I have mentioned the admirable curry which Ahtan put before me; perhaps I ought to explain how we make that dish in the Far East; it appears a very different thing from what I have tasted in England under the name of curry: a fowl is cut up into small pieces, and four dried and two green onions, five chillies, half a turmeric, one teaspoonful of coriander seed, one of white cumin, and one of sweet cumin are provided. You must well pound the seeds, turmeric and chillies, and slice the onions fine; then take the saucepan, and after buttering it, slightly brown the onions, then add the pounded ingredients with just sufficient water to reduce them to a paste, and throw in the fowl and well mix them up, till the meat has a yellow tint, and lastly, add the cocoa-nut milk, and boil till the curry be thoroughly cooked. I hope my teaching is sufficiently clear to be understood, but I must add, the cocoa-nut milk is made by scraping the meat of half of an old nut very fine, then soaking it in warm water, and after squeezing out the milk, throw the fibre away. I watched the whole process of cooking with great interest, and almost fancy I could make a curry myself. After dark, while the men were sitting in their tents, I had a talk with the Orang Kaya Upit about the treatment of the aborigines. Now that we are away from the influence of the rajahs, he will speak out, and tell me anecdotes that otherwise would never reach my ears: they are admirably illustrative of the present method of governing this country. A few years ago, a Murut of the Limpasong village killed a tax-gatherer. There was little doubt that the Murut could only excuse himself by urging oppression; and that had he been seized and executed, nothing could very well be said on the subject; but the present Sultan thought differently: instead of killing the offending Murut, he determined to destroy the village of about two hundred souls. He collected a force of Malays to attack the houses from the river, and promised the Muruts the heads, slaves, and plunder, if they attacked by land. The Limpasong people surrounded by a couple of thousand men had no chance; they made a slight resistance, then fled. The Muruts in the woods fell upon them, killed about fifty, and took about the same number of women and children prisoners; the rest escaped. The Orang Kaya thought nothing of this; but the grievance was that the Sultan took away all the prisoners as his slaves, and likewise defrauded the Muruts of the most valuable plunder.