thousand palm-leaf attaps for the outside walls and roof, and thirty
mats to make inner walls. The men went into the jungle and felled wood
for posts and rafters, then nibong palms were split into strips for the
floors. The whole building was tied together with rattans, like all
Malay houses. There were three rooms, twelve feet by fifteen each, and
two little bath-rooms. A verandah ran along the whole length of the
front, and this was planked to prevent little feet from slipping
through. But the rooms were covered with thick mats, and the floor was
so springy it danced as you moved. We put very little furniture into
these rooms, and the inside walls were only eight feet high, so that
though you could not see into the next room, you could hear all that
went on in all three rooms. The cook-house and servants' room were
separate.

As early as the year 1848, the Rajah had a little Dyak house built on
high poles, under the mountain of Santubong. It was an inconvenient
little place, into which you climbed up a steep ladder--only one room,
in fact, with a verandah; but we spent some happy days there, for the
beauty of that shore made the house a secondary consideration. A small
Malay village nestled in cocoa-nut palms at the foot of Santubong; in
front lay a smooth stretch of sand, and a belt of casuarina-trees always
whispering, without any apparent wind to move their slender spines. The
deer in those days stole out of the jungle at night to eat the sea-foam
which lay in flakes along the sand, and wild pigs could often be shot in
a moonlight stroll under the trees. In the morning, we used to set off
as soon as it was light to a fresh spring in the jungle, where we took
our bath. Dawdling along the edge of the waves, then quite warm to our
bare feet, with towels and leaf buckets in our hands, we reached the
little stream, running under the shade of tall trees in which the
wood-pigeons were cooing. How delicious and fresh that water was! and
every sense was charmed at the same time, unless some stinging ants
walked over our feet, which was not uncommon.

Then we trudged home again, with the wet towels folded on our heads to
shield us from the sun, who by that time was an enemy to be shunned.

A little colony of Chinese were settled here in 1852, but they never
took to the place; the soil was perhaps not good enough for their
gardens. In 1857 the Malays fell upon them and killed them all, because
they were of the same tribe