On Reaching The Summit We Got A Splendid View Of The Surrounding Country, And Could Plainly See The Distant Sea; But All Else Was Thick, Billowy Forest, Dotted At Long Intervals With Limestone Ridges, Also Covered With Forest.

Here we found the hole on the top of the large cave, and stretching across it were two long, thick "bilian" logs, to which the natives were now fastening their long rattan ladders before descending them to collect the nests.

We crept along the logs and listened to the everlasting twittering far below; but, although we could see nothing but pitchy darkness, the thought of what was below made me soon crawl back with a very shaky feeling in my legs

We then descended again till we came to the mouth of a curious cave, which was practically a dark chasm at our feet. We climbed down into the depths on a straight, swaying ladder, which required a good grip, and then, after a climb over slanting, slippery rocks, we found ourselves in the large cave, on a sort of ledge, within perhaps sixty feet of the roof. We were told that we were the first Europeans who had ever descended on to this ledge. From here we watched the natives collecting the nests. In a short account of this description it is impossible for me to detail all the wonderful methods the natives had for collecting the nests, but the chief method was by descending rattan ladders, which were let down through the hole on the top of the cave. It made one quite giddy even to watch the men descending these frail swaying ladders with over five hundred feet of space below them. The man on the nearest ladder had a long rattan rope attached low down to his ladder, with a kind of wooden anchor at the end of it. At the second attempt he succeeded with a wonderful throw in getting the anchor to stick in the soft guano on the edge of the slanting ledge where we were. It was then seized by several men waiting there; by these it was hauled up until they were enabled to catch hold of the end of the ladder, which they dragged higher and higher up the steep, slanting rocks we had come down by. This in time brought the flexible ladder, at least the part on which the man was, level with the roof, and he, lying on his back on the thin ladder, pulled the nests off the rocky roof, putting them into a large rattan basket fastened about his body.

We saw many other methods they have of collecting these nests by the aid of long bamboo poles and rattan ropes, up which they climbed to dizzy heights.

These eaves, we were told, were full of very large harmless snakes, but we did not come across them. If I had had a good head and plenty of skill and pluck as a climber, I might have come away a wealthy man, as the Hadji told us that in a sort of side cave high up in the large cave were the coffins of the men that first discovered these caves, and with them were large jars of gold and jewels, but no one dared touch them, as they said it would be certain death to the man who did so.

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