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 entirely 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 Sadong, we got on to the lower slopes of the Seboran
Mountain, and the path lay along a sharp and moderately
steep ridge, affording 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 ot well-rounded pebbles of the very hardest
materials. They had evidently 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 important bearing on the modern theory,
that the form of the ground is mainly due to atmospheric
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 earthquakes. 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
sufficient causes for the production of such valleys. But
the resemblance between their forms and outlines, their
mode of divergence, and the slopes and ridges that divide
them, and those of the grand mountain scenery of the
Himalayas, is so remarkable, that we are forcibly led to
the conclusion that the forces at work in the two cases
have been the same, differing only in the time they have
been in action, and the nature of the material they have
had to work upon.
About noon we reached the village of Menyerry, beautifully
situated on a spur of the mountain about 600 feet
above the . valley, and affording a delightful view of the
mountains of this part of /Borneo. I here got a sight of
Penrissen Mountain, at the head of the Sarawak River,
and one of the highest in the district, rising to about
VOL. I. i