row valley,
with steep sides of marble, which progressively closed in and became
higher. In several places they are underwashed, cleft, and hurled over
each other, and with their naked side-walls form a beautiful contrast
to the blue sky, the clear, greenish river, and the luxuriant lianas,
which, attaching themselves to every inequality to which they could
cling, hung in long garlands over the rocks.

[A frontage.] The stream became so rapid and so shallow that the party
disembarked and dragged the boat over the stony bed. In this manner
we passed through a sharp curve, twelve feet in height, formed by two
rocks thrown opposite to each other, into a tranquil oval-shaped basin
of water enclosed in a circle of limestone walls, inclining inwards,
of from sixty to seventy feet in height; on the upper edge of which a
circle of trees permitted only a misty sunlight to glimmer through the
thick foliage. A magnificent gateway of rock, fifty to sixty feet high,
and adorned with numerous stalactites, raised itself up opposite the
low entrance; and through it we could see, at some distance, the upper
portion of the river bathed in the sun. [A beautiful grotto.] A cavern
of a hundred feet in length, and easily climbed, opened itself in the
left side of the oval court, some sixty feet above the surface of the
water; and it ended in a small gateway, through which you stepped on
to a projection like a balcony, studded with stalactites. From this
point both the landscape and the rocky cauldron are visible, and
the latter is seen to be the remainder of a stalactitic cavern, the
roof of which has fallen in. The beauty and peculiar character of the
place have been felt even by the natives, who have called it Sogoton
(properly, a bay in the sea). In the very hard limestone, which is
like marble, I observed traces of bivalves and multitudes of spines of
the sea-urchin, but no well-defined remains could be knocked off. The
river could still be followed a short distance further upwards; and in
its bed there were disjointed fragments of talcose and chloritic rocks.

[Fishing.] A few small fishes were obtained with much difficulty;
and amongst them was a new and interesting species, viviparous. [183]
An allied species (H. fluviatilis, Bleeker) which I had two years
previously found in a limestone cavern on Nusa Kambangan, in Java,
likewise contained living young ones. The net employed in fishing
appears to be suited to the locality, which is