A great many stories might be related of rats, but the most extraordinary thing I ever saw regarding these animals was a migration which took place one evening at dusk through my bedroom. I was just getting better from a severe attack of malaria, and was lying on the bed inside my mosquito house half awake and half asleep, with my Malay Ayah sitting against the wall in a corner of my room. Suddenly, I saw two or three long objects moving across the middle of the room, their black bodies standing out against the pale yellow matting. My room opened on to verandahs from all sides (as every one who is acquainted with the architecture of tropical houses will understand), and it was easy for any animal to climb over the outer verandah and pass through the screened doors leading to the opposite verandah. I watched these crawling creatures, and, being only half awake, wondered what they were. At first I thought it was the result of malaria, making me see things which did not exist, but when the rats were joined by others coming in at one door and going out of the other, in numbers of tens, of twenties, of sixties, then it must have been hundreds, for the floor was one mass of moving objects, I called to the Ayah, who sat motionless the other side of the room. “Don’t move,” she said; “they are the rats.” I was too frightened not to move, and I screamed out to the Rajah, who I knew was in the room next to mine. As he came in, the rats ran up one side of him, and I remember the dull thud they made as they jumped off his shoulder to the floor. Some fortmen, hearing my screams, also appeared. The Rajah told me to make as little noise as possible, so I had to remain still whilst thousands and thousands of rats passed through my room. This abnormal invasion lasted for about ten or fifteen minutes, when the rats began to diminish in number, until there were only a few stragglers left to follow the main body. It appears that such migrations are well known all over Sarawak, and that people fear them because they are accompanied by a certain amount of danger. It is said by the natives that if any one should kill one of these rats, his companions would attack the person in such large numbers that his body would be almost torn to pieces. Looking deeper into the matter, one wonders why these creatures should so migrate, and where they go; but this no one seems to know. Their area of operations is a restricted one, for it appears that on this occasion my bedroom was the only human habitation through which they went.