"It made me," says the narrator, "long
to float away."

From the mid-slope of Kina-Balu many
brilliant glimpses of unexplored plains, unmapped
rivers, unransacked valleys, and villages
unknown to the best maps, could be obtained. At
nine thousand feet above the level of the sea the
travellers slept in a cave. Above rose the peak.
Now the peak itself—the very apex of the mountains
—was what Mr. St. John, desired to reach.
He tried his best; he persevered until the
rising ledge narrowed under his foot to eight
inches. It was unsafe to go further; so he,
from a more secure point, flung a stone to the
summit, forty feet above him, which he could
not scale, and turned him downwards, collecting
plants by the way, to return through a storm
to the friendly people of the highest village.
There all the girls had washed their faces, and
brought little presents of tobacco, in exchange
for pins and needles. On the way back to Brunei,
botanising a little, Mr. St. John, not confining
himself to the gorgeous flowers, also took notes
of sundry marvellous fishes, very like those in
the Arabian tale, where "the fisherman, looking
into the lake, saw in it fish of various colours—
white, and red, and blue, and yellow." And it
is curious that those which live in the brilliant
water-world, among coral reefs, where the nautili
stand "at their diamond doors" in "rainbow
frills," are singularly rich in tint and iridescence.
There was one—emerald green, striped with rose,
with adornments of amber and ultramarine—
exactly suited for the dinner of a Calendar, or
Sleeper Awakened, or a Princess of China
betrothed to a monarch pavilioned with his hosts
on the plains of Tartary. Glorious, indeed, is
the face of nature in this land of birds of paradise,
of scented beetles, coral snakes, the "sun-
coloured" cinnyris, the Indian lotus, the original
tiger lily, the harp-shell—tinted like a tulip—and
the only genuine mermaid, whose flesh none but
kings may eat.

The travellers' first object was attained. The
mountain had told its story. The river was now
to be questioned. This river Limbang is the
Nile of Borneo, whose sources in the far interior
are yet undiscovered. The natives talked of it
as a second Alph, the sacred stream which

———ran
Through caverns measureless by man,
Down to a sunless sea.

It rushed, they declared, through miles of natural
tunnel; beyond, it meandered through a seven
days' journey of smooth land, peopled by tame
goats without masters; but no one had been
among these goats, nor visited the watery caverns.
However, Mr. St. John, in the spirit of the simple
old voyager who began his narrative with "being
resolved to survey the world, I sailed from
Bristol," undertook to explore the Limbang
for himself, and go from its traditions into its
geography. Two boats were equipped; the
crews were armed; hatchets, yellow, black, red,
and white cloths, looking-glasses, agates, and
beads were taken in stock to propitiate the
savages, and in August, 1858, a start was made.
Away, past a burial-ground of chiefs, where gold
ornaments are found, either in the earth or
among the prawns in the river, past the stony
relics of ancient Brunei, past rafts of palms,
and through a connecting channel into the
Limbang river. Thenceforward, no Malay dwellings
were seen; the Bisayans, the Muruts, and a
few Kayans occupied the sprinkled villages.
It was a fatiguing but an interesting journey,
with forest fare of the best; for Mr. St. John
travelled with a cook who could make salads
as he ran of cucumbers and chillies, of prawns
and curry, or contrive curries finished in the
orthodox way with cocoa-nut milk. The
navigation was not only difficult but perilous, and the
weather intensely disagreeable. In the woods,
overhanging the stream, hideous green snakes
were pendent; hornets infested the air, and
stung fiercely; leeches clung to the explorers,
legs, when they landed on the swampy shores.
But they continued their adventures on foot,
with provisions failing and men discontented.
In the valley of the Limbang the women make
the tapioca from the starch of the bitter cassava,
cut into slices, dry its poison out and pound it into
meal. The strange tribes, the singular village
life, the legends of the elders, the manners and
customs of a new race, the brilliant flowers of
this wilderness of the Sun Garden, the sport,
the scenery, and the promise of a glimpse
of Larvi, a mountain of mystic fame in the far
interior, occupied the minds of the travellers.
A month was spent on the road, however, and
Larvi was not reached. Still, the course of the
Limbang, for a considerable distance, was
determined.

On his way back to Brunei he heard some
fearful and wonderful stories about the ourang-
outang, the wild man of the woods. It
had frequently been asserted that young girls
were carried off by these poor relations of his
lordship the gorilla; but here we have a tale
about a monstrous female ourang-outang who,
taking a fancy to a poor Murut gentleman whom
she saw bathing, dragged him by force to a tree
which she compelled him to climb, lodged him
in a warm nest, watched him with feminine
jealousy, fed him with fruits and palm cabbage,
and forced him to travel from one branch to
another instead of treading the ground. The tale is
a tragedy; for the ungrateful Murut not only
ran away at the first opportunity, but afterwards
shot the forest syren with a poisoned arrow.

Forest travel in Borneo, then, was not
altogether a luxury; nor was it monotonous. A
mile an hour is the rate of progress under
ordinary circumstances. With all exertion, Mr.
St. John never recorded more than ten miles'
progress in a day through the thick pathless
forests, and that was a day of ten hours' hard
incessant work.

As for the sultan to whom Mr. St. John
was accredited, his is a Malay kingdom, one
of the few which have not fallen. He keeps
a constitutional court in the Oriental sense of
the term, and his capital is styled the Abode of
Peace. He is surrounded by an aristocracy—