BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN BORNEO. 



45 



and other vegetation, and the very name of " Tuan Hillow " is a 

 passport and household word in Borneo at the present time. 



My own little share of Borean exploration took place during 

 the years 1877 and 1878, and the main objects of my journey were 

 the rare Orchids and Pitcher-plants or Nepenthes, and other 

 tropical vegetation known or suspected to exist in that beautiful 

 country. I am not sure that it is quite right and proper for 

 travellers to write books or papers about where they have been 

 and what they have seen and done ; such works are really most 

 infectious. If such books were suppressed or treated like dyna- 

 mite, in all probability there would be a lesser number of our 

 young people wanting to be explorers and collectors than there 

 are, and I for one should not be before you to-day. 



For in an evil moment I saw and read the " Himalayan 

 Journals," by Dr. (now Sir) J. Hooker ; " The Voyage of H.M.S. 

 Beagle," by Charles Darwin ; Mr. (now Sir) Hugh Low's " Sara- 

 wak " ; Wallace's " Malay Archipelago," and St. John's " Life in 

 the Forests of the Far East," and the influence of works like these 

 is, I can assure you, too much for a boy to withstand who was 

 born and bred in the heart of an English sporting county, and who 

 was taught by his father to love everything that lives, and to 

 admire and wonder at everything that grows. After deciding on 

 my visit to Borneo, I became interested not only in books, but 

 more especially in the living men and women who had been 

 there, and in this way began my personal acquaintance with Dr. 

 Alfred Bussel Wallace, the late Miss Marianne North, and Sir 

 Spencer St. John, all of whom gave me excellent advice and 

 encouragement ; indeed the only discord in my enthusiasm was in 

 a note sent me by that veteran collector, Mr. Tom Lobb, and 

 he said the natives of Borneo were " an infernal lot of liars and 

 thieves," adding that he had seen enormous baskets full of the 

 skulls of people they had murdered there for mere fun. 



But I knew of many people having been murdered even in 

 England, and so Mr. Lobb's note only served to whet my curiosity 

 and expectations. Borneo is, roughly speaking, 10,000 miles 

 away. Having insured your life and secured a suitable outfit, 

 you get a berth on an ocean steamer either in London or Liver- 

 pool or Southampton, and off you go. If you are a good sailor 

 the voyage is a pleasant one — rough in Biscay, smooth in the 

 Mediterranean, dusty in the Suez Canal, and uncomfortably hot 



