Kayan river, a main branch of the Sadong, we got on to the lower slopes
of the Seboran Mountain, and the path lay along a sharp and moderately
steep ridge, affording an excellent view of the country. Its features
were exactly those of the Himalayas in miniature, as they are described
by Dr. Hooker and other travellers, and looked like a natural model
of some parts of those vast mountains on a scale of about a
tenth--thousands of feet being here represented by hundreds. I now
discovered the source of the beautiful pebbles which had so pleased me
in the riverbed. The slatey rocks had ceased, and these mountains seemed
to consist of a sandstone conglomerate, which was in some places a mere
mass of pebbles cemented together. I might have known that such small
streams could not produce such vast quantities of well-rounded pebbles
of the very hardest materials. They had evidently been formed in past
ages, by the action of some continental stream or seabeach, before the
great island of Borneo had risen from the ocean. The existence of such a
system of hills and valleys reproducing in miniature all the features of
a great mountain region, has an important bearing on the modern theory
that the form of the ground is mainly due to atmospheric rather than
to subterranean action. When we have a number of branching valleys and
ravines running in many different directions within a square mile,
it seems hardly possible to impute their formation, or even their
origination, to rents and fissures produced by earthquakes. On the other
hand, the nature of the rock, so easily decomposed and removed by water,
and the known action of the abundant tropical rains, are in this case,
at least, quite sufficient causes for the production of such valleys.
But the resemblance between their forms and outlines, their mode of
divergence, and the slopes and ridges that divide them, and those of the
grand mountain scenery of the Himalayas, is so remarkable, that we are
forcibly led to the conclusion that the forces at work in the two cases
have been the same, differing only in the time they have been in action,
and the nature of the material they have had to work upon.
About noon we reached the village of Menyerry, beautifully situated on
a spur of the mountain about 600 feet above the valley, and affording
a delightful view of the mountains of this part of Borneo. I here got a
sight of Penrissen Mountain, at the head of the Sarawak River, and one
of the highest in the district, rising to about 6,000 feet above the
sea. To the south the Rowan, and further off the Untowan Mountains in
the Dutch territory appeared equally lofty. Descending from Menyerry we
again crossed the Kayan, which bends round the spur, and ascended to the
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