In the evening the Rajah took me in his comfortable boat for a turn on the river. Three Malay boat-boys sent us along; their paddles as they struck the water were as rhythmic as a march tune. We floated past the Malay portion of the town with its brown houses made of palm leaves, their roofs and walls so frail that “you might anywhere break them open with your finger!” Moving westwards we faced the great mountain called Matang, which bars the sunset, its wooded sides and ravines changing every moment of the day under the brilliant sunlight or passing clouds. The sunset behind Matang on that first evening I spent in Kuching was a memorable one. The dark purple mass seemed palpitating with mystery, standing out as it did against a background of crimson and rose and yellow. FOOTNOTES: [1] Malay word meaning palace. [2] The barge was presented by the King of Siam to the late Rajah in 1851. CHAPTER II Sarawak is a land of mountains, of trees, and of water. Steaming from Singapore on your way to Kuching, you enter a great crescent-shaped bay called Datu. The most important rivers of Sarawak flow into this bay. At its southern end stands Tanjong Datu, rising to a height of 700 feet; and across sixty miles of sea in a northerly direction, almost opposite to this green cliff, is Tanjong Sirik, from whence the low and sandy coast runs in an almost straight line as far as Brunei. Harbourless and unprotected, this coast is lashed by the surf during the north-east wind from September to the end of March. During the south-west monsoon, which blows for the remainder of the year, fairer weather prevails, making easier communication between these river mouths and the rest of the world. If you approach Sarawak in the early morning, you can see from the deck of a steamer, cobalt blue mountains hanging baseless between earth and sky. Mists, white as snow-wreaths, encircle their wooded peaks only to melt away at the first rays of the sun and return to the land in refreshing showers later in the afternoon. Cascades born in the mountains, fed by daily rains, tear down their wooded ravines, rolling stones and trees and soil from their banks in their headlong course. Impetuous and irresistible, they widen as they go, until they become mighty rivers tamed by their passage through muddy plains, where they meander in sluggish ways.