104 
KINA BALU. 
could see that the mountain on this side was a sheer precipice and quite inaccessible, 
the water falling thousands of feet without touching the rock; and I found out later that it 
was a very tough job to reach it. 
The prominent points seen from the coast looked now very different, the peculiar 
sharp point at the more northern end becoming a round-topped peak, separated from the 
main ridge ; the long jagged main ridge is broken in one place by a peak which towers up 
in front of it. Between the main buttress and the long jagged ridge is a huge gorge 
surrounded on three sides by sheer precipices of bare rock, the entrance to this gorge being 
from the western side, facing Melangkap. At the most southern extremity the mountain 
suddenly terminates at its greatest altitude by precipices of rock. The top along the whole 
distance is bare of vegetation and very rough; here and there great scars formed by 
rockslips may be noticed. Though Kina Balu is only a few miles distant, the intervening 
country is a mass of high forest-clad ridges, which look from here very steep, and through 
which the Panataran and other streams have cut, in the course of ages, deep channels. 
The Panataran flows half round the hill on which Melangkap is situated, but is 
several hundred feet below the village, the mountain-sides being very steep. In the 
foreground of the picture are native clearings and a few coconut-plantations, the fruit 
and forest trees growing in patches mingled together. The hill-sides are covered with a 
species of bracken fern, and in some places with lalang grass, or last year’s and the present 
year’s rice-clearings, in Avhich may be noticed the small watch-houses of the Dusuns. 
The village of Melangkap is situated at the end of a huge spur, which runs round in a 
slight curve almost to the base of the great buttress of Kina Balu. At the Melangkap end 
the altitude is over 1000 feet, but this spur gradually rises on nearing the mountain to over 
5000 feet. It is covered with a dense forest-growth and branches off in several directions, 
the Panataran flowing along its base, the head waters of this river falling from the top of the 
buttress itself. On looking to your left, when facing the mountain (from the village of 
Melangkap), another lofty spur sweeps round from the other end of the mountain. This 
spur is more broken up and about 4000 feet in altitude; on it, facing Melangkap, are the 
villages of Kapar and Teung, and over it a path leads to the village of Siap. Directly in 
front of Melangkap, and between the two mentioned ridges, the country is a mass of huge 
spurs, mounting up, as Kina Balu is neared, to 5000 or 6000 feet; one sharp peak, as I have 
already stated, is very much higher, and when seen from Melangkap breaks the outline of 
the main ridge of Kina Balu itself. Another stream drains this district and flows past the 
spur on which Kapar is situated, joining the Panataran shortly below that village. The 
Tampassuk plain, the sea beyond, and the islands of Mantinani, are distinctly visible from 
the top of the Melangkap ridge. I find that the late Mr. Frank Hatton mentions this 
village, then composed of six houses (‘ North Borneo,’ p. 247). 
The afternoon we arrived I made my first attempt at foraging, but found food of all 
sorts excessively scarce. A Dusun brought me a small chicken, and on asking him the 
price, he looked round the house for a second or two, and pitched on a blanket, which he 
evidently considered would be about the value of his chicken. He refused to take 
anything else, so I went without my dinner. The Dusun values all material by length, not 
by quality; cloth of all sorts is measured by the fathom. 
