Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On reaching Saráwak early in December I found there would not be an opportunity of re-
turning to Singapore till the latter end of January. I therefore accepted Sir James Brooke's
invitation to spend a week with him and Mr. St. John at his cottage on Peninjauh. This is a
very steep pyramidal mountain of crystalline basaltic rock, about a thousand feet high, and
covered with luxuriant forest. There are three Dyak villages upon it, and on a little platform
near the summit is the rude wooden lodge where the English Rajah was accustomed to go
for relaxation and cool fresh air. 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 Mangusteens and Lansats, two of the most delicious of the subacid tropical fruits.
We returned to Saráwak 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, but-
terflies 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 abund-
ance 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.
On one side of the cottage there was a verandah, looking down the whole side of the
mountain and to its summit on the right, all densely clothed with forest. The boarded sides
of the cottage were whitewashed, and the roof of the verandah was low, and also boarded
and white-washed. As soon as it got dark I placed my lamp on a table against the wall, and
with pins, insect-forceps, net, and collecting-boxes by my side, sat down with a topic. So-
metimes during the whole evening only one solitary moth would visit me, while on other
nights they would pour in, in a continual stream, keeping me hard at work catching and pin-
ning till past midnight. They came literally by thousands. These good nights were very few.
During the four weeks that I spent altogether on the hill I only had four really good nights,
and these were always rainy, and the best of them soaking wet. But wet nights were not al-
ways good, for a rainy moonlight night produced next to nothing. All the chief tribes of
