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The only other river of any size and navigable for vessels drawing about nine feet over the bar, is the Kinabatangan, which, like the Sibuku, is on the East side, the coast range of mountains, of which Kinabalu forms a part, being at no great distance from the West coast and so preventing the occurrence of any large rivers on that side.
The whole of these rivers are deep and navigable for seventy or eighty miles; but have all of them mud flats at their mouths, which would not admit of the entry of vessels exceeding fourteen feet at high water springs. The third most considerable river on Borneo is the Kinabatangan, lying in the north of the island, and emptying itself into the Sulo seas.
Visit to the Birds'-nest Caves of Gomanton. I had just returned down the river with Richardson from Tangkulap. Tangkulap is a journey of several days up the Kinabatangan River in British North Borneo. Richardson was the magistrate for this district, and his rule extended over practically the whole of this river, Tangkulap being his headquarters.
The localities at present in favour with tobacco planters are Marudu Bay and Banguey Island in the North, Labuk Bay and Darvel Bay in the neighbourhood of the Silam Station, and the Kinabatangan River on the East.
On these Bornean rivers one is constantly seeing pigs, crocodiles and monkeys, but I noticed on this river an abundance of a monkey which one seldom sees on the large Kinabatangan River.
The descendants of the immigrants who introduced this type of culture are, we think, the Muruts proper, who claim that name and dwell chiefly in the Trusan, the Padas, the Sembakong, the Kerayan rivers, and in the head of the Kinabatangan; also the Kalabits in the northern part of the upper basin of the Baram. It is these which display most decidedly the physical peculiarities noted above.
Besides minor journeys, he had traversed the country from West to East and from North to South, and it was on his last journey from Pappar, on the West Coast, inland to the headwaters of the Kinabatangan and Sambakong Rivers, that he was murdered by a tribe, whose language none of his party understood, but whose confidence he had endeavoured to win by reposing confidence in them, to the extent even of letting them carry his carbine.
Cases are not unknown of whole villages being compelled to remove to a distance, owing to the presence of a number of man-eating crocodiles in a particular bend of a river; this happened to the village of Sebongan on the Kinabatangan River, which has been quite abandoned.
With only one exception, the caves occur in limestone rocks and, generally, at no great distance from the sea, though some have been discovered in the interior, on the banks of the Kinabatangan River. The exception above referred to is that of a small cave on a sand-stone island at the entrance of Sandakan harbour.
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