172 
ACCOUNT OF EXPEDITIONS TO MT. KINABALU. 
of the Kadamaian below. This is probably the origin of 
the three reigning families of Kian. At present there are 
only two villages, as Upper Kiau has joined up with Middle 
Kiau. 
Little states that “ Kabong was the headman of the 
middle village together with Baging ,” and that “ Bunahow 
owns the lower village.” These last two names I did not 
hear mentioned. 
III. The Lake of Kinabalu. 
Old writers refer to a lake on or near Kinabalu, and each 
visitor to the mountain, having failed to find it, has had to 
offer some new suggestion to account for it. 
Low * dismisses it summarily: “ I made diligent inquiries 
of the Dyaks, but could learn nothing satisfactory about 
it. Very few had ever heard of such a lake.” 
St. John,f in a paper read before the Geographical 
Society in London, states: “ That it exists to the east of 
the mountain appears from inquiry to be certain; its size 
it is unnecessary to estimate, though our informant stated 
that, standing on one bank, it was not possible to see the 
opposite one. . . . We jointly questioned the Ida’an on 
many questions during our long stay at Kiau village; they 
spoke of it as a certainty, many affirming that they them¬ 
selves had been on trading expeditions to it.” 
Several travellers having tried hard to be the first to find 
this elusive lake, it became rather the thing to prove defi¬ 
nitely its non-existence. Treacher,! in a discussion on 
Admiral Mayne’s article on explorations in British North 
Borneo, states that “ the late Mr. Witti settled once for all 
the vexed question of the existence of the large mythical 
Kinabalu lake which had figured in all maps and charts of 
Borneo up to this time.” He goes on to observe that “ the 
late Mr. Frank Hatton supplemented Mr. Witti’s investi¬ 
gations in that quarter; but visiting it at a different time 
of year he found that its flooded condition from the waters 
of the Linogu or Labuk river gave some little foundation 
to the ancient tradition of the lake’s existence.” Treacher 
refers to a plain some thirty miles east of Kinabalu, which 
is known as Danau —a word of no particular meaning to 
the Dusuns, but in Malay meaning lake. This plain is 
1600 ft. above sea-level, and measures roughly four miles 
* Journ. Ind. Arch, and East. Asia, 1852, vol. vi. p. 17. 
f Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. 1868, p. 221. 
I Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. 1888, p. 145. 
