49 AN EXPEDITION TO MOUNT BATU LAWL. 
arrival here last year, the Limbang was in heavy flood and as it 
seemed hopeless trying to paddle up against it for some days, I 
took the opportunity of an excursion up the Madalam to its source. 
Jt took us the best part of 4 days to get there* and just 12 hours for 
the return journey. ‘The route has been traversed often enough by 
Europeans and natives, as it is one of the recognised routes between 
the Limbang and Baram districts. Sir Spenser St. John gave a 
good account of it 50 years ago, describing how the Madalam dis- 
appears under a great rock (the Batu Tarikan) and how the Kayans 
had dug’a ditch round this rock to get their boats through to join 
the stream where it emerges again the other side; this ditch is still 
used to-day, though not by armies of head-hunting Kayans so much 
as by parties‘of gutta-hunting natives of various tribes. We found 
a small party of seven Dayaks encamped there, on their way to the 
coast after six months’ gutta-hunting. They said they had about 
4 pikuls (gutta rian) for which they expected to get $120 per pikul 
from the ‘Chinese at the Baram bazaar, the latest price in Kuching 
being about $300; this last I told them, but they seemed to look 
upon it as a recognized thing for the Chinaman to gather in some- 
what more than a moderate profit, and indeed they seemed well 
satisfied with their prospecitve gain of some $70 each. ‘They had 
been delayed there some 3 or 4 days doing nothing because their 
“angei” or omens, had been bad; they had heard the ery of an 
evil bird each morning and that had prevented them walking some 
3 hours to the next stream where their boats awaited them. How- 
ever they got over the difficulty while I was there by getting up 
before daylight and slipping otf by torchlight before that wretched 
bird of ill-omen had time to wake up and utter his warning cry. 
A little way above the Batu Tarikan, (the rock mentioned be- 
fore) the stream enters a high limestone cliff and disappears al- 
together into the bowels of Mt. Molu; a wide archway, but very 
low, only 4 ft. above the water’s edge at the highest point, lets one 
into a spacious hall; four of us paddled in, leaving one man outside 
with a cut stick and a whistle, so that he could let us know if the 
water was rising. According to the natives the water has a way of 
rising very suddenly for no apparent cause, and for that reason 
most natives are afraid of going in there; however one must not 
believe them too implicitly, as in Sarawak, at any rate, they are 
usually most accommodating to the European traveller; if they see 
‘he wants to do something never done by white men before, they are’ 
‘quite ready to tell you the story of one who never dared to do this 
“before, and at the same time keep quiet about the hundred and one 
‘who have done it. Once inside this kind of hall or ante-reom a small 
“dark door-way barely five foot square shows. us the only way into 
“mysteries of the interior; through this we push our boat, shoving 
“against the slimy walls of the cavern with our hands. ‘This soon 
oo 
*Sir Spenser §t. John did the trip twice, taking 8 days on the first occasion 
from Brunei and 5 days on the second from the Kuala Madalam. 
Jour‘iStraits Branch 
