This mysterious Santubong figure puzzles and interests me greatly. There is no one nowadays in Kuching capable of fashioning such a thing. Moreover, the tops of carved pillars, and other fretted fragments of stone, have been found in these gravel beds, so that I imagine somewhere on the mountain must be hidden more vestiges of a long-departed people, in the shape of temples and maybe of other buildings. When one remembers Angkor Wat and the manner in which that stupendous work of men’s hands lay buried for centuries, under its shroud of leaves, which more completely than desert sand obliterated the works of humanity for a long while, one can almost be certain that Santubong and its mysteries will be unveiled some day. I only wish I could live long enough to see it. Musing over the past history of semi-deserted countries, such as these, entrances and terrifies one. Under the shade of innumerable generations of trees, men and women have come and gone, struggled to live their lives, raised altars and temples to their gods, with perhaps the quietude of endless previous centuries lulling them into factitious security. Then that “something” happens, when, helpless as thistledown blown about by puffs of wind, such people are destroyed, driven forth or killed, when the relentless growth of the tropics takes possession of their deserted homes, and the trace of their existence is blotted out by leaves. Those great forests of the tropics must hold many secrets, and when staying near the Santubong mountain, its mystery weighed on me, and I longed to know the fate of those who had gone before. For reasons such as these, it is a pity that some of the Europeans who come into touch with natives should do all they can to wipe out from their minds legends and tales bearing on the origin of their race--yarns they call them. Hadji Ahmad was a proof of the manner in which these methods affected him. I was anxious to know what was thought by the Santubong people about this stone. The Hadji said some obvious things, but when I pressed him further, he begged me not to do so, for he was afraid Englishmen in Sarawak might accuse him of telling lies; therefore he preferred to keep what he thought about the stone to himself. I cannot repeat too often that such criticisms made by Europeans to imaginative Eastern peoples amongst whom they live are helping to suppress secrets which, if unveiled, might prove of inestimable value to science.