CH. vi.i River Travel. 133 



pitcher plants {Nepenthes bicalcarata), Burhidgea nitida, 

 Pinanga Veitchii, Cypripedium Lawrenceanum, and other 

 beautiful fine-foliaged plants and orchids : — 



" Towards the noon of a hot day in January 1878 

 — a day hot even for the tropics — two Veitchian tra- 

 vellers in North-western Borneo, with their native 

 contingent of guides, boatmen, and carriers, were de- 

 scending one of the most lovely of all the rivers in the 

 island. The water was clear and smooth — so clear and 

 so smooth that the great nipa leaves, which arched grace- 

 fully out from the banks and laved their ends in the 

 stream, were reflected in the water as clearly as if in a 

 mirror. The boatmen were in good spirits, for there was 

 but little work for their paddles, so they chewed their 

 betel-nut and Hmed pepper leaves contentedly, or roUed 

 up a little tobacco, cigarette-like, in wrappers made of the 

 young leaves of Nipa fruticans, and smoked in a silence 

 only broken by low laughter and sentences murmured in 

 the most musical of tongues. The river banks were 

 clothed with forest trees, as also was the rising ground 

 behind, and where the river was shallow mangrove trees, 

 thickly interlaced, took the place of the big fruited nipa. 

 On the lower trees near the fringe of the forest ccelogynes, 

 dendrobes, bolbophyUums, and other orchids — not often 

 beautiful as that word is too often understood — clothed 

 the branches ; the tiny Davallia parvula, D. heterophylla, 

 and D. pedata — aU modest little species of ferns — were 

 also seen on tree trunks or on rocks, and on the outer 

 branches far overhead Platycerium biforme made itself a 

 home, its fertile fronds drooping four or five feet below 

 the cluster of barren ones. For company, but never at 

 so great a height, varieties of Neottopteris nidus avis, or 

 an allied species, were seen forming nests of glossy 

 broadly strap-shaped fronds often of great length. Of 



