IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap, x 



trary, they did their best to dissuade me from attempting the ascent, 

 and declared that unheard-of difficulties would beset me on my 

 road to the summit. Most certainly from the village in which I 

 was the way to Mount Pennerrissen was neither short nor easy, as 

 I could see for myself. Besides, I had brought with me only a small 

 quantity of provisions. So making a virtue of necessity, I contented 

 myself with the ascent of Gunong Wa, an easy undertaking from 

 Tappo Kakas. On November 19th, accordingly, I started with 

 four or five Dyaks accompanying me as guides. The side of 

 the mountain was far from steep, and after a couple of hours 

 very easy climb up an excellent pathway, we reached the summit, 

 which is a kind of plateau, the mountain having no real culminating 

 prominence. For this reason there was no view, it being impeded 

 on all sides by the forest trees, and I was in consequence somewhat 

 disappointed with my excursion. 



The formation is sandstone, as I believe it to be in all the hills 

 of the group I had crossed, of coarse elements, containing pebbles 

 of quartz and other silicious minerals, and easily disintegrated. 

 It might almost be called a quartzose conglomerate. Having 

 examined the karangan, or gravel beds, in which diamonds 

 are found at Sunta, and all along the Sarawak river, it 

 appears to me highly probable that the gems originate from the 

 disintegration of the rocky mass of the Pennerrissen group. If 

 this be true, they ought to be found in situ in the rocks of which 

 these mountains are composed. 



Up to an elevation of about 2,000 feet the slopes of the mountain 

 either were then, or had some time or other been, under rice 

 cultivation, and the primeval forest had therefore disappeared. 

 In most of the abandoned plantations a gigantic bamboo grew 

 with great luxuriance, forming huge clumps, which recalled to my 

 mind those I had admired along the Mahawelliganga in the Botanic 

 Gardens at Peradeniya, in Ceylon. It was, no doubt, a Dendrocalamus. 

 The internodes of its young shoots contained a large quantity of 

 limpid cool water which flowed out as from a tap if an incision 

 was made in them. I am not aware if this peculiarity is con- 

 stant in this species of bamboo, or whether it occurs in others when 

 growing in localities provided with a superabundance of water in 

 the soil, as was undoubtedly the case here. x I have stated in 

 a previous chapter that cultivated bamboos in Borneo rarely 

 run to seed, and are never met with in the true primeval 

 forest, except in localities once under cultivation or near 



1 Recently here, in Florence, after abundant rain, I found the young 

 shoots of a bamboo (Bambusa viridi-glaucescens) with their internodes full 

 of water. But this abnormal absorption soon caused them to turn yellow 

 and perish, the internodes becoming detached one from the other. 



126 



