It is not impossible, or indeed improbable, that diamond deposits in Sarawak will be found and exploited. No systematic operations in search of these precious stones have been attempted, the dense jungle which covers the country being an obstacle. The only people who wash for diamonds are the Malays, and these carry on their work in a very desultory and imperfect manner.
But agriculture and jungle produce have been, and will be, the main source of revenue to Sarawak, and prosperity to the country. We shall deal with these products, as well as with those that are mineral, more fully in a subsequent chapter.
The Bornean forest is so varied and so different at different hours and seasons that no description can possibly convey an adequate idea of it to those who have not known it. Infinite and ever changing are its aspects, as are the treasures it hides. Its beauties are as inexhaustible as the varieties of its productions. In the forest man feels singularly free. The more one wanders in it, the greater grows the sense of profound admiration before nature in one of its grandest aspects. The more one endeavours to study it, the more one finds in it to study. Its deep shades are sacred to the devotee of Science. Yet they afford ample food for the mind of the believer, not less than to that of the philosopher.[[10]]
And we would add, to the superstitious native, to whom the jungles teem with ghosts and spirits.
The Bornean jungles are full of life, and of the sounds of life, which are more marked in the early mornings and in the evenings. Birds are plentiful (there are some 800 species), some of beautiful plumage, but few are songsters. Insect life is very largely represented, and includes many varieties of the curious stick and leaf insects,[[11]] hardly to be distinguished from the twigs and leaves they mimic. Also the noisy and never tiring cicadas, whose evening concerts are almost deafening, and frogs and grasshoppers who help to swell the din. There are many varieties of beautiful butterflies, but these are to be found more in the open clearings. Though there are no dangerous animals, there are many pests, the worst being the leeches, of which there are three kinds, two that lurk in the grass and bushes, the other being aquatic—the horse-leech. Mosquitoes, stinging flies, and ants are common, and the scorpion and centipede are there as well. Snakes, though numerous, are rarely seen, for they swiftly and silently retire on the approach of man, and one variety only, the hamadryad, the great cobra or snake-eating snake, is said to be aggressive. The varieties of land and water snakes are many, there being some 120 different species. Natives often fall victims to snake bites. Pythons attain a length of over twenty feet;[[12]] they seldom attack man, though instances have been known of people having been killed by these reptiles, and the following story, taken from the Sarawak Gazette, will show how dangerous they can be. At a little village a man and his small son were asleep together. In the middle of the night the child shrieked out that he was being taken by a crocodile, and the father, to his horror, found that a snake had closed its jaws on the boy's head. With his hands he prised the reptile's jaws open and released his son; but in his turn he had to be rescued by some neighbours, for the python had wound itself around his body. Neither was much hurt.
Of the wild animals in Sarawak, wild cattle and the rhinoceros have nearly disappeared before their ruthless destroyer, man; and such would have been the fate of that huge, though harmless, anthropoid, the maias, or "orang-utan," at the hands of collectors, had not the Government placed a check upon them by limiting the number each may collect.[[13]] Deer, the sambur, the muntjac or barking deer, and the little mouse-deer, and also wild pig, of which there are several species, abound.[[14]] Numerous too are the monkeys and apes, and numerous are the species; the more peculiar of the former being the proboscis monkey, a species confined to Borneo, and of the latter the gentle gibbons, who announce the dawn, making the woods ring and echo with their melodious gurgling whoops. There are two kinds of diminutive bears, the tree-leopard, wild cat, the scaly ant-eater, the porcupine, the otter, the lemur, and other small animals, including the flying fox, flying squirrel, flying lizard, flying frog, a peculiar kind of rat with a tail which bears a close resemblance to a feather,[[15]] and huge toads nine inches in height.[[16]] But to the casual traveller in the dense jungle with but a limited view, excepting an occasional monkey, or a pig or deer startled from its lair, few of these animals will be visible.
Of the valuable products of the jungle it will be sufficient to note here that gutta, camphor, cutch, and dammar-producing trees abound; also creepers from which rubber is extracted; and rattans of various kinds. There are trees from the nuts of which excellent oil is expressed; and many kinds of useful woods, some exceeding hard and durable, and some ornamental.
Man's greatest enemy is the crocodile, and this voracious saurian becomes a dangerous foe when, driven perhaps by scarcity of other food, it has once preyed upon man, for, like the tiger, it then becomes a man-hunter and man-eater. It will lurk about landing and bathing-places for prey; will snatch a man bodily from a boat; and one has been known to seize a child out of its mother's arms while she was bathing it. The Sarawak Gazette records numerous deaths due to crocodiles, though by no means all that happen, and many thrilling adventures with these reptiles. Two we will give as interesting instances of devotion and presence of mind. A little Malay boy, just able to toddle, was larking in the mud at low water when he was seized by a crocodile, which was making for the water with its screaming little victim in its jaws, when the child's sister, a girl of twelve, and his brother of eight, rushed to his assistance. The boy hopelessly tried to stop the crocodile by clinging to one of its fore-paws, but the girl jumped upon the brute's back, and gradually working her way to its eyes which were then just above water, succeeded in gouging out one with her fingers. This caused the crocodile promptly to drop its prey, but only just in time, as it was on the point of gliding into deep water. By the girl's vigorous intervention it not only lost its prey but also its life, for two men coming up hacked the brute to pieces. The little heroine had remembered the story of how her grandfather had formerly saved his life in the same way. To scoop out the eyes is the only chance of escape for one taken, and it must be done promptly. The little boy was scarcely hurt. The girl's courageous deed duly received a graceful recognition from the Ranee.
Another girl, a Dayak girl this time, rescued her mother, who was dragged out of a boat, in which they were together, by a large crocodile. She threw herself upon the monster, and by thrusting her fingers into its eyes compelled the brute, after a short but sharp struggle, to release its prey.
Death caused by a crocodile is one of the most horrible of deaths, and it is often a protracted one, as the victim is borne along above water for some distance, then taken down, bashed against some sunken log, and brought up again. "May I be killed by a crocodile if I am guilty" is a common invocation made by Malays in protestation of their innocence; in other words, they invoke the most dreadful death that comes within their ken. So did once a young Malay woman in the Simanggang Court on being convicted of a serious crime. That evening, whilst she was bathing, a smothered cry, that she had barely time to utter, announced that her prayer had been heard.