After having spent some time on the north-west coast of Borneo, varied by collecting expeditions further in the interior of the Murut and Dusun countries, I took a passage on the small trading steamer Far East, bound for Sandakan and the Sulu Archipelago. An intelligent young Scotchman, Mr. W.C. Cowie, part owner and engineer, was on board, and enlivened the voyage with a fund of information relating to the habits, customs, and trade of the natives among whom we were going. We were accompanied by his brother, who was going to reside in Sulu for trading purposes, and several Chinese and Malay traders also had taken deck passages. We sailed about 7 A.M. on April 5th, and the weather being fine we obtained capital views of the Bornean coast as we steamed along.

This was the greatest season of drought which had been known here for some time, nearly five months without rain, and this under a tropical sun, and in several places we could see jungle fires raging along the coast. The monsoon was dead against us, and we met numerous native boats flying down to Labuan before the wind. These were laden with pearl-shell, trepang, etc., and were mostly from the islands of Balabac and Palawan; some, however, had come round from the north-east coast of Borneo, and even from the Sulu isles. In about a fortnight the monsoon is expected to change, when they will find no difficulty in returning safely. At sunset, and again at sunrise, we saw “Kina Balu” towering up into the clouds, and apparently very near to the coast, but the distance is very deceptive. It was dark when we entered Sandakan Bay, and about three o’clock on the morning of the 8th, I was awakened by the rattling of the anchor-chains, and found we were at Sandakan itself. It is merely a small trading station consisting of about a dozen “ataps,” or palm thatched houses built over the water, and a long “jimbatan,” or jetty, also on piles, serves as a roadway and a landing stage for produce.

At the time of my visit the only European residents were Mr. W.B. Pryer, who acted as agent and resident for the company, who had just obtained cessions of territory from the Sultans of Brunei and Sulu respectively, and Mr. Martin, a trader. There was formerly a depÔt here belonging to the “Labuan Trading Company,” managed by a Mr. Sachze, who died rather suddenly, as is believed by poison administered by his wife, a beautiful native woman given to intrigue. We landed at daybreak, and Mr. Cowie and myself took our guns and went for a walk in the forest behind the little group of houses. We followed a path which had been recently cut, and which led us in a northerly direction for about half a mile until we came to a stream descending the steep hill-side in a series of little falls. Pigeons were plentiful here, but the trees were too high to allow of our shooting them. We also disturbed a colony of large red monkeys, who were breakfasting on a tall fig-tree in fruit. We clambered up the hill-side and walked along the ridge for some distance. The surface vegetation was very meagre, only a few ferns being obtained, all of which I had seen before, with the exception of a bipinnate form of Blechnum orientalis, having fronds five feet in length.

We retraced our steps along the ridge and descended near the houses, following for some distance the little stream which supplies beautifully clear and cool water to the houses, and ships which call in here occasionally. This stream falls over the sandstone rocks about a hundred yards from the houses, to which it is conveyed by a large bamboo aqueduct. Quite near to the rocks a neat little bath house has been erected, and through the upper part of this structure the bamboo water-pipe is carried, and by blocking it up with a plug a delicious shower-bath is obtainable. We sent for our towels and clean clothes from the ship, and enjoyed our morning ablutions very much. The noble Dipteris Horsfieldii was luxuriant on the rocks here, and a fine scarlet ixora was a perfect mass of bloom. While searching for plants on the wet rocks near the bath-house, I was startled by a snake popping its head out of a bunch of herbage just level with my face! I struck at it with a stick I had in my hand, but it made its escape apparently unhurt, and perhaps more frightened than I was, although I entertain a horror of these creatures. Returning to the ship I shot a fine fish hawk as it flew overhead on its way to the forest. After breakfast we paid Mr. Pryer a visit, and enjoyed looking over splendid collections of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera which he had made here. Some of the butterflies and beetles were especially fine, and several were supposed to be new to science. He had also a small collection of bird skins made here, but I noted nothing among them different to those of the north-west coast.

When Mr. Pryer first came to live here the natives had annoyed him a good deal by coming below the house at night and stealing rice. This they did by making a hole through the bags with a spear, so that the rice ran through the interstices of the lath floor, and was caught in a vessel held below for that purpose. One day, however, a tolerably large and healthy alligator was brought in for sale, and with the eye of a naturalist, Mr. Pryer at once saw his chance. The ugly creature was purchased and confined beneath the house, and it is needless to add that the nocturnal pilfering in that direction was immediately discontinued. Alligators of enormous dimensions are said to be very common here, but we had to be satisfied with a glimpse of a shark in the bay. Elephants are said to come down to the banks of the Sagaliad river, and a young rhinoceros was actually shot there a few months only after the time of our visit. Having borrowed a boat and obtained a native crew we landed on two of the islands in the bay, and found them equally barren. The only plants of interest we noticed were one or two species of palms, which I had not seen elsewhere, and of one of these I obtained a large quantity of seeds. We saw plenty of curlew, and large flocks of milk white cranes or “padi birds,” rested on the trees near the shore. It was nearly dusk when we returned to the ship, and being wet and dirty, as one almost invariably is on exploring tours in the forest and jungle, we were glad to visit the little bath-house once more, and change our clothes before dinner on the cool upper deck of the little steamer.

At daybreak I was awoke by the rattling of the chains as the anchor was weighed, and in a few minutes afterwards Sandakan was behind us as we steamed away to the Sulu Archipelago. We reached Meimbong on the evening of the 10th, and anchored just off the traders’ houses, which, as is usual here, are built on piles far enough out from the shore for vessels to anchor at the little jetty before the doors. Sulu is about thirty-six hours steaming from Sandakan, but in this case we were longer. We reached the islands at the entrance to the harbour of Meimbong just at sundown, and were much impressed by the indications of cultivation and fertility which they presented. We could also see the cultivated patches and the fruit groves on the Sulu hills quite plainly, while the cool fresh evening air was deliciously perfumed, with what we afterwards found to be a mint-like plant (Hyptis suaveolens), very common throughout the island, especially in waste places and cornfields.

After dinner we went ashore to see an old Chinaman named “Peah,” one of the principal traders in the place. His house was half house and half warehouse, consisting of a large front room the entire length of the house with some private apartments behind, the kitchen, as is usual, being a separate structure at the end of the dwelling. Half the large front room consisted of a raised platform about four feet in height, carpeted with finely-worked pandan mats, and covered with a fancy chintz canopy, fringed in front. Cushions were piled up on the parti-coloured mats, and between these and the partition behind fancy coloured boxes were piled ostentatiously, each secured by a brass lock of Chinese manufacture. On entering we found “Peah” sitting on the platform talking to some Sulu traders, his wife, a neat little Chinese woman, and about a dozen slaves and attendants, mostly Sulu girls. The room was but dimly illuminated with cocoa-nut oil lamps, but a couple of composite candles were brought on our arrival, and installed in two fancy glass holders. The girls ran away to the kitchen to prepare chocolate, which, together with biscuits, was soon handed round, after which one of the dusky belles brought us nipa leaf cigarettes very deftly made.

A long “bichara,” or talk on trading and other topics now took place, gin and water being handed round at intervals. We afterwards had some music on a kind of harmonica, formed of about a dozen small gongs of graded sizes, arranged in a bamboo frame, these being beaten dulcimer-like by two sticks to an accompaniment of five or six larger gongs and of some Malay drums. The whole made a deafening noise as I thought, but at a distance some very pleasant effects are produced, the smaller gongs sounding quite sweet and bell-like in tone.

It is not an uncommon practice for Sulu parents to sell their children, or for them to be taken into slavery, as payment for some debt previously contracted by their parents or guardians. It is a kind of slavery, however, like that in Borneo, which is not so objectionable as it sounds, since they enjoy pretty much liberty, and are often far better off in the way of food and clothing than if they were free; nor are they torn from their home and friends as in the case of the poor African of years ago. As I have said they are well treated and are rarely chastised, but we had one instance of this being done during the time we lay in harbour here. A well-known Chinese trader from Labuan “Cheng Ting” had brought with him a young Chinese servant, or “boy” about twenty years of age, and for a Chinaman remarkably handsome, with a jet black pig-tail hanging nearly as low as his heels. This “boy” was a great favourite with “Peah’s” Sulu girls, especially with one whom we, not knowing by name, had christened the “gipsy,” a remarkably well made girl with expressive eyes, high cheek-bones, and luxuriant hair, all of which was, doubtless, altogether too much for the tender susceptibilities of a young oriental. We lay close alongside the pile wharf, and one night were awoke by a woman’s piercing shrieks, and the loud voices of several men, and on our going to see the cause we found the youthful oriental in the hands of a couple of “Peah’s” coolies, who stripped this celestial Adonis, and tying him to a post by his queue, they gave him a dozen or so with a rattan, at which he did bawl most lustily, much to the amusement of his captors. And she, the dusky Venus, was handed over to Mrs. “Peah,” who corrected her privately in the women’s apartment, and afterwards chained the erring damsel in a space below her own bed, so as to prevent her stealing out to midnight meetings again during our stay. I do not think either of the culprits were hurt much, and despite the yells of the “boy,” the rascal was jolly enough and full of bravado when he came on board in the morning.

The first morning after our arrival I and Mr. Cowie took a boat at sunrise and pulled down to the market place. Leaving our boat at the Orang Kayu’s house we walked through the narrow gateway, and crossing the place where the market is held, just outside the barricade, we followed the course of the river for some distance, and obtained capital shooting at the large blue pigeons, evidently the same species as that so common in Borneo. We should have had much better sport, only that about a dozen of the “lads of the village” followed like curs at our heels, and they ran riot as soon as ever they saw a bird fall, and in their eagerness to clutch it they did a good deal of damage to a long-tailed rufous brown pigeon which I shot here for the first time and wished to preserve. Their frantic leaping, splashing and yelling in the little stream and on its banks also frightened away many birds before we could get within range, while anything like remonstrance was so much labour thrown away. White and green paroquets flew screaming overhead as they left the tall trees near the coast, where they had evidently roosted for the night, and were now most probably on their way to their feeding grounds, the fruit trees in the forest further inland. We crossed several cultivated patches, and growing in clumps near the native houses we saw quantities of Musa textilis cultivated here, and also in the Philippines, the fibre being used for cordage, and it is also largely imported into this country under the name of “manilla hemp.” On waste places beside the river, Quisqualis indica was very abundant, forming bushes about four feet in height, its slender branches being literally borne down to the ground by the weight of its flowers, which hung in immense clusters from the points of its branches.

On our return we made a detour to the right and came upon several graves, a few of which were fenced in with bushes and had rude headstones, or a post to mark the spot. Other graves were neglected and overgrown with weeds. Here a variety of the “Frangipane” (Plumieria acuminata), was very lovely, bearing immense clusters of its waxy flowers which exhale a most delicious odour. These flowers are white with a yellow centre, and are flushed with purple behind. This plant, or, as seen here in Sulu, small tree, is common throughout the Malay region, and is by the natives esteemed as a suitable decoration for the graves of their friends. Its Malay name of “Bunga orang sudah mati,” meaning literally, “Dead man’s flower.” We returned to the river near the market-place and obtained a nice cool bath previous to returning for breakfast on board. About two o’clock we all returned, and leaving the boat in a creek a little beyond the headman’s house, we bore across the plain to the right through an orchard-like grove of teak-trees. I had stopped to load my gun before starting, and when I hastened on to rejoin my friends, I found them at the foot of a dead teak-tree, where they had kindly awaited my coming to point out a pretty pink-flowered orchid which was clinging to the naked branches right in the blazing sunshine, and flowering most profusely.

We at last came to an undulating plain of coarse “lallang” grass four feet in height, while the soil at our feet was thickly paved with vitrified slag or scoriÆ, the product of the island during its volcanic epoch. It was very hot, and the walking over the sharp stones, hidden as they were in the tall grass, was, to say the least of it, very troublesome. We had expected to find deer or wild pig in the patches of thick jungle which occur here and there, but the dogs were too wild and did not hunt the ground well. Along the edge of a bit of old forest we obtained an occasional shot at a bird or two, and amongst others we secured a golden oriole with black wing, tips and tail, a small hawk, and a large greenish paroquet, together with several pigeons. The black and white and large blue pigeons were extremely plentiful here, as also were white paroquets, but these last were too wary to allow us within range.

I made several dips into the patches of old forest in search of plants, but nothing of interest was seen. Orchids appeared to be very rare, and with the exception of a dingy yellow-flowered cleisostoma which grew rather plentifully on the teak-trees, nothing more was seen. We had had a long and wearying walk, and it was about half-an-hour before sundown when we returned to the boat and pulled to the ship for dinner. I was very tired, but altogether pleased at having secured at least one new species of orchid as well as two or three birds that I had never seen before. After dinner I occupied myself in sketching my new pink orchid and in helping my “boy” skin the birds I wished to preserve.

I was happy in the labour, and no description could possibly convey any idea of that delight which fills one when new and beautiful objects of natural history are discovered for the first time.