102 BORNEO. [chap. v. 



fuel when wood is so abundant and so easily obtained. It 

 was evident that Europeans seldom came here, for numbers 

 of women skeltered away as I walked through the village ; 

 and one girl about ten or twelve years old, who had just 

 brought a bamboo full of water from the river, threw it 

 down with a cry of horror and alarm the moment she 

 caught sight of me, turned round and jumped into the 

 stream. She swam beautifully, and kept looking back as 

 if expecting I would follow her, screaming violently all 

 the time ; while a number of men and boys were laughing 

 at her ignorant terror. 



At Jahi, the next village, the stream became so swift in 

 consequence of a flood, that my heavy boat could make no 

 way, and I was obliged to send it back and go on in a very 

 small open one. So far the river had been very mono- 

 tonous, the banks being cultivated as rice-fields, and little 

 thatched huts alone breaking the unpicturesque line of 

 muddy bank crowned with tall grasses, and backed by the 

 top of the forest behind the cultivated ground. A few 

 hours beyond Jahi we passed the limits of cultivation, and 

 had the beautiful virgin forest coining down to the water's 

 edge, with its palms and creepers, its noble trees, its ferns, 

 and epiphytes. The banks of the river were, however, still 

 generally flooded, and we had some difficulty in finding a 

 dry spot to sleep on. Early in the morning we reached 

 Empugnan, a small Malay village situated at the foot of an 



