352 TWO TEAKS IN THE JUNGLE. 



gether, so that their tops formed a compact mass of green foHage 

 which shut out every ray of sunlight from the ground below. In- 

 stead of tangled and spreading brushwood, the undergrowth con- 

 sisted of saplings, with the stems of rattans, rope-like creepers and 

 hanas hanging from the tree-tops or twining in awkward, angular 

 fashion around their trunks. The ground beneath was little more 

 than a net- work of gnarled i-oots, rising out of a thick pulp of water 

 and decayed vegetable matter often a foot deep. It was not water, 

 for it was too thick to be called a liquid ; it was not mud, for there 

 was scarcely any soil in it ; but it was as wet as water and soft as the 

 softest mud. It is this vegetable pulp which, when washed into 

 the rivers of Borneo, is immediately dissolved, and imparts to the 

 streams near the coast their murky brown color. 



Almost the entire island of Borneo is quite encircled by a belt 

 of swamp forest such as the above, extending back from the sea- 

 shore a distance of fifteen to forty miles, where the land rises and 

 asserts itself. Along the coast of Sarawak, particularly between 

 the Sambas and Batang Lupar Rivers, isolated hills and lofty peaks 

 rise abruptly fi'om the level forest here and there — evergreen islands 

 rising out of an evergreen sea. Along the seashore, the jungle 

 is low and scrubby, but it reaches quite down to tide-mark. 

 Where the beach is clean and sandy it is fringed with graceful 

 casuarinas (C littorea), here called the arrooree tree ; but where the 

 shore is of mud, as it is between the Sadong and Batang Lupar, the 

 mangrove forms the boundary of the jungle. A few miles back 

 from the sea the jungle rapidly rises in height and attains its great- 

 est altitude on the hills. 



Progress on foot through the swamp is slow and difficult at 

 best, and even the man who prides himseK on his ability to follow 

 wherever a native can lead, will find his powers of endurance put to 

 the test when he starts out to follow a naked Dyak through his na- 

 tive swamps. It seems strange that any terrestrial quadruped 

 should voluntarily make its home in these gloomy fastnesses, where 

 there is not even a spot of dry ground large enough for a lair, and 

 yet the sambur deer {Rusa equina), the wild hog, and the tiny 

 Java deer are abundant in this very swamp. I say abundant, be- 

 cause several were taken there during my stay, although on the 

 day of which I am now speaking we saw not one. The only 

 animal we saw was a large monkey with a short tail, called a pig- 

 tailed macaque (Macacus nemestrinua), which I shot and skinned. 



A day in the swamp, together with two or thi-ee shorter excur- 



