On one occasion we pitched our tents for a time on the western slope of Kina Balu, about five thousand feet above the sea, on a spot which was fairly level for half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth. There were but few trees, the ground being rocky, but the stony surface was covered by beautiful nepenthes plants, with purple pitchers, which held as much as two quarts of water. From this elevation we could see over the ranges of hills we had passed in our journeys, the reaches of many rivers, the Tampasuk plain to the China Sea beyond. It would be a perfect site for a sanatorium. Roads would have to be made, then invalids and others would come to enjoy the healthy breezes, and gain strength to make excursions over the mountain. Forty years ago I recommended the Government of India to send the least guilty of their mutineers to the north-west coast, where they would have opened up a splendid country, and our camping ground would have furnished space for the barracks required for a garrison of English troops. In these days when mountaineers are seeking new worlds to conquer, it may interest them to read the following short description of our first joint expedition to Kina Balu. To ascend this splendid peak has, no doubt, been the desire of all those who have looked upon its noble proportions. Seen from the north-west, no grander effect can be conceived, as it rises sheer out of the plain and sweeps aloft until it attains the towering height of nearly fourteen thousand feet. Its grand precipices, its polished granite surfaces, glittering under the bright tropical rays, the dashing cascades which fall from a height so great that they dissolve in spray before they are lost in the dark valleys below, have a magical effect on the imagination, and I felt a longing, scarcely to be conceived, to explore its unknown beauties. No amount of fatigue, no suffering, no opposition could stop us when once we started from the coast, and the first time I reached the summit, it was with bare feet that left a red tinge on the rocks at every step. But all this was unnoticed as I viewed the grandeur of the scene around, the lofty peaks of every varied form, the magnificent slopes of apparently polished granite, the broad terraces, the cyclopean walls fringing the giddy precipices, the chasms, whose depths the eye could not penetrate. There was nothing that stopped our onward march, and no rest was sought until we reached the solitary southern peak and I had climbed to its very pinnacle, and rested on a spot not a yard in breadth. Then, and only then, did the glow of triumph mantle in my cheeks as my eyes rested with satisfaction on the vast panorama spread out below. Unfortunately misty clouds swept round the mountain obscuring the splendour of the scene, but they lent a powerful aid to the imagination, as through the rents in the fleecy curtain, rivers, mountains and villages were now visible, now hidden. And there,