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Updated: May 17, 2025
The yacht is now lying at anchor in a deep coffee-colored stream, near a picturesque Malay village on stilts, surrounded by very extensive groves of palms. Several rivers intersect each other in this neighborhood, flowing through dense jungles and mangrove swamps. The sun is still high.
They are far from picturesque or beautiful, for the banks are generally low, and the jungle invariably extends to the water's edge. For the first fifteen or twenty miles the banks are lined with the nepa-palms, which then gradually disappear, leaving the mangrove alone to clothe the sides of the stream.
Banks indeed at high water can hardly be said to exist, the water stretching away into the mangrove swamps for miles and miles, and you can then go, in a suitable small canoe, away among these swamps as far as you please. This is a fascinating pursuit. But it is a pleasure to be indulged in with caution; for one thing, you are certain to come across crocodiles.
They took the boat to examine this point, and carried six fathoms soundings round the head of the spit to the mouth of the inlet, when it shoaled to two fathoms, and the landing was observed to be bad, by reason of mangrove swamps on either side of it. Mr. Kent, I think, told me that this inlet was from ten to twelve miles long.
Even the monotony of the mangrove-belt alongside gave an additional charm to it, like the frame round a picture. As we passed on, the ridge turned N. and the mangrove line narrowed between the hills. Our path now ran east and more in the middle of the forest, and the cool shade was charming after the heat we had had earlier in the day.
By this time it was late in the afternoon, but the sun was still very hot. I was careful not to let anybody work long at a stretch. As the bars of gold were uncovered we packed them in the box brought for the purpose. Every time a shovel disclosed a new find there was fresh jubilation. While Alderson and I were resting under the shade of a mangrove the sailor made a suggestion.
This fern demands conditions similar to the mangrove water, heat and humidity and might be quoted in support of the theory which gives unique interest to a mangrove swamp. Whole battalions of living mangrove radicles fall into the rivers during February and March.
One of our horses was slightly hurt by a stump of a mangrove tree. All we got from the horse we last killed was sixty-five pounds of meat. October 5 and 6. We travelled over sandy soil, but with little grass, meeting frequently with salt lagoons, surrounded by various salsolaceous plants.
After some miles of this cheerless scenery, and at a point where the fresh water begins to mingle with the salt, the handsome and useful nipa palm, with leaves twenty to thirty feet in length, which supply the native with the material for the walls and roof of his house, the wrapper for his cigarette, the sugar for his breakfast table, the salt for his daily needs and the strong drink to gladden his heart on his feast days, becomes intermixed with the mangrove and finally takes its place a pleasing change, but still monotonous, as it is so dense that, itself growing in the water, it quite shuts out all view of the bank and surrounding country.
We ran into a channel between the eastern shore of the bay and an island, and came to in a deep channel near the shore, which was marshy and covered with a dense growth of mangrove bushes. "Now," said Pecetti as he made fast the painter to a projecting limb, "if the sand-flies don't eat us up, we ought to get some fish here." "What kind of fish do you find here?" asked Herbert.
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