We none of us slept that night, our boats swayed to and fro in the angry waters which now rushed impetuously over the point, and knowing that we had but a small rope holding us, we feared every moment to see it part and find our boats dashed over a neighbouring fall. In the morning we observed by rough measurement that the water had risen twenty-four feet. As the river continued too rapid to be contended against, we employed next day in manufacturing strong rattan ropes. It took us five days more to reach our camping-ground at the foot of the mountain, a journey which in ordinary times might have been done in two. We passed during our advance up the Madalam many curious and beautiful plants; among others, a very elegant little palm, with finely-divided pinnated leaves, and a stem about a foot high; it grew in tufts on the banks, within the influence of the rise of the waters. Mr. Low found also a beautiful climber with white flowers, in bunches, on the _axils_ of the leaves, with a very fragrant scent; and also a curious rhododendron, with terminal single pale yellow flowers an inch and a half across on pendent branching stems, epiphytal in moss on many of the trees overhanging the water; but what I admired most was a rhododendron with large bunches of straw-coloured blossoms. It grew on the trees, and the flower, as it gracefully bent over us, looked both showy and beautiful. Here, too, Mr. Low discovered three new species of the areca palm, and was enabled to secure the seeds of two: one of them had a curious mottled foliage, another had a dark green stem, with white sheaths to the leaves, which were most delicately fashioned, the leaflets being linear, and not more than an eighth of an inch broad. I may further notice that at the mouth of the Limbang River grows in the marshes a beautiful fan-palm, which at a distance might, from its size, be mistaken for a fine cocoa-nut tree. We reached the Batu Rikan in safety, and passed round it, through a small rivulet, improved into a sort of canal by the Kayans, above which we brought up at an old Kayan encampment on the left. We had here a good view of the range, which is a mass of limestone, and the ascent to the summit is at an angle of 70°; impossible to ascend over any other kind of rock than limestone, the water-worn surfaces of which usually present so many prominent points as to render these precipices practicable. The mountain appears to be covered with vegetation to the precipitous summit, and even on the almost bare rocks shrubs could be seen clinging to the crevices. Round the base of the mountain are detached masses of limestone, much water-worn, with caverns and natural tunnels, with the ground around covered by the tracks of pigs and deer. At the base of the mountain the soil is a yellow loam, with many water-worn sandstone pebbles on its surface.