It Is Only Twenty Miles Up The River, But The Road Up
The Mountain Is A Succession Of Ladders On The Face Of
Precipices, Bamboo Bridges Over Gullies And Chasms, And Slippery
Paths Over Rocks And Tree-Trunks And Huge Boulders As Big As
Houses.
A cool spring under an overhanging rock just below the
cottage furnished us with refreshing baths and delicious drinking
water, and the Dyaks brought us daily heaped-up baskets of
Mangosteens and Lansats, two of the most delicious of the subacid
tropical fruits.
We returned to Sarawak for Christmas (the second
I had spent with Sir James Brooke), when all the Europeans both
in the town and from the out-stations enjoyed the hospitality of
the Rajah, who possessed in a pre-eminent degree the art of
making every one around him comfortable and happy.
A few days afterwards I returned to the mountain with Charles and
a Malay boy named Ali and stayed there three weeks for the
purpose of making a collection of land-shells, butterflies and
moths, ferns and orchids. On the hill itself ferns were tolerably
plentiful, and I made a collection of about forty species. But
what occupied me most was the great abundance of moths which on
certain occasions I was able to capture. As during the whole of
my eight years' wanderings in the East I never found another spot
where these insects were at all plentiful, it will be interesting
to state the exact conditions under which I here obtained them.
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