We stayed the night in one of two raised half-thatched huts used only by the natives in the collecting seasons, a ladder from the river leading into them. It was almost dark when we arrived, and hardly were we under shelter when rain came down in torrents. It poured all night, and when we started off on foot at sunrise the next morning we found the track in the forest a regular quagmire; in places we waded through mud up to our knees. As we scrambled and floundered through the mud at our best pace we heard a great crashing noise just in front of us, and the air resounded with cries of “Gajah, gajah!” (elephant). I was just in time to see a large elephant tear by. It literally seemed to fly, and knocked down small trees as if they were grass. It seemed greatly frightened, and made a sort of coughing noise. It went by so quickly that I was unable to see whether it had tusks or not.
After about three hours’ hard tramping, I caught sight of a high mass of white limestone gleaming through the trees. It made a pretty picture in the early morning, the white rock peeping out of luxuriant creepers and foliage. It rises very abruptly from the surrounding forest, and at a distance looked quite inaccessible to a climber.
We waded through a stream of clear water, washing the horrible forest mud from off us, and soon found ourselves in a most picturesque village at the very base of the rock. We disturbed quite a crowd of native girls bathing in a spring, and they seemed very much alarmed and surprised at seeing two Europeans suddenly turn the corner. Out of season I don’t believe any one lives in this village except some watchers at the mouths of the eaves to guard against thieves. The Hadji gave us a rough hut with a flooring of split bamboo and kept us provided with chickens. All this no doubt was in his estimation part of the necessary steps to securing that much-desired Panglima-ship.
The two days we were here, people kept flocking into the village, most of the men carrying long steel-pointed spears, in many cases beautifully mounted with engraved silver: others carried long “parangs” and “krises” in rough wooden sheaths, but the handles were often of carved ivory and silver.
After some breakfast we started off to see the near lower cave, which was one of the smaller ones. We followed a very pretty ferny track by the side of a rocky stream for a short distance, the forest being partially cleared and open, with large boulders scattered around. The sky overhead was thick with swallows, in fact one could almost say the air was black with them. These of course were the birds that make the nests. The mouth of the cave partly prepared me for what I was to see. I had expected a small entrance, but here it was, I should say, sixty feet in height and of great width, the entrance being partly overhung with a curtain of luxuriant creepers. The smell of guano had been strong before, but here it was overpowering.
Extending inside the cave for about one hundred yards was a small village of native huts used chiefly by the guards or watchers of these caves. Compared with the vastness of the interior of the cave—I believe about four hundred and eighty feet in height—one could almost imagine that one was looking at the small model of a village. A small stream ran out of a large hill of guano, and if you left the track you sank over your knees in guano. The vastness of the interior of this cave impressed me beyond words. It was stupendous, and to describe it properly would take a better pen than mine. One could actually see the very roof overhead, as there were two or three openings near the top (reminding one of windows high up in a cathedral) through which broad shafts of light forced their way, making some old hanging rattan ladders high up appear like silvery spider webs. Of course there were recesses overhead where the light could not penetrate, and these were the homes of millions of small bats, of which more presently. As for the birds themselves, this was one of their nesting seasons, and the cave was full of myriads of them. The twittering they made resembled the whisperings of a multitude. The majority of them kept near the roof, and as they flew to and fro through the shafts of light they presented a most curious effect and looked like swarms of gnats; lower down they resembled silvery butterflies. Where the light shone on the rocky walls and roofs one could distinguish masses upon masses of little silver black specks. These were their nests, as this was a black-nest cave. Somewhere below in the bowels of the earth rumbled an underground river with a noise like distant thunder. This cavernous roar far below and the twittering whisper of the swallows far overhead, combined to add much to the mysteriousness of these wonderful caves.
On the ground in the guano I picked up several eggs, unbroken. How they could fall that distance and yet not get smashed is hard to understand, unless it is that they fell in the soft guano on their ends. We were told that when a man fell from the top he was smashed literally into jelly. I also picked up a few birds which had been stunned when flying against the rocks. This saved me from shooting any.
Spread out on the ground in the cave and also drying outside, raised from the ground on stakes, were coil after coil of rattan ropes and ladders used for collecting the nests. These always have to be new each season, and are first carefully tested. The ladders are made of well twisted strands of rattan with steps of strong, hard wood, generally “bilian.”
On our return to the village we bathed in a shady stream of clear water, the banks of which I noted were composed chiefly of guano. In the afternoon we started off in search of the upper eaves. After a short, stiff climb amid natural rockeries of jagged limestone, we passed under a rock archway or bridge, under which were perched frail-looking raised native huts of the watchers. As we stood under this curious archway we looked down a precipice on our left. It was very steep at our feet, but from the far side it took the form of a slanting shaft, which terminated in a little window or inlet into the lower cave we had visited in the morning. In our ascent we had to climb up very rough, steep ladders fastened against the rocky ledges. The rocks were in many places gay with variegated plants, the most notable being a very pretty-leafed begonia, covered with pink and silver spots, the spots being half pink, half white. The natives with us seemed to enjoy eating these leaves; they certainly looked tempting enough.
Another fine plant growing among these rocks was a climbing pothos, with very dark green leaves, ornamented with a silver band across each leaf, but the finest of all was a fine velvet-leafed climber, veined with crimson, pink, or white (Cissus sp.).