might attack the Fort and take us unawares during the night!” to which remark I replied--what was really very true--that the rats frightened me much more than could any Dyaks in the country. Although my stay in Simanggang was rather lonely, I had certain compensations which did not entirely come from human companionship. I fancy every one must have heard of those beautiful birds--now being exterminated all over the world to satisfy the stupid vanity of ignorant and frivolous women--the egrets, or, as Sarawak people call them, paddy birds. From a terrace overlooking the river I used to watch, a little before sunrise and at sunset, for the daily migration of these birds to and from their roosting-places to the fishing grounds on the coast. Simanggang is divided by about sixty miles from the sea, and every morning and evening I could be certain, almost to the minute, of seeing this company of white wings in triangular battalions flying across the river. The shafts of light breaking against their bodies in tints of orange and rose made symphonies of colour as they formed and re-formed with the movements of the birds. I fancied the beautiful things understood the pleasure they gave me as they flapped their great white wings over my head, across the river, across miles of forest, finally disappearing like dots of glittering light in the morning and evening mists. Another wonderful sight on the shores of that Batang Lupar River was the Bore, a fortnightly phenomenon. Now the Batang Lupar, as I have said before, is four miles in breadth at its mouth. This vast volume of water progresses undisturbed for fifteen miles from the mouth of the river, when the channel narrows until at Simanggang there are only five hundred yards from bank to bank. At each flood-tide, the water is forced, as it were, into a funnel, through which it rushes, beating against sandbanks, rocks, snags, and other impediments existing in this shallow river, hurling itself against such obstructions with a noise like thunder which can be heard for miles away. For some minutes the noise of its advent was noticeable from the Fort, when in great walls of white foam it rounded the last reach before it passed Simanggang. Sometimes tiny boats, in which were seated Malay children, were borne along the swiftly-moving backs of the waves, the little canoes looking like flies on the surface of a whirlpool. The children seem to have charmed lives on such occasions, for they can apparently play with the Bore with impunity, although men and women have often been known to find their death in the flood. As it pounded up the banks, tossed itself against snags, and fell back in huge cataracts of water, the spray, touched by the sunlight, looked like a rain of precious stones. Then on it went in its furious course, shaking the boats moored to the banks near the Bazaar, tossing them hither and thither, sometimes tearing one or two away from their moorings, until growling, fighting,