480 TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



meats. We ate heartily, both by choice and as a matter of cour^ 

 tesy due the company. When hot and thii'sty, I can eat a good 

 many mandarin oranges out of poHteness to my host. 



We reached Everett's quarters about noon, and in the afternoon 

 St. John and I went to see some caves not far away. Half a mile 

 east of Paku is a rocky gorge between two hills, in one of which 

 Ensunah cave is situated. The cavern extends, like a gi'eat irregu- 

 lar tunnel, quite through the hill, and is at least four hundred feet 

 from end to end. In some places it is wide and high, like the in- 

 terior of a cathedral, and in others contracted to a mere passage, 

 so naiTow that a man weighing two hundred pounds would not be 

 able to get through. The sides of the cave revealed the fact that 

 the whole hiU is full of cracks and fissui'es. I was sui'prised at see- 

 ing long, slender, rope-like roots of a dark red color coming down 

 from the trees far above, and winding about through the crevices 

 in a most persistent way. In some parts of the cave, water was 

 dripping down in a copious shower, and the soft limestone floor 

 imderneath was quite honeycombed with small round holes which 

 the "little drops of water" had drilled. The earth on the bottom 

 of the cave had all been dug up and examined by the indefatigable 

 Chinese in their never-ending search for new deposits of gold. 



After leaving the cave, we went on higher up the gorge to some 

 of the i-emarkable well-like cre\ices which exist in the hills. They 

 are simply holes running down thi'ough the limestone, with ragged, 

 uneven sides, very often of no greater diameter than a common 

 well, three or four feet, and sometimes sixty to seventy feet deep. 

 Sometimes gold is found in the loose dirt at the bottom, and when 

 this is the case they are worked by the Malays. In order to get down 

 one of these holes and up again, the prospector puts sticks across 

 the opening, jamming the ends firmly into the cracks in the sides, 

 thus forming a ladder reaching to the bottom. There is usually 

 a cavern at the bottom of each crevice, and it would seem that the 

 whole hill is a mass of huge rocks, cracked and seamed throughout. 



The antimony mine at Bidi was full of water and we did not 

 visit it. With the exception of that one mine, all the rest of the 

 antimony produced is fovmd in surface pockets, many of which 

 have been found, and quickly emptied, along the line of the tram- 

 way. The Honorable Borneo Company has a monopoly of all the 

 useful minerals of Sarawak except gold, coal, silver, and diamonds ; 

 and all the antimony found by the natives is purchased by the com- 

 pany at forty to sixty cents per picul, according to its quality. 



