WE ASCEND A RIVER 125 



In shape, Pulo Panjang is roughly a parallelogram, but its 

 north - west side is somewhat eaten away ; and the bay thus 

 formed makes, together with Pulo Milo, a most effective 

 harbour. 



At the apex of this is a small secondary bay, where a little 

 river, rising in the hills inland, debouches through a broad belt 

 of mangroves. The salt-water basin, although partially choked 

 with coral, would, in the event of settlement, serve well as a 

 small boat harbour. 



We ascended the stream several times in search of the big 

 storkbilled kingfisher {Pelargopsis leucocephala), which, strangely, 

 occurs again in Borneo, and at no spot between that island and 

 the Nicobars ; the case of the megapode is exactly parallel. 



The river at first ran through a forest of young, but lofty^ 

 mangroves {Bruguiera gymnorhizd)^ whose straight stems, leaning 

 towards each other across the stream, bore a certain resemblance 

 to an assemblage of scaffold-poles. At length, when the land 

 became less swampy, they gave place to a fringe of nipah or 

 attap palms, the fruit of which looks like an exaggerated pine 

 cone, and is sometimes eaten by Malays, while from the tender 

 inner shoot, the same people obtain a wrapper for their 

 cigarettes.* 



Finally, where the banks became dry and solid, they were 

 overgrown by luxuriant jungle — a mixture of forest trees, bam- 

 boos, palms and rattans, with here and there bordering the stream, 

 a many-footed, white-skinned pandanus, and often a beautiful 

 tree fern {Alsophila albasetecea), that immediately brought to 

 my mind the blue hills and equally lovely valleys of New 

 Zealand. 



The stream, although maintaining a depth of 5 to 10 feet, 

 at length became very narrow, and we were compelled, in order 



S.oc. Bengal), and by the members of the Galathea Expedition up the Galathea 

 River in Great '^\co\>da {Corvetten Galathea! s Jordourseiling, Steen Bille, Kjoben- 

 haven, 1852). 



* The Malay roko is an affair of much wrapper and little tobacco, whose 

 flavour would seem so bonfire-like as to be akin to the brown paper or stump- 

 of cane smoked by precocious and naughty little boys at home I 



