Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
then another public audience, with gifts of rice and eggs, and drinking of rice wine. These
Dyaks cultivate a great extent of ground, and supply a good deal of rice to Saráwak. They
are rich in gongs, brass trays, wire, silver coins, and other articles in which a Dyak's wealth
consists; and their women and children are all highly ornamented with bead necklaces,
shells, and brass wire.
In the morning I waited some time, but the men that were to accompany me did not make
their appearance. On sending to the Orang Kaya I found that both he and another head-man
had gone out for the day, and on inquiring the reason was told that they could not persuade
any of their men to go with me because the journey was a long and fatiguing one. As I was
determined to get on, I told the few men that remained that the chiefs had behaved very
badly, and that I should acquaint the Rajah with their conduct, and I wanted to start immedi-
ately. Every man present made some excuse, but others were sent for, and by dint of threats
and promises, and the exertion of all Bujon's eloquence, we succeeded in getting off after
two hours' delay.
For the first few miles our path lay over a country cleared for rice-fields, consisting en-
tirely of small but deep and sharply-cut ridges and valleys, without a yard of level ground.
After crossing the Kayan River, a main branch of the Sádong, we got on to the lower slopes
of the Seboran Mountain, and the path lay along a sharp and moderately steep ridge, afford-
ing an excellent view of the country. Its features were exactly those of the Himalayas in
miniature, as they are described by Dr. Hooker and other travellers; and looked like a natural
model of some parts of those vast mountains on a scale of about a tenth, thousands of feet
being here represented by hundreds. I now discovered the source of the beautiful pebbles
which had so pleased me in the river-bed. The slaty rocks had ceased, and these mountains
seemed to consist of a sandstone conglomerate, which was in some places a mere mass of
pebbles cemented together. I might have known that such small streams could not produce
such vast quantities of well-rounded pebbles of the very hardest materials. They had evid-
ently been formed in past ages, by the action of some continental stream or seabeach, before
the great island of Borneo had risen from the ocean. The existence of such a system of hills
and valleys reproducing in miniature all the features of a great mountain region, has an im-
portant bearing on the modern theory, that the form of the ground is mainly due to atmo-
spheric rather than to subterranean action. When we have a number of branching valleys and
ravines running in many different directions within a square mile, it seems hardly possible
to impute their formation, or even their origination, to rents and fissures produced by earth-
quakes. On the other hand, the nature of the rock, so easily decomposed and removed by
water, and the known action of the abundant tropical rains, are in this case, at least, quite
