rbed, will become a garden itself, trailing its red or
orange blossoms from bough to bough till the forest glows with colour.

The Rhododendron, growing in the forks of the great branches, takes
possession of the tall trees, making them blush all over with delicate
pinks and lilacs, or deepest rose clusters. Then the orchideous plants
fix themselves in the branches, and send out long sprays of blossom of
many colours and sweetest perfume. Here the voice of the Burong boya
(crocodile-bird) may be heard, singing like an English thrush. He shakes
his wings as he sings, and the Malays say that from time immemorial he
has owed a large sum of money to the crocodile, who comes every year to
ask payment; then the bird, perched on a high bough out of reach of the
monster, sings, "How can I pay? I have nothing but my feathers, nothing
but my feathers!" So the crocodile goes away till next year. There are
not many singing birds in Borneo besides this thrush. The soft voices of
many doves and pigeons may always be heard, and often the curious
creaking noise made by the wings of rhinoceros hornbills as they fly
past. More musical is the voice of the Wawa monkey, a bubbling like
water running out of a narrow-necked bottle, always to be heard at early
dawn, and the sweetest of alarums. A dead stillness reigns in the jungle
by day, but at sunset every leaf almost becomes instinct with life. You
might almost fancy yourself beset by Gideon's army, when all the lamps
in the pitchers rattled and broke, and every man blew his trumpet into
your ear. It is an astounding noise certainly, and difficult to believe
that so many pipes and rattles, whirring machines and trumpets, belong
to good-sized beetles or flies, singing their evening song to the
setting sun. As the light dies away all becomes still again, unless any
marshy ground shelters frogs. But to hear all this you must go to the
old jungle, where the tall trees stand near together and shut out the
light of day, and almost the air, for there is a painful sense of
suffocation in the dense wood.

CHAPTER IX.

CONTINUATION OF THE TRIP TO REJANG.

After two days' paddling from the mouth of the Rejang, the boats arrived
at Sibou, where there is a manufactory for nepa salt. The nepa palm
grows down to the edge of the banks, which are washed by a salt tide,
and furnishes the Dyak with many necessaries.

The leaves make the thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter
over th