Beautiful hills rise sharply from the banks; some are wooded, with clumps of lofty palms pushing their way up through the jungle, while others are cleared, presenting swelling grassy summits and green slopes. Before us the honoured hill of Sei rises, and forms, as it were, an abrupt termination of the river. The Borneans take a pride in this hill that overshadows their town, although its elevation is but 700 feet. Turning sharply to the right, we saw the first houses of the capital of Borneo, by the natives called Dar’u’salam, or the Abode of Peace, and which has been truly described as the “Venice of hovels.” The salt-water creek or river here expands to a small lake, and on mud-banks are the houses, built on the slenderest of piles--mere palms, that rot in three years. Slow, sluggish, and muddy, the water passes underneath, to leave, at ebb tide, exposed banks emitting the most offensive effluvia, which turns the gold and silver of uniforms to the colour of dirt. As soon as we had anchored, the steamer was surrounded by a crowd of canoes, some so small as scarcely to float a child of five years of age--in fact, but a hollowed log. Mothers do not fear to trust their children in them, as they swim like fishes. It is a saying in Siam, that their children can do three things at a tender age--swim, smoke, and suck. I once saw a child at the breast, but with one eye fixed on his brothers paddling in the water; presently it gave a crow of delight, and leaving its mother’s arms, sprang into the river to enjoy the fun. He was not more than three years old. The whole town appeared to be interested in our arrival, for, as we passed up the broad and deep river between the lines of houses, crowds of men, women, and children thronged the verandahs. The floating market mentioned by Forrest was there also--several hundred canoes, each containing one or two women, covered over with mat hats a yard in diameter, floated up and down about the town, pulling through the water lanes and resting for a while in the slack tide at the back of the houses. These women, generally ill-favoured old slaves, frequent this migratory assemblage every day, and buy and sell fowls, vegetables, fish, and fruit. The supply of food for this population of five-and-twenty thousand requires some arrangement: so every morning a market is held at various points, where the hill people assemble and exchange their agricultural produce for salt, fish, iron, and clothes. The old women are diligent frequenters of these places, and buy here to retail in the capital. I have often come across these extemporized markets: some held under groves of fruit-trees; others on grassy fields, but, by choice or accident, always in a lovely spot.