6 MISS L. S. GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
also the interior of this highland country. The natives have invested it with 
a wealth of legendary lore that even Fuji can hardly rival! On its mist- 
crowned summit the souls of the departed find their eternal home, phantom 
herds of buffalo follow their masters to graze on the shadowy grasses which 
abound in that fabled kingdom. By those who would scale its sublime 
heights many ceremonies have to be performed to propitiate the “ Hantu,” or 
spirits of the mountain, and mollify their resentment at the intrusion of 
mortals on their sacred precincts. 
Round these coasts the sea is very shallow. The rivers constantly bring 
down enormous masses of material, thus continually increasing the land areas 
at their mouths and driving the mangrove formation further into the sea. 
Posewitz (13. 259) holds that “In the Tertiary Period the configuration of 
Borneo resembled an extensive archipelago, in which small island groups and 
larger islands were surrounded by the sea,” and that since then the country 
has been gradually built up by the deposition of sedimentary material in situ 
surrounding the islands. He also mentions that it is a tradition of the natives 
that the island many years ago was small. 
Motley, in 1852 (3. 6), referring to the shallowness of these seas, notes, “ the 
natives say that they sow padi where their fathers caught fish,” and further 
on, * the island laid down on the old chart of Dalrymple under the name of 
Pulu Pusania is now no longer an island, nor even is it called so. It is con- 
nected with the main by a neck of low land and its style and title altered to 
Tandjong Sari Besar.” 
In British North Borneo, within quite recent times the mangrove-fringed 
Menkabong river has almost been reduced to a salt-water lake, having so silted 
up that only light craft can now cross the bar under favourable conditions, 
and it is necessary to pass over a neck of land into Gantisan Bay to pick up 
the larger boats. The waters of the coast area are b "ackish in composition, 
owing to the enormous body of fresh water carried out to sea by the rivers. 
A fine silt is constantly deposited over the sponge and coral beds round the 
coast, and these conditions naturally explain the limited growth of marine 
algse. 
Alluvium formation has, however, in North Borneo by no means the extent 
and importance it possesses in other parts of the island, as according to 
Posewitz (12. 241), *the great development of sea-sand on the north coast 
hinders the formation of morass.” 
On the west coast there are four principal rivers: the Tampussuk and 
Tuaran in the north, which rise from Kinabalu ; the Papar river, from the 
Crocker range, and the Padas river, from the Limbakauh mountains, in the 
south. The Pengallan river, which waters the interior, flowing parallel to 
the coast, arises apparently in the Trusmandi range, traverses the plains of 
Kaningau and Tambunan on its course, and falls into the Padas at Tenom. 
