336 TWO YEARS IIS" THE JUNGLE 



the island was a very agreeable one ; and I shall always remember 

 that but for him I should have gone further and fared worse, for 

 I learned later that Pontianak would not have been the place for 

 me. Since my return to America, the sad news has reached me 

 that my genial friend has gone forever from the land he helped to 

 govern both wisely and well. In his nineteenth year of service his 

 health failed utterly, and on the voyage home he died on the pas- 

 sage up the Ked Sea. The rajah lost a valuable officer and the 

 Dyaks a valuable and trusted friend. 



The trim little steamer Rajah Brool-e, belonging to the Honor- 

 able Borneo Company, makes tri-monthly trips between Singapore 

 and Sarawak (pronounced Sar-a/i-wok), carrying to the latter Chi- 

 nese emigi'ants, cloth, brass, and ironware, crockery, opium, to- 

 bacco, sugar and manufactured sundries, and returning with sago, 

 flour, gutta-percha, dried fish, rattans, edible bird's nests, timber 

 and other jungle products, and also a very considerable quantity 

 of antimony and quicksilver from the mines of the Borneo Com- 

 pany. 



On August 7th I embarked myself, a first-class Chinese servant 

 named Ah Kee, a half-caste Portuguese lad named Perara to assist 

 in hunting and preparing specimens, and a complete jungle outfit, 

 with provisions for three months. 



At three o'clock we left the Singapore Roads, and, while at our 

 six o'clock dinner, steamed out between Horsburgh Light and 

 Point Romania, the extreme southeastern point of Asia, heading 

 " east-b'-north " for Sarawak. The day following was one of 

 smooth, uneventful sailing o'er a " sultry summer sea," with here 

 and there a pretty green islet in sight, but the cloudless simrise of 

 the third day out found us running close along the coast of Bor- 

 neo. Cape Datu lay directly astern. Cape Sipang stood out di- 

 rectly ahead, while all along the south stretched the yellow, sandy 

 beach and evergreen forest of my new laud of promise. Borneo at 

 last, the land of apes and monkeys, the home of the orang-utan, 

 the country of the head-hunter, perhaps the sepulchre of the mys- 

 terious INIissing Link ! 



Far in the interior there loomed up the rugged masses and iso- 

 lated peaks of the Knimbang range, clad with tropical verdure, 

 looking dreamily blue and hazy in the distance. As we proceeded, 

 the view disclosed still more lofty and extensive ranges farther in- 

 land, until at last the whole interior seemed to be composed of 

 mountains only, between which and the sea there stretched a wide 



