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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 27 of 219
Words from 13549 to 14060
of 114260
