The Camp We Were Just Leaving Was Only About A Metre Above The Kayan River, So We Probably Were Not More Than Twenty-Odd Metres Above Sea-Level.

Twenty metres more, and the jungle vegetation was thinner even at that short distance.

Trees, some of them magnificent specimens of hard wood, began to assert themselves. Above 100 metres elevation it was not at all difficult to make one's way through the jungle, even if we had not had a slight Punan path to follow. It is easier than to ascend the coast range of northeast Queensland under 18 S.L., where the lawyer palms are very troublesome. Making a light clearing one evening we opened the view to a couple of tall trees called in Malay, palapak, raising their crowns high above the rest; this is one of the trees from which the natives make their boats. The trunk is very tall and much thicker near the ground.

Reaching a height of 500 metres, the ground began to be slippery with yellow mud, but the jungle impeded one less than the thickets around Lenox, Massachusetts, in the United States. Toward the south of our camp here, the hill had an incline of 45 degrees or less, and one hardwood tree that we felled travelled downward for a distance of 150 metres. A pleasant soft breeze blew for about ten minutes, for the first time on our journey, and the afternoon was wonderfully cool.

A Kayan messenger here arrived from the kampong, bringing a package which contained my mail, obligingly sent me by the controleur.

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