The Portland daily press., 1891-12-26
up A BORNEO RIVER.
Borneo Is Country Where if You Would
Walk You Must Go in a <Boat--Archi-
lecture, Cooking, Fishing, Music--Other
Matters.
Especial Correspondence

LONDON, Dec. 12.-Borneo is one of
those places where, as Paddy would say,
all land travel must be done by water,
for Stanley himself would find it hard to
force way through the bristling mass
of impenetrable jungle-too tough and
plant to be cut down and too full of
moisture to be burned up-which fully
bears out the eastern proverb, can ele-
plant cannot break it down, nor an ant
wriggle through it," In fact, the thick
cts of Borneo, like those of South Amer
lea or Central Africa, may be best con-
ceived by imagining forest of inter-
laced telegraph wires, relieved by an
occasional patch of fishhooks or of PEN
knives.
Thus, when you start on journey
here you hire boat instead of horse
or carriage, and inquire, not about the
state of the roads, but about the tides
and currents. Your native "house boat"
with a roof overhead and windows along
the sides, a cabin amidships for yourself,
q small pantry farther aft, and few
little rabbit hutches at the stern for
your Malay crew and servants, looks
like cross between an overgrown gon-
dola and Noah's first attempt at an ark
overcrowded by false alarm of the
deluge. The only novel feature is huge
staring eye painted on each side of the
bow, since, as the Chinese boatbuilder
will tell you, "Boat no have eye, no can
see CO."
The first twenty miles or SO of the
voyage are gloomy and monotonous
enough. The river seems to have about
hundred mouths, all exactly alike and
all equally overshadowed by the black
funereal mangroves, which stand SO
thick along either bank as to give you
. the feeling of sailing through monster
hairbrush with bristles twenty feet high.
The cherries twilight of the overarch-
ing thickets, the black, sullen, Shiny
waters, the close, damp, vapor bath at
mosphere, the sickening ordor of mud
and decaying vegetation, the sudden
starting up ever and anon through the
thick, oily stream of the horny snout
and huge notched tail of monstrous
crocodile, all combine to make this part
of the journey rather depressing. Nor
are matters much improved when you
pass on to the swanpy jungles of the
fernlike "nipa" palm, which, however
useful in furnishing atap (thatch) for ma
tive huts and house boats, becomes rath-
er a bore when you see nothing else for
twenty or thirty miles on end.
But by degrees the gloom lessons, the
banks grow ''high and dry" the 'eous
cobweb of swamp and thicket gives
place to the firm forest land, and at
length, sweeping around sharp curve,
you come all at once upon view that
might make any man wish himself
painter. A vast tower shaped mass Of
sandstone ehrusts itself out like a pier
into the broad, brown stream, crested
along the summit with noble forest trees,
while the successive lodges or terraces
of its steep, crumbling face are plumed
with magnificent palmlike ferns, one
sprig of which would have covered Go
Hath from head to foot.
In the base of this mighty cliff, lust
above the waters edge, yawns a deep
black tunnel-like arch, all around which
lie packets of rice and tobacco, strips of
dried fish, deer horns, incense sticks"
and tiny red and white flags. Your
Malay boatmen answer your inquiring
look with an expressive gesture and the
single word ''hantus" (spirit), these Of
ferings being in fact kind of black
mail paid to the spirits Of the cave, who
might otherwise play unpleasant tricks
on passing travellers.
By this time you will have passed four
or five groups of rotting, tumbledown
novels, which were once thriving ma
tive hamlets, for before the coming of
the English to establish order with a
strong hand, this whole district was so
mercilessly ravaged by pirates that it was
gradually forsaken by its inhabitants,
most of whom have never returned. But
as you get farther away from the sea
inhabited villages begin to multiply,
and very queer sight they are All
alike are built in the regular Malay
fashion, every house being little box
of bamboos rooted in with palm leaf
thatch and raised high above the ground
on strong piles, which makes all the
huts look as if they were walking about
on stills. The only access is by tang
gan (bamboo ladder), and in the middle
of the floor there is always a large
square hole, through which Stops and
refuse of every kind are emptied on to
the ground below, till by degrees there
forms underneath the house perfect
lake of miscellaneous filth, of which, as
the Scottish ganekeeper said of his mas
ter's shooting, '"The more said the less
the better"
Nor is the cookery of this strange re-
gion less primitive than its architecture.
Half way up the river you are RECALLED
by a hospitable penghulu native chief
with a huge "chunk" of queer looking
bluish-brown meat mixed with yellow
fat, which tastes good deal like rather
gamy pork, but finally turns out to be
rhinoceros, a kind of beef which (as any
one who has been in south Africa will
admit) is not so bad when nothing bet
ter can be got. A little farther on you
fall in with another national dish which
is even more remarkable. AT one Of the
riverside villages two men come on
board with rather tough steak smell
ing strongly of musk, which they pre-