The plain we had just traversed was well cultivated, and very fertile, rice, bananas, cocoa-nut trees, and other vegetation being most luxuriant. Buffaloes were employed to draw the rude ploughs through the rich, moist earth. We saw immense flocks of white “padi birds,” and here and there a crane, majestically stalking among the crops. At our halting-place the river is very shallow, its high banks being fringed with groves of cocoa-nuts and bananas; and in one or two places I noted neatly-fenced and well-kept gardens descending nearly to the water’s edge. In these were sweet potatoes, cucumbers, maize, and “kaladi,” or Caladium esculentum. The women seemed to be the principal cultivators of these little plots, and we could see them at work among the garden crops here and there as we passed along.
Here we noticed a lovely palm for the first time—a caryota—having dark green plumose foliage, the pinnæ abruptly jagged, and notched along its margins. As we partook of our luncheon, an intelligent old native came along, and sent our men to his garden, which he pointed out to us, for some green cocoa-nuts, so that we obtained a delicious draught, which we found very refreshing after our hot walk. He was very talkative, and begged a little brandy; and he also gladly accepted the seeds of a fine pomolo (Citrus decumana), to plant in his garden. We did not cross the stream here, but plunged on beside the river, following a narrow, muddy buffalo track, which in places resembled a tunnel, being completely embowered with tall grasses, bound together with large convolvuli and other creeping and climbing plants.
A heavy walk of a couple of hours brought us to the first group of Dusun houses, which stood on a bit of rising ground close beside the stream, being surrounded by a grove of cocoa-nut palms and other fruit-trees. We stayed here to rest our followers, and while waiting shot several birds on the surrounding trees. Let not the gentle reader blame us for wanton destruction! There was “method in our madness;” we did not “kill for sport,” but only for the advancement of learning, or for food.
About half a mile beyond we came to a fording-place in the stream, and descending the slippery clay banks, we crossed the river, which in places reached up to our waists; and in one place the current was rather too strong to be pleasant. Beaching the other side, our way lay along an abandoned bed of the stream for some distance. The old shingly bed was in some places quite thickly covered with Celosia argentea, forming compact little bushes, two feet high, every branchlet terminated by a rose-tipped spike of silvery bracts, forming, as seen here, a very pretty object.
We reached the Dusan village of Bawang (bawang, in the Dusun dialect = river) about four o’clock, after fording a creek up to our necks, and indeed we were both tired and hungry. We took refuge in a house, which stood on the bank, quite close to the river, and our men soon had several fires ablaze on the pebbly beach below. We pulled off our wet things, and enjoyed a bath in the bubbling stream, and then a nice rub, dry and clean clothes, made us quite comfortable by dinner time. “Bongsur,” one of the bird hunters, brought in two or three very pretty birds here; and Mr. Veitch added a black, red-bellied squirrel (“basing”) to our collection.
We slept the sleep of the weary; and the following morning pushed on up the slope beyond the village. The shady jungle through which we passed ere we began to ascend was thickly carpeted with selaginellas, S. Wallichii being especially luxuriant. S. caulescens drooped from the moist rocks here and there very gracefully. We found the climbing rather arduous work, and but for the shade of the overhanging bamboo, which grows here plentifully, we should have fared worse.
On reaching the crest of the hill, an altitude of say 800 feet, we got along better. At this height we found our first nepenthes, a pretty green-pitchered form, swollen below, and having a broad, flattened red rim to its mouth (N. Phyllamphora). We rested an hour on the top, but could procure no water, excepting a few drops from the cut end of a climbing plant, which the natives call “kalobit,” and of which they sometimes form rough cordage, by rending it into long strips. The juice of this plant is intensely bitter; but the water which distilled itself slowly from the cut end was quite pure and tasteless.
We ascended about 1500 feet to-day, and the views from the summit of the range between Bawang and Si Nilau were very satisfying, all the intervening country to the sea being plainly visible, as well as the whole coast-line, as far as Gaya Bay. We walked along quicker than usual, for the sky became very black, and it was evident that we should soon have a drenching shower. Our guides had forgotten the way to Si Nilau, and so there was nothing for it but to push on, in the hopes of meeting with a shelter by the way.
At length we suddenly came upon the site of a deserted village, and took shelter in a hut—a little better in repair than the rest—while from the trees near both langsat fruit and cocoa-nuts were procurable. Here we waited until the rain abated, when we took up our quarters in the house of a Dusun man, near the site of the old village, which had, as we afterwards heard, been deserted on account of the death of the headman.
We had previously met our Dusun landlord about two miles from this village, in some patches of rice and gourds, but he had been too frightened to answer our inquiries as to the route, and rushed down the hill just as the first few drops—big, heavy, solitary drops—fell from the black rain-clouds over head. Fortunately, I had struck the right road a few yards further on, and followed it up, when in turning a rocky corner, where two roads merged into one, I came across the man again face to face. He was so surprised at my sudden reappearance, that he fairly shook with terror, and he rushed down the rocky ledge, which served as a path around the hill-top, with the speed of a startled deer. I had yelled after him to stop, but he ran all the faster; and when afterwards we entered his house, our men had a little trouble to reassure him that we meant him no harm.