We left Kuching in one of the Government launches about eleven o’clock in the morning, and after a few hours’ steaming came to a Chinese settlement, called Sigobang, where the land on the banks becomes a broad alluvial plain and where Chinese settlers grow plantations of sugar, that beautiful cane with its emerald green leaves and golden stems. Fresh sugar-cane is a pleasant thing to munch at in a desultory way. You cut through a piece of the stem, slice it into tubes, peel off its thick rind, and when it looks like a stick of white wood you bite into it, suck its juice, and dispose of its filaments in the most convenient way. The paths in the vicinity of towns or villages are always strewn with the vestiges of sugar-cane eaters, who suck in the juice and spit out the filaments as they go. As we steamed up river we saw pepper vines, yams, pineapples, etc., also growing near the banks, and Chinamen clad in short cotton drawers, holding umbrellas over their heads, and using their other hand as they worked in their gardens. Yellow dogs, about the size of fox terriers, rushed out from Chinese houses and yelped at us from doorways; these were evidently Dyak dogs, who are never known to bark. Bamboo wheels stood under open sheds--primitive machines for extracting the sugar juice from the cane. These Chinese houses appeared more substantial than were those of the poorer Malays. They were built level with the ground, and their wooden doors were ornamented with scarlet bands of paper over which were large black Chinese characters. Ducks and geese were swimming about in the river near these settlements. These small villages being left behind us, the forests once more encroached on the land. The river now became narrower, and rocky banks replaced the mud. The banks were covered with ferns and bamboo grass, the latter weed looking like green lace and shaking at the slightest current of air. Black butterflies fluttered over the grass, and an alligator bird, or bul-bul, was singing on the banks in the sunshine. Clumps of bamboos grew here and there, and great trees hung over the water, clinging to the banks, their branches entangled with parasites and stag’s-horn ferns, whilst the reflection of lagerstremias covered with purple spiked flowers, stained the running water. [Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT UP THE BATANG LUPAR RIVER THE TUAN MUDA, MR. BAILEY AND THE AUTHOR WITH MALAY AND DYAK CHIEFS]