"_31st._--Started on a short excursion up the country, and slept at Siniawan. Here I found a young Pangeran (who came from Sambas with Mr. Hupe, a German missionary) enchained in the delights of opium. He left Sarawak for Sambas two months since, proceeded five hours' journey, and has since been smoking the drug and sleeping alternately. His life passes thus: between four and five he wakes, yawns, and smokes a pipe or two, which fits him for the labors of taking his guitar and playing for an hour. Then follows a slightly tasted meal, a pipe or two succeeds, and content and merriment for another hour or two. About eight o'clock the gentleman reclines, and pipe succeeds pipe till, toward daylight, he sinks intoxicated and stupid on his pillow, to wake up again in due course to play again the same part. Poor wretch! two months of this life of dissipation have reduced him to a shadow--two more months will consign him to his grave. "_Feb. 1st._--Started after breakfast, and paddled against a strong current past Tundong, and, some distance above, left the main stream and entered the branch to the right, which is narrower, and rendered difficult of navigation by the number of fallen trees which block up the bed, and which sometimes obliged us to quit our boat, and remove all the kajang covers, so as to enable us to haul the boat under the huge trunks. The main stream was rapid and turbid, swollen by a fresh, and its increase of volume blocked up the waters of the tributary, so as to render the current inconsiderable. The Dyaks have thrown several bridges across the rivers, which they effect with great ingenuity; but I was surprised on one of these bridges to observe the traces of the severe flood which we had about a fortnight since. The water on that occasion must have risen twenty feet perpendicularly, and many of the trees evidently but recently fallen, are the effects of its might. The walk to Rat, or Ra-at, is about two miles along a decent path. Nothing can be more picturesque than the hill and the village. The former is a huge lump (I think of granite), almost inaccessible, with bold bare sides, rising out of a rich vegetation at the base, and crowned with trees. The height is about 500 feet; and about a hundred feet lower is a shoulder of the hill on which stands the eagle-nest-like village of Ra-at, the ascent to which is like climbing by a ladder up the side of a house. This is one of the dwelling-places of the Sow Dyaks, a numerous but dispersed tribe. Their chief, or Orang Kaya, is an imbecile old man, and the virtual headship is in the hands of Nimok, of whom more hereafter. Our friends seemed pleased to see us, and Nimok apologized for so few of his people being present, as the harvest was approaching; but being anxious to give a feast on the occasion of my first visit to their tribe, it was arranged that to-morrow I should shoot deer, and the day following return to the mountain. The views