At Muaratabas we joined the _Jolly Bachelor_ pinnace, sending our boat on in shore. Setting sail with a fair breeze, we soon reached the entrance of the Batang Lupar, which is marked by two conical hills,--one the island of Trisauh, in the centre of the river, the other on the right bank. During our passage we observed some of those floating islands which wander over the face of the sea, at the mercy of wind and wave. I remember once that the signalman gave notice that a three-masted vessel was ahead. We all fixed our telescopes on her, as at sea the slightest incident awakens interest: her masts appeared to rake in an extraordinary manner. As we steamed towards her our mistake was soon discovered; it was a floating island, with unusually tall nipa palms upon it, that were bending gracefully before the breeze. On one occasion a man was found at sea making one of these his resting-place. Doubtless he abandoned his island home cheerfully, though he fell into the hands of enemies. He told us that his pirate companions, in hurried flight, had left him on the bank of a hostile river, and so seeing a diminutive island floating to the sea, he swam off and got upon it, and he had been there many days, living upon the fruit he had found on the palm stems. The origin of the islands is this: The stream occasionally wears away the steep bank under the closely united roots of the nipa, and some sudden flood, pressing with unusual force on the loosened earth, tears away a large portion of the shore, which floats to the mouth of the river to be carried by the tides and currents far out to sea. Some fifteen miles off Baram Point, mariners tell of a great collection of floating trees and sea-weed, that forms an almost impassable barrier to ships in a light breeze. Some action of the currents appears to cause this assemblage of floating timber always to keep near one spot, and to move with a gyrating motion. The Batang Lupar is in breadth from two to three miles, and occasionally more: we never had a cast of less than three fathoms on the bar, and inside it deepens to six. The banks are low, composed entirely of alluvial soil. Wind and tide soon carried us to our first night’s resting-place at the mouth of the Lingga river, some twenty miles from the _embouchure_ of the Batang Lupar. It is small, and its banks have the usual flat appearance, relieved, however, by some distant hills and the mountain of Lesong (a mortar), from a fancied resemblance to that article to be seen in every Malay house. We found our boat here, together with a large force from Sarawak. I had taken advantage of the chance to accompany Captain Brooke on one of his tours through the Sarawak territories. This was to induce all the branches of the Sea Dayaks to make peace with each other, and with the towns of the coast, some of which they had so long harried.