European athletic sports. A palm-thatched erection
beneath the casuarina trees, near Ramsay Point, does
duty as a grand stand and refreshment bar, and from the
slight elevation, it affords an excellent view of the dusky
but smiling faces and parti-coloured costumes of the
natives and Chinese. All the native beauties are present,
and glimpses of bright expressive eyes, coal-black hair
secured with silver pins, and brilliant sarongs beneath
neat cool-looking sacques meet one at every turn. Here
and there the sparkle of jewellery and the glitter of
bangles meet the eye, and on all sides the lavish display
of pearly teeth and the ripple of merry laughter is seen
and heard. A dinner at Government House, to which
almost all the Europeans in the island, or from the gunboat
which may happen to be in harbour, are invited,
winds up this gala day of the opening year.
There is a neat little wooden church here on the hill
behind Government House, and there is a service once
or twice every third year, when the Lord Bishop of
Sarawak visits this part of his diocese. From some of
the elevated portions of the island beautiful views are
obtainable, with the blue mountains of Borneo towering
skywards in the distance; and from the verandah of the
manager’s house at the coal-mines at the northern end of
the island, Kina Balu may be seen quite plainly at sunrise
and sunset during clear weather; and although more than
a hundred miles away, its topmost crags stand out clear
and sharp, and are tinged with the most beautiful tints
o f purple and gold by the rising or the setting sun.
It was from Labuan that my visits to the Bornean
coast and to Sulu were made. Some of these adventurous
wanderings were pleasant, others the reverse.
The following is a short account of a boat journey made
by myself and Mr. Peter Yeitch, its object being to obtain
pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcaratd), Burbidgea nitida,
Pinanga Veitchii, Cypripedium Lawrenceanum, and other
beautiful fine-foliaged plants and orchids:—
“ Towards the noon of a hot day in January 1878
—a day hot even for the tropics—two Yeitchian travellers
in North-western Borneo, with their native
contingent of guides, boatmen, and carriers, were descending
one of the most lovely of all the rivers in the
island. The water was clear and smooth—so clear and
so smooth that the great nipa leaves, which arched gracefully
out from the banks and laved their ends in the
stream, were reflected in the water as clearly as if in a
mirror. The boatmen were in good spirits, for there was
but little work for their paddles, so they chewed their
betel-nut and limed pepper leaves contentedly, or rolled
up a little tobacco, cigarette-like, in wrappers made of the
young leaves of Nipa fruticans, and smoked in a silence
only broken by low laughter and sentences murmured in
the most musical of tongues. The river banks were
clothed with forest trees, as also was the rising ground
behind, and where the river was shallow mangrove trees,
thickly interlaced, took the place of the big fruited nipa.
On the lower trees near the fringe of the forest ccelogynes,
dendrobes, bolbophyllums, and other orchids—not often
beautiful as that word is too often understood—clothed
the branches; the tinyDavallia parvula, D. heterophylla,
and D. pedata—all modest little species of ferns—were
also seen on tree trunks or on rocks, and on the outer
branches far overhead Platycerium biforme made itself a
home, its fertile fronds drooping four or five feet below
the cluster of barren ones. For company, but never at
so great a height, varieties of Neottopteris nidus avis, or
an allied species, were seen forming nests of glossy
broadly strap-shaped fronds often of great length. Of