10 MISS L. 8. GIBBS ON THE FLORA AND PLANT FORMATIONS 
Whitehead (16. 112), thoroughly appreciate the various stages in the forest 
growth, and distinguish them by different names. 
Certainly the “untrodden jungle” of fiction seems to be as non-existent 
in this country as the “rain forest” of science. Everywhere the forest 
is very well worked and has been so for generations. Murut guides 
always follow paths, right up to the ridges, which though often undis- 
tinguishable to an untrained eye, are of known direction to them. For the 
jungle produce, rotan canes, evidently ready for cutting, can be seen pulled 
out in a conspicuous position ; dry grass, the remains of camps, suggest 
valued fruit trees ; heaps of dammar, accumulating till the requisite load for 
the dammar baskets is made up, mark the buttressed stems of the “ Salan ” 
trees, while concern is palpably shown if one incises the bark to determine a 
possible latex-bearing vine or tree. ` 
The true home of a jungle people is the jungle, which is to them what 
our agricultural and pasture land is to us. The Bornean forests have been 
systematically worked by the inhabitants and their produce, passed on to 
Chinese agents through the intermediary of the coast tribes, has been the 
principal source of the Chinese supplies of rotan and malacca canes, camphor, 
dammar, birds’ nests, bees and wax, the finished products of which have been 
distributed from China throughout the world. It was the jungle, again, 
which supplied the principal wealth of the ancient capital of Brunei, the seat 
of the Sultans of Brunei, who reigned supreme in Borneo at the time of the 
Portuguese domination. 
Portuguese writers describe the Malayan seas as swarming with junks 
and galleys bearing the produce from the Bornean forests to the markets of 
China, and Chinese colonies were established at the most fertile places 
along the coasts, resulting in much inter-marriage with the native tribes. It 
is to this intercourse that the superior qualities of the Dusuns is ascribed : 
Tamils or fairs have been and still are held all through the country at different 
localities and definite times, when the produce of the interior, in the shape 
of tobacco and rotans, and hats, mats or baskets made of the latter, are 
bartered for the salt made from the Nipa palm, and for dried fish, both 
supplied by the Bajow tribes of the coast. 
In former days the population was very much in excess of the present 
scale. Recently the people have been decimated by smallpox and cholera 
epidemics, which have limited the natural increase of the population to a 
much greater extent than former head-hunting proclivities. But now, as the 
white men and rubber plantations penetrate more and more inland, so the 
Murut gradually is driven further and further back. With the destruction 
of the forests, he is deprived of his livelihood, and his wild soul will never 
tamely submit to work as a coolie on the hunting-grounds of his ancestors. 
