Thus ends my journal.
As I have now made many journeys in Borneo, and seen much of forest walking, I think I can speak of it with something like certainty. I have ever found, in recording progress, that we can seldom allow more than a mile an hour under ordinary circumstances. Sometimes, when extremely difficult or winding, we do not make half a mile an hour. On certain occasions, when very hard pressed, I have seen the men manage a mile and a half; but, with all our exertions, I have never yet recorded more than ten miles progress in a day through thick pathless forests, and that was after ten hours of hard work. Of course we actually walk more than we record, as one cannot calculate the slight windings of the way; but allowing for all this, I have the strongest suspicion that Madame Pfeiffer measured her miles by her fatigue. She talks of twenty miles a day as a common performance of hers; and another visitor to this island beats her, recording walking thirty miles in one day through Bornean forests—an utter impossibility.
There was an Adang man among the wax-hunters, the one who accompanied our guide for a short distance, who was pointed out to me as a model of activity, and he certainly appeared so; well built, strong, but light, he skimmed the ground; and the story is told of him, that on receiving information of the illness of his child, he started home, leaving everything behind him but his spear and a little food, and walked from forty to forty-five miles in two days. No European that I have ever seen would have had a chance with him in his own forests.
Six miles a day is quite enough for any man who wishes to take his followers long journeys, unless specially favoured by the ground and the paths; Galton, in speaking of African travelling, says three miles a day with waggons, horses, and cattle, and he is of some authority. I have often thought that we must have walked twenty miles, but the bearings have always proved to me that we have seldom done half that distance. It requires great experience not to judge distance by the fatigue we feel.
Whilst referring to the mistakes in the estimates of distance, I may notice the very remarkable errors into which two visitors to the Limbang have fallen. Mr. Motley[9] mentions exploring that stream to an estimated distance of one hundred and fifty miles, by the windings of the river, and about fifty in a general south-west direction. He reached the Limbuak village, which by my measurement is under twenty miles in a straight line from the mouth: fifty miles in a direct line to the south-west, would have nearly brought him to the Baram, across numerous ranges of hills, and several navigable streams, and a hundred and fifty miles up the river would have brought him nearly to the farthest point I reached, long past the limestone districts. It proves how impossible it is to trust to estimates.
The next curious mistake I may notice, was made by Mr. de Crespigny; he ascended the river Limbang as far as the river Damit. I have seen a sketch map of his, and he places the mouth of that stream in north latitude, 3° 48’, and the mountain of Molu to the north-east of it, in latitude 4° 3’, whereas Molu Peak is a little to the westward of south from the Damit, and nearly twenty-five miles distant in a direct line.
In drawing attention to these errors, I by no means claim immunity from them in the map of the Limbang and Baram rivers which accompanies this volume; but I think they will be found free from gross errors. The course of the latter river was taken down by Captain Brett of the Pluto, and observations of the latitude and longitude of the town of Lañgusan were made by many of the officers on board. In my land journeys, I had very inferior compasses, as I was unable to take with me the valuable levels and other instruments obligingly lent me by Dr. Coulthard, on account of their weight and size; but I used them as long as I was in my boats, to lay down the position of the mountains; and in order to enable me to correct my own errors, I put down the day’s observations on a rough map every evening during the journey, except after we had shot the cascade and wetted the paper too much to permit it being handled roughly.
I may add, that of the whole party of nineteen, none after our return suffered severely from the exposure and privations we had undergone, and I believe the real reason was, that we always were dry at night. For many years we trusted during our expeditions to the leaf huts the natives are accustomed to construct for us and for themselves; but although with sufficient time, and when good materials are plentiful, they manage to make them tolerably watertight, yet they are never so good as the simple tents we always took with us during our later expeditions. With proper ropes and everything fitted to enable us to raise these tents on cross poles in ten minutes, the two did not weigh more than twenty pounds, and afforded comfortable accommodation for our whole party of nineteen people, with all our baggage, and on occasions our six guides took advantage of them also.
I had suffered severely from exposure on former expeditions, particularly when we ascended the Sakarang, and were eight days sleeping in the leaf huts hastily erected by our followers. Of the seven Englishmen who slept on shore, I believe only one escaped without some severe attack of illness, and I remember the late Mr. Brereton mentioning that on his return from a visit to the Bugan country, where his men had been greatly exposed, a fourth of his party died of various diseases. Another precaution I took was to carry myself a few night things, as a light silk jacket, a pair of loose sleeping drawers of the same material, a jersey, and a dry towel, so that if my men lagged far behind, I was not kept for hours in my wet clothes; and whilst travelling in these forests you are always wet, as if there be no rain there are sure to be many rivers to ford.
On my return, I tried to remember the geographical information that was given me before starting. I was told it would take six days from Blimbing to Madihit: leaving out the two days’ detention from freshes, it took us about three hours over the six days. Even the walking distance was really correct; it was only two days from the Adang landing-place, and seven from Madihit; as, although we took ten, yet for the first five days we did not do a fair half-day’s work on any of them. We were warned that it would be impossible to use rafts, and that the banks were almost impassable, and we indeed found it so.