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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Tell them we will go ahead, Achang, and all they need to do is to make fast their rattans to the sampan," said Captain Scott, when he had taken in the situation. In reply to the message the Bornean delivered to them, the Malays nodded their heads vigorously, and smiled their assent. "Go ahead, down the river, Clinch," added the captain to the helmsman.
He pointed to a large low hut formed in the cocoa-nut grove by utilising six growing trees as corners and centre-posts, and binding to these thin horizontal poles, freshly cut down for eaves and ridge. Others formed gables, being fixed by the sailors with their customary deftness, thin rattans being used as binding cords.
Stately emperor palms, kitools with crimped green tresses, fan and oil palms, with the slender areca in countless thousands, vary the shadowy vistas branching out in every direction, with huge-leaved creepers and glossy rattans garlanding the gnarled trunks of forest-trees.
The wayside was bordered by hedges of green and growing rattans uniformly clipped, and forming a continuous wall, which, here and there, threw out a graceful feathery bit of foliage. Over the hedge occasionally bent tall and handsome palm-trees of various species, often laden with cocoanuts, or other fruit of the palm family, and occasionally whole groves of bananas were in sight.
Borneo, notwithstanding its vast extent and immense internal wealth, has but a limited external trade. Boats from Sambas, Pontianack, and Borneo Proper, visit Singapore every year, from May till October, and bring with them black pepper, Malay camphor, gold-dust, rattans, &c.
Very large quantities of the finest camphor in the world are procurable here; it comes down from the Morut country, by the great river; a great deal of wax, some gold, much birds'-nests of an inferior quality, any quantity of sago, cassia, clove-bark, pepper, betel-nut, rattans, camphor-oil, &c., tripan, tortoise-shell, &c.
Huts are now raised in different parts of the plantation, from whence a communication is formed over the whole by means of rattans, to which are attached scarecrows, rattles, clappers, and other machines for frightening away the birds, in the contrivance of which they employ incredible pains and ingenuity; so disposing them that a child, placed in the hut, shall be able, with little exertion, to create a loud clattering noise to a great extent; and on the borders of the field are placed at intervals a species of windmill fixed on poles which, on the inexperienced traveller, have an effect as terrible as those encountered by the knight of La Mancha.
We were obliged to make bridges by cutting down tall trees, laying them across the stream, and interlacing them with rattans. We were now between two ranges of very high hills; on our right hand Bukit Pandang, seen from a great distance at sea; the road shockingly bad. Encamped on the western bank. 23rd. Marched in a north direction, the roads almost impassable.
Immediately after the Butabué influent on the right bank the bed bends abruptly east, and we reached the far-famed rapids of that name. Here the whole surface, as far up as the eye can see, is a mass of rocks and of broken, surging water. The vegetation of the banks, bound together by creepers, llianas, and rattans, is peculiarly fine.
She had been captured at a very early age, with her mother, and a brother and sister, by the piratical prahus of a neighbouring tribe; and those to whose share she fell, sold her to her present owner for some bees' wax and a few bundles of rattans. Her figure was short, and her features very flat; but she was so intelligent and lively that she was a general favourite.
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