little interest, I did not have the tree cut down to get it.
At this time I had the misfortune to slip among some fallen trees,
and hurt my ankle; and, not being careful enough at first, it became a
severe inflamed ulcer, which would not heal, and kept me a prisoner in
the house the whole of July and part of August. When I could get out
again, I determined to take a trip up a branch of the Simunjon River to
Semabang, where there was said to be a large Dyak house, a mountain with
abundance of fruit, and plenty of Orangs and fine birds. As the river
was very narrow, and I was obliged to go in a very small boat with
little luggage, I only took with me a Chinese boy as a servant. I
carried a cask of medicated arrack to put Mias skins in, and stores and
ammunition for a fortnight. After a few miles, the stream became very
narrow and winding, and the whole country on each side was flooded. On
the banks were an abundance of monkeys--the common Macacus cynomolgus,
a black Semnopithecus, and the extraordinary long-nosed monkey (Nasalis
larvatus), which is as large as a three-year old child, has a very long
tail, and a fleshy nose longer than that of the biggest-nosed man. The
further we went on the narrower and more winding the stream became;
fallen trees sometimes blocked up our passage, and sometimes tangled
branches and creepers met completely across it, and had to be cut away
before we could get on. It took us two days to reach Semabang, and we
hardly saw a bit of dry land all the way. In the latter part of the
journey I could touch the bushes on each side for miles; and we were
often delayed by the screw-pines (Pandanus), which grow abundantly in
the water, falling across the stream. In other places dense rafts of
floating grass completely filled up the channel, making our journey a
constant succession of difficulties.
Near the landing-place we found a fine house, 250 feet long, raised high
above the ground on posts, with a wide verandah and still wider platform
of bamboo in front of it. Almost all the people, however, were away on
some excursion after edible birds'-nests or bees'-wax, and there only
remained in the house two or three old men and women with a lot of
children. The mountain or hill was close by, covered with a complete
forest of fruit-trees, among which the Durian and Mangosteen were very
abundant; but the fruit was not yet quite ripe, except a little here
and there. I spent a week at this place, going out everyday in various
directions about the mountain, accompanied by a Malay, who had stayed
with me while the other boatmen returned. For three days we found no
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