132 BORNEO. [chap. v. 



thousand feet high, and covered with luxuriant forest. 

 There are three Dyak villages upon it, and on a little plat- 

 form near the summit is the rude wooden lodge where the 

 English Rajah was accustomed to go for relaxation and 

 cool fresh air. It is only twenty miles up the river, but 

 the road up the mountain is a succession of ladders on 

 the face of precipices, bamboo bridges over gullies and 

 chasms, and slippery paths over rocks and tree-trunks and 

 huge boulders as big as houses. A cool spring under an 

 overhanging rock just below the cottage furnished us with 

 refreshing baths and delicious drinking water, and the 

 Dyaks brought us daily heaped-up baskets of Mangusteens 

 and Lansats, two of the most delicious of the subacid 

 tropical fruits. We returned to Sarawak for Christmas 

 (the second I had spent with Sir James Brooke), when all 

 the Europeans both in the town and from the out stations 

 enjoyed the hospitality of the Rajah, who possessed in a 

 pre-eminent degree the art of^naking every one around 

 him comfortable and happy. 



A few days afterwards I returned to the mountain with 

 Charles and a Malay boy named Ali and stayed there 

 three weeks for the purpose of making a collection of 

 land-shells, butterflies and moths, ferns and orchids. On 

 the hill itself ferns were tolerably plentiful, and I made 

 a collection of about forty species. But what occupied 

 me most was the great abundance of moths which on 



