Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
V
Borneo—Journey in the Interior
(
NOVEMBER
1855
TO JANUARY
1856)
As the wet season was approaching I determined to return to Saráwak, sending all my collec-
tions with Charles Allen round by sea, while I myself proposed to go up to the sources of the
Sádong River, and descend by the Saráwak valley. As the route was somewhat difficult, I
took the smallest quantity of baggage, and only one servant, a Malay lad named Bujon, who
knew the language of the Sádong Dyaks, with whom he had traded. We left the mines on the
27th of November, and the next day reached the Malay village of Gúdong, where I stayed a
short time to buy fruit and eggs, and called upon the Datu Bandar, or Malay governor of the
place. He lived in a large and well-built house, very dirty outside and in, and was very inquis-
itive about my business, and particularly about the coal mines. These puzzle the natives ex-
ceedingly, as they cannot understand the extensive and costly preparations for working coal,
and cannot believe it is to be used only as fuel when wood is so abundant and so easily ob-
tained. It was evident that Europeans seldom came here, for numbers of women skeltered
away as I walked through the village; and one girl about ten or twelve years old, who had just
brought a bamboo full of water from the river, threw it down with a cry of horror and alarm
the moment she caught sight of me, turned round and jumped into the stream. She swam
beautifully, and kept looking back as if expecting I would follow her, screaming violently all
the time; while a number of men and boys were laughing at her ignorant terror.
At Jahi, the next village, the stream became so swift in consequence of a flood, that my
heavy boat could make no way, and I was obliged to send it back and go on in a very small
open one. So far the river had been very monotonous, the banks being cultivated as rice-
fields, and little thatched huts alone breaking the unpicturesque line of muddy bank crowned
with tall grasses, and backed by the top of the forest behind the cultivated ground. A few
hours beyond Jahi we passed the limits of cultivation, and had the beautiful virgin forest
coming down to the water's edge, with its palms and creepers, its noble trees, its ferns, and
