22 THE SULU ISLANDS. [chap. 



Meimbun in Sulu Island. He was a lively little youngster of about 

 fourteen, who had been a great favourite of the last Sultan of Sulu, 

 and had apparently acquired a good many of his sovereign's 

 despotic habits, for the way in wliich he ordered about his 

 followers was most amusing. He smoked native rokos or cigarettes 

 incessantly when he could not get ours, and his chief amusement 

 seemed to be the rapt contemplation of the two or three tinsel and 

 gold embroidered hajus that constituted his wardrobe. Our own 

 native servants were two in number ; Ismail, a Singapore Malay, 

 and a Sulu boy named Usman, both of whom we had taught to 

 collect and skin bu'ds. 



We left the shores of Borneo behind us on the afternoon of 

 April 19th, and set our course westward for Sulu. The northern 

 part of this extensive archipelago is but little known, and the 

 curi'ents are strong and uncertain, and hence it is necessary to be 

 careful not to approach the network of shoals and islands before 

 daylight. The following morning we found that we had been set 

 considerably to the northward by the current, instead of to the 

 south, as we had been informed by the Sandakan people would be 

 the case. The mountains of the island of Sulu, among which 

 Buat Timantangis was especially conspicuous, were \isible far away 

 to the E.S.E., and altering course so as to pass through the 

 Pangutarang Channel, we rapidly approached them. I have never, 

 in the whole course of my wanderings, seen a calmer sea than that 

 wliich lay before us. Not only was its burnished surface unbroken 

 by a single breath of air, but no trace of a swell was visible to mar 

 the glassy plane. Everything was aglow with the heat. The little 

 puffs of white cloud were reflected in the oily mirror with mar- 

 vellous distinctness, and sea and sky blended in a shade of silvery 

 grey towards the in^dsible horizon. A mile or more away the 

 flying-fish were visible, little dark specks that regained the sea 

 only to leave a larger, darker speck behind them — the ripples 

 :ihat marked their disappearance ; and far astern of us we could 

 see our track widening almost to infinity — a series of parallel black 



