Before closing this chapter, I must recount a conversation I had with one of my Santubong friends the evening before our departure to the Rejang. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the mountain of Santubong looked black against the sky. Within a few yards of the house a grove of casuarina trees were swaying in the evening breeze. The murmur of their frail branches made an exquisite sound in the stillness of the night. As we stood on the verandah, my Malay friend said: “If you like to go out by yourself, Rajah Ranee, and stand under those trees at midnight, you will hear voices of unknown people telling you the secrets of the earth.” I wish now I had gone out and listened, for I am foolish enough to believe that the secrets told by those musical branches might have been worth listening to, but afraid of the night, of the solitude, and, above all, of the criticisms of my European friends, I refrained. I have since come to the conclusion that I have lost a wonderful and beautiful experience which may never occur again. “I know a story about the mountain of Santubong. Would Rajah Ranee like to hear it?” said my friend, as we stood looking at the mountain. “Say on,” I replied; “I should well like to hear.” “In the days of long ago,” she began, “a holy man, whose name was Hassan, lived in a house at the foot of this mountain. He was a Haji, for he had been to Mecca, and wore a green turban and long flowing robes. He read the Koran day and night, his prayers were incessant, and the name of Allah was ever on his lips. His soul was white and exceedingly clean, and whenever he cut himself with his parang whilst hewing down the trees to make into canoes, the blood flowed from the wound white as milk.[10] He occasionally visited his brothers and sisters living in Kuching, taking about half a day to accomplish the journey, but he was never away from his solitary home by the sea-shore for very long. He never suspected that a beautiful lady, the Spirit of Santubong and the daughter of the moon, lived on its highest peak, and from thence had watched him admiringly on account of his blameless life. One day she flew down into the valley, entered his house, and made friends with him. Their intercourse ripened into love, they were married, and the daughter of the moon wafted her Haji husband to her home beyond the clouds. Haji Hassan and his spirit-wife lived for some years in this lofty region. They were such good people that it seemed as though nothing could ever happen to mar their happiness. But as time went on, the good man grew weary of this unalloyed happiness, and sighed for a change. From his home on the mountain-top he could see the roof of his little palm-thatched house, where he had lived alone for so many years, and he could see the lights of the village near it twinkling in the darkness of nights. He thought of his brothers and sisters in Kuching, and of his other friends living there, and a great longing came over him to