CHAPTER IY.
BORNEO— TH E ORANO-UTAN.
T ARRIVED at Sarawak on November 1st, 1854, and
left it on January 25th, 1856. In the interval I
resided at many different localities, and saw a good deal of
the Dyak tribes as well as of the Bornean Malays. I was
hospitably entertained by Sir James Brooke, and lived in
his house whenever I was at the town of Sarawak in the
intervals of my journeys. But so many books have been
written about this part of Borneo since I was there, that
1 shall avoid going into details of what I saw and heard
and thought of Sarawak and its ruler, confining myself
chiefly to my experiences as a naturalist in search of shells
insects birds and the Orang-utan, and to an account of a
journey through a part of the interior seldom visited by
Europeans.
The first four months of my visit were spent in various
parts of the Sarawak River, from Santubong at its mouth
up to the picturesque limestone Mountains and Chinese
gold-fields of Bow and Bede. This part of the country
has been so frequently described that I shall pass it over,
especially as, owing to its being the height of the wet
season, my collections were comparatively poor and insignificant.
In March 1865 I determined to go to the coal-works
which were being opened near the Simunjon River, a
small branch of the Sadong, a river east of Sarawak and
between it and the Batang-Lupar. The Simunjon enters
the Sadong River about twenty miles up. It is very
narrow and very winding, and much overshadowed by the
lofty forest, which sometimes almost meets over it. The
whole country between it and the sea is a perfectly level
forest-covered swamp, out of which rise a few isolated
hills, at the foot of one of which the works are situated.
From the landing-place to the hill a Dyak road had been
formed, which consisted solely of tree-trunks laid end to
end. Along these the bare-footed natives walk and carry
heavy burdens with the greatest ease, but to a booted
European it is very slippery work, and when one’s attention
is constantly attracted by the various objects of
interest around, a few tumbles into the bog are almost
inevitable. During my first walk along this road I saw
few insects or birds, but noticed some very handsome
orchids in flower, of the genus Coelogyne, a group which I
afterwards found to be very abundant, and characteristic of
the district. On the slope of the hill near its foot a