophir which was
sent to the Royal Geographical Society, but which was neither
read nor printed owing to press of matter at the end of a
session, and the MSS. of which cannot now be found. I the less
regret this, however, as so many works have been written on these
parts; and I always intended to pass lightly over my travels in
the western and better known portions of the Archipelago, in
order to devote more space to the remoter districts, about which
hardly anything has been written in the English language.
CHAPTER IV.
BORNEO - THE ORANGUTAN.
I ARRIVED at Sarawak on November 1st, 1854, and left it on
January 25th, 1856. In the interval I resided at many different
localities, and saw a good deal of the Dyak tribes as well as of
the Bornean Malays. I was hospitably entertained by Sir James
Brooke, and lived in his house whenever I was at the town of
Sarawak in the intervals of my journeys. But so many books have
been written about this part of Borneo since I was there, that I
shall avoid going into details of what I saw and heard and
thought of Sarawak and its ruler, confining myself chiefly to my
experiences as a naturalist in search of shells, insects, birds
and the Orangutan, and to an account of a journey through a part
of the interior seldom visited by Europeans.
The first four months of my visit were spent in various parts of
the Sarawak River, from Santubong at its mouth up to the
picturesque limestone mountains and Chinese gold-fields of Bow
and Bede. This part of the country has been so frequently
described that I shall pass it over, especially as, owing to its
being the height of the wet season, my collections were
comparatively poor and insignificant.
In March 1865 I determined to go to the coalworks which were
being opened near the Simunjon River, a small branch of the
Sadong, a river east of Sarawak and between it and the Batang-
Lupar. The Simunjon enters the Sadong River about twenty miles
up. It is very narrow and very winding, and much overshadowed by
the lofty forest, which sometimes almost meets over it. The whole
country between it and the sea is a perfectly level forest-
covered swamp, out of which rise a few isolated hills, at the
foot of one of which the works are situated. From the landing-
place to the hill a Dyak road had been formed, which consisted
solely of tree-trunks laid end to end. Along these the barefooted
natives walk and carry heavy burdens with the greatest ease, but
to a booted European it is very slippery work, and when one's
attention is constantly attracted by the various objects of
interest around, a few tumbles into the bog are almost
inevitable. During my first walk along this road I saw few
insects or birds, but noticed some very handsome orchids in
flower, of the genus Coelogyne, a group which I afterwards found
to be very abundant, and characteristic of the district.
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